industrial-organizational psychology learning module e valuating work performance prepared by the...

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module

Evaluating Work Performance

Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998

Lesson Objectives

Know why evaluating work performance is important

Know how I/O psychologists help people evaluate work performance

Understand one approach to developing evaluation tools

At the end of this lecture, you should:


Why does evaluating work performance matter?

Helps people do their jobs better Identifies training and education needs Assigns people to work they can do well Maintains fairness in salaries, benefits,

promotion, hiring, and firing


Evaluation Helps People Do Their Jobs Better Most workers want to know how they are

doing on the job Workers need performance feedback to

work effectively timely, accurate, constructive feedback is

key to effective performance motivational strategies such as goal setting

depend upon regular performance updates


Evaluation Helps Identify Training Needs Critical for identifying training needs

shows individual strengths shows “development opportunities”

Jobs change, markets change, and the competition changes most workers will have more than one career

and frequent need to develop new skills Organizations thrive when workers value

“lifelong learning”


Evaluation Helps Assign People to Appropriate Work People are hired to do one job...

but they may eventually become more suited for a different job

many people also develop areas of expertise on their jobs: activities at which they excel

Performance evaluation systems help manage these changes to identify individuals for promotion to facilitate lateral transfers


Evaluation Facilitates Fairness in Important Decisions

Rewarding good performance merit-based salary and benefits promotions

Addressing poor performance firing decisions

Requires accurate measurement of how well people do their jobs

Issues that are NOT job related must be ignored by the evaluation system


Examples of Important Decisions Many court battles are fought because of

discrimination in the workplace Example: Rountree v. Department of

Agriculture Example: Hopkins v. Price-Waterhouse

Performance evaluation is often at the center of these disputes

I/O psychologists ensure the evaluation process is fair and help companies avoid these kinds of legal problems


How do I/O psychologists help evaluate work performance?

Identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other qualities necessary for performance

Create standards for performance: What is acceptable, or good, or excellent?

Train supervisors to: observe/evaluate performance accurately