Coordination and Standard Practices - A study by Artur Victoria

After standard practice procedures have been put into operation, better ways may be developed for doing the work. When these improvements are to be put into effect, a change is made in the standard practice instructions covering the performance of the activity involved, and a notice of the change is sent to all persons concerned.

Standard practice instructions are of great value to both the management and the workers. To the worker, the detailed directions serve to minimize the chance of error, to relieve him of the task of planning his method of work (a task for which he is not always well fitted), and to save him from much unnecessary effort by eliminating wasted motion. When he follows standard instructions he knows he has done his work correctly, and he has the satisfaction which comes from work well done. leia todo o artigo

Compensation - Salary Better Than Wages? - A study by Artur Victoria

A good plan must recognize the relative value of each individual contribution as demonstrated through sustained performance. It must first emphasize actual work accomplishment as measured by objective performance appraisal. This will insure full recognition of exceptional performance while avoiding an over payment for performance below established standards. Many companies treat exempt employees as equals in performance and give flat percentage increases across the board to all exempt employees except perhaps a rare few who have surpassed all standards. This practice drives good people out of the company because tangible recognition of accomplishment is lacking. And, because excellent, mediocre, and poor performance are rewarded alike, compensation Euros are wasted. leia todo o artigo

Business Organizational Adjustment - A study by Artur Victoria

Organizational performance may decline for reasons other than top management neglect of either the leading or lagging aspects of the administrative role. A change in overall economic conditions or any other force not entirely controllable by management may require adjustments to be made by the organization. And since the demands for adjustment which stem from sources both external and internal to the organization-are numerous, complex, and vary in predictability, management must necessarily choose to focus on some demands more than others. leia todo o artigo

Performance of Clerical Employees - A study by Artur Victoria

While clerical employees should participate in the goal setting, the degree to which they should be permitted to set their own performance standards is necessarily limited. Yet management must depend on this group to keep the business going, to help realize profit goals, to reduce costs, and to move up into positions of responsibility in lower and middle management. Discussion of individual performance results is equally important. The manager will have to pick up and carry the ball more frequently, but should encourage the individual to participate in the discussion and freely express his viewpoint. leia todo o artigo

The Employee Being Evaluated - A study by Artur Victoria

An evaluation system will tend to be viewed as more distributive just if its procedures are perceived to be fair, and the procedures used are more likely to be viewed as equitable by those who view the outcomes it produced (ratings or rewards based on those ratings) as fair. When it comes to perceptions of procedural justice, important ingredients include the following:

- Individuals being evaluated should have some impact on the process. Individuals value: a) participation in setting the standards by which they will be judged (management by objectives scores very well here); b) the opportunity to present their own case, especially when evaluations are subjective; and c) rights of appeal, when they disagree with either the process or outcome. leia todo o artigo

Setting Up an Employee Retention Plan - A study by Artur Victoria

In an overhaul the exempt salaried compensation program attitude surveys and exit interviews strongly indicate that two out of three voluntary resignations of exempt, salaried employees are due in large measure to feelings of dissatisfaction associated with compensation. Specifically, employees note that there has been no upgrading of the exempt salaried pay structure for the past five years; individual pay increases have failed to keep pace with increases in the cost of living; pay increases are granted every 16 months on the average, and there seems to be a tendency to give uniform pay increases, thus failing to recognize superior performance while overpaying mediocre and poor performers. A significant contributing factor here is the absence of position descriptions, performance standards, and performance appraisals. Also contributing to the problem is an absence of control on the number of people hired by certain functions, and formal organization planning is nonexistent. Ten action steps are indicated for this: leia todo o artigo

Performance of Clerical Employees - A study by Artur Victoria

While clerical employees should participate in the goal setting, the degree to which they should be permitted to set their own performance standards is necessarily limited. Yet management must depend on this group to keep the business going, to help realize profit goals, to reduce costs, and to move up into positions of responsibility in lower and middle management. Discussion of individual performance results is equally important. The manager will have to pick up and carry the ball more frequently, but should encourage the individual to participate in the discussion and freely express his viewpoint. The format for appraisal of a non-exempt salaried employee performance is necessarily less complex than the one used for exempt salaried employees. leia todo o artigo

Performance Evaluation In Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

The primary reason why performance evaluation is so difficult and why almost every appraisal system is flawed is that performance appraisal serves many different purposes, which are rarely well-served by the same methods of performance evaluation. The purposes for conducting performance evaluation include: 1. Evaluation to improve job matching. Employees must be given tasks and assigned to jobs based on their skills and abilities. Performance evaluation of workers gives their superiors a sense of what they can do and how well they do it.

2. Communication of organizational values and objectives. The individual employee sometimes has a poor sense of what the organization wants done. An employee may wish to satisfy the desires of the organization but cannot do so without some guidance. Performance evaluation can be a very powerful tool for showing employees what is valued and what is incidental. At the same time, performance evaluation can be a powerful means of communicating organizational culture and norms of behavior, with regard to both outcome (what is sought) and process (acceptable methods). leia todo o artigo

Patterns Of Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

When "what to do" is reduced to a standard operating procedure, task ambiguity is low. But some jobs score quite high on task ambiguity and requisite discretion, such as physicians, self-directed research scientists, and high-level general managers. In these jobs, it can be just as important (if not more so) to exercise good judgment in selecting what tasks to carry out as it is to execute those tasks well. A physician who selects the wrong procedure but performs it masterfully is of little use to the patient! In extreme cases, creativity-finding entirely new tasks to perform or, at least, new ways to perform old tasks-is the most important factor in good performance. leia todo o artigo

Objective Versus Subjective Measures In Human Resources Evaluation - A study by Artur Victoria

The desirability of objective/formulaic evaluation measures versus subjective/impressionistic measures hinges largely on considerations of strategy, technology, and culture. But either of these alternatives involves a number of complex considerations when it comes time to devise and implement a particular scheme.

Foremost among these complex considerations are perceptions of justice: An evaluation system that is purely subjective the evaluator simply announces whether she thinks the employee's performance is excellent, good, fair, or poor - is apt to score low on procedural justice, being too susceptible to caprice and bias by the evaluator. Some basis for the evaluation should be offered. But highly formulaic systems, applied in a non formulaic environment different individuals face different challenges, have access to different resources, and so on - are equally apt to be seen as unjust, because they miss all the distinctive factors applying to the individual being evaluated. A compromise scheme that uses objective measures, but tailors the "formula" to the individual situation, invites corruption or at least politicking in the formula - setting process, and as a result can lead to perceptions of procedural injustice. leia todo o artigo

Misalignment of Incentives In Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

Misalignment of incentives usually comes down to a problem of workers choosing to do the "wrong" thing. The variations on the basic model of agency illustrate many of these problems:

1 - When workers have several tasks to perform, incentive systems have a hard time getting the balance right. Attention and effort will be given to those activities on which the employee perceives that he or she can have the biggest impact in terms of compensation. The perception of a large impact, in turn, depends on two considerations: Does the reward system take significant account of this or that measure of performance? And how much control does the individual have over the performance measures - how noisy is the relationship between efforts and performance measures? leia todo o artigo

Managing The Workers' Motivation - A study by Artur Victoria

One motivating factor is of course interest in the job itself. Where people have this interest they are prepared to put in a great deal of effort and produce first-class results. It is not uncommon for a man whose work is indifferent, and who is regarded as being lazy, to have a hobby at which he shows himself to be energetic and to have high standards. There is nothing wrong with the man himself; he just happens not to find his work very interesting. It is usually found that where work is varied and makes demands on a man skill there is little problem of motivation; in these circumstances people express themselves through their work, and poor performance would diminish them as people.

It may be objected that not everyone has or can have an interesting job, and that we have to consider effective means of motivation for them also. This is true, but it is possible to overstate the argument. A skilled engineer may look round a factory where light assembly work is being done, where iced fruits are put on chocolates by people who do nothing else, and reflect that he personally would not like to do any of those jobs, whatever the rate of pay offered. But the people who do such jobs often find satisfaction in them. They do their work with minimal attention and think of more interesting things. Industrial music, congenial company, and pleasantly decorated surroundings all add to the interest of the work. leia todo o artigo

Managing Employee Training - A study by Artur Victoria

A new employee, especially if he is young or new to factory life, has an inevitable feeling of strangeness among new surroundings and new people. He needs to be welcomed and helped to feel at home. Even if he is accustomed to factory work, the kind of welcome he receives in his first few days can have an effect on his attitude to his job. It is worthwhile therefore giving some attention to a new employee, and setting aside the necessary time on his first morning to give him undivided attention. It is usually convenient to have a list of the things new employees should have explained to them. This list obviously needs to be made especially for the factory concerned, but might include some of the following points: the kind of work done in the department systems (e.g. production control) in use in the factory safety practices and rules company rules and procedures payment of wages and bonuses canteen and welfare facilities works clubs and recreational facilities. Some large companies have induction courses for new employees, but such courses are a supplement to the induction given by the supervisor and are not a substitute for it. In a small company with no induction course, the whole of the responsibility is on the supervisor. A new employee should be introduced to his colleagues, and should know at least some members of senior management and be able to recognize them. leia todo o artigo

Layoff Of Senior Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

To the extent that senior workers are, by virtue of their seniority, more highly paid, the firm gets more economic bang by terminating more senior employees. In settings where the knowledge base and technology change rapidly, recent hires may be more in tune with important new developments, giving another reason to discharge more senior workers. But potential claims of age discrimination (in locations where there are laws against age discrimination) must be attended to. Consequently, when a firm decides it would prefer to prune selectively from its more senior workers, early retirement programs, carefully crafted to avoid any adverse selection and appearance of age discrimination, may be more desirable. Layoffs targeted at older workers are also unlikely to appear distributive just. Organizations with a culture that emphasizes loyalty will obviously have an especially difficult time with targeting senior workers, as will organizations that depend on slowly developed firm-specific human capital. leia todo o artigo

Incentive Schemes In Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

Incentive schemes are sometimes constructed in which rewards to the individual depend on achieving certain hurdle levels of performance. That is, compensation depends discontinuous on the achievement of some numerical goal. For example, a salesman bonus may depend on whether he surpasses some level of sales, and/or his average commission percentage may jump discontinuous as certain sales figures are exceeded. When effort is spread over time, such schemes can fail to achieve the desired ends. For example, a worker whose performance near the end of the evaluation period is far from the next hurdle will have little incentive to work hard. In contrast, employees who are close to a hurdle will have strong reasons to want to kill themselves (or others!) trying to make it, even at the cost of hurting performance in the future or undertaking dysfunctional actions, such as bilking a valued customer in order to make a quick sale. The salesperson far from the next hurdle may "bank" sales for the next period, while the salesperson close to the next hurdle may try to accelerate sales.

This can be particularly true of comparative schemes, where a prize is given, say, to the best cumulative performer over some period out of a set of employees. In such cases, if one employee builds up a substantial lead over the others, then all may decrease their efforts; those who are behind slow down because there is little chance that they can catch up, and the leader slacks off because those behind have slowed down. In general, the worker's ability to shift the level and nature of effort as time passes makes schemes that evaluate performance over a period of time somewhat tricky. leia todo o artigo

Human Resources Individual Evaluation - A study by Artur Victoria

The appraisal of individual employees is almost inevitably dysfunctional. Organizational performance is improved through refinements to the overall system or process of production, which must be the focus of attention. According to this line of thought, individual performance appraisals typically divert attention from more important tasks; they focus people's attention on alleviating symptoms of poor performance rather than identifying root causes, and they serve only to demoralize workers who find the evaluations unfair or inequitable. Deming argues that performance can usefully be appraised at the system level only, because it is system improvements that must be stressed.

One can legitimately ask why summary evaluations are necessary. If the point of performance appraisal is to help the individual to comprehend what the organization desires or to aid in self-improvement, then a vague, multi-criterion evaluation -"You did well in sales level, but you need to pay more attention to established customers, at least as measured by repeat sales"-is often adequate and even superior to a single precise summary statistic, such as "Overall, you are a 3 on a scale of 1 to 6." leia todo o artigo

Human Resources Evaluation Systems - A study by Artur Victoria

Performance evaluation systems can be classified along a number of dimensions that capture variations in their structure, content, and process characteristics. Among the most important dimensions are the following: 1. Who/what is evaluated? Do we evaluate the individual, the workgroup, the division? 2. Who performs (and has input into) the evaluation? Is it done by each individual's immediate supervisor? Peers, subordinates, or customers? How much input does the person being evaluated has into the evaluation and in appealing the results? 3. Time frame: short to long. What is the time frame over which data are collected (either formally and objectively or informally) before evaluations are rendered?

4. Objective/formulaic versus subjective/impressionistic evaluations. In some cases, performance is measured very objectively, using unambiguous measures of different aspects of performance. For example, a salesperson might be scored on Euros sales, new customers developed, and increases in orders by old customers, and each of these being put on some standard scale (e.g., standard deviations from the mean performance of salesmen in the organization) and then weighted 40%, 40%, and 20%, respectively. In contrast, employees in a facility might be evaluated and rated based on the subjective overall impressions of their immediate superiors. leia todo o artigo

Human Resources - Choosing a Method of Performance Evaluation - A study by Artur Victoria

Today it is widely recognized that a manager who wants to improve organizational performance must concern himself with the total environment in which employees work. He must be sensitive to the need for change in the physical and social surroundings in which work is performed, as well as to questions of compensation, hours of work, incentives, recognition, and the like. The importance of the physical setting-plant layout, lighting, ventilation, and so forth-on productivity was an early concern of scientific managers. There is very complex and subtle interdependence of (a) Management efforts to introduce change, (b) Workers perceptions of such efforts, and

(c) Organizational efficiency. Unfortunately, the impact of this important insight-as well as a limited understanding of the way space and other aspects of the physical environment affect people-led to inferences that the physical setting hardly mattered. Today space planners and organizational development experts have found in a broader approach to the physical environment natural and fruitful areas for collaboration in their efforts to improve organizational effectiveness. leia todo o artigo

Evaluation Strategy In Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

Performance evaluation systems should be congruent with the strategy of the firm, helping to communicate that strategy clearly and forcefully to individuals and putting positive value on behaviors that reinforce the strategy. For example, a manufacturing firm whose strategy involves providing high levels of quality and after-sale service to customers should not reduce performance evaluation of salesmen to levels of Euros sold or new customers developed. Looking at reorder levels or surveyed measures of customer satisfaction may be much better. In the same context, a firm that emphasizes after-sale service may wish to slow down the pace of performance evaluation, so that a greater amount of relevant information can be brought to bear. Although the need for congruence between strategy and performance evaluation is obvious, it is not hard to find examples of organizations that fail to satisfy this simple desideratum.

When an organization changes its strategy, using performance evaluation to communicate the nature, importance, and the change to employees can be very effective. Technology and work organization enter in several ways. For guardian jobs, to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptably low performance, but fine distinctions should not be made among those whose performance is acceptable; Companies don't want to stimulate employees to gamble on getting slightly better performance if there is a risk that this will lead to a disaster. leia todo o artigo

Equity In Human Resources Evaluation - A study by Artur Victoria

There are no doubt some occasions in which employees will believe it is fair for a supervisor to hold a particular co-worker to a lower performance standard-for instance, a colleague whose entire family was just killed in a car crash, or who lost a finger, or who has a learning disability, or who is brand new to the job. However, appraisal systems that permit evaluators to establish a separate baseline for each person being evaluated can invite perceptions of subjectivity and bias among those being evaluated. They certainly invite ferocious politicking and the possibility of corruption. Besides worrying about perceived (and actual) justice in comparative evaluation schemes, you have to worry about the impact that such schemes can have on the behavior of those being evaluated. It can happen that some likely behavioral reactions:

1 - Politicking and possible attempts at corruption may occur at the time the criteria for evaluation are established or handicaps are employed. We know of no fool-proof response to this problem, but for several reasons it often helps to have criteria set and handicaps determined by a committee of supervisors: a) it is usually harder to corrupt or influence a committee than an individual; b) individual supervisors are less likely to be capricious or biased when they have to defend their actions in a group; and c) committees can stiffen the backbone of individual supervisors, by giving them a "cover" or excuse for decisions that are made. leia todo o artigo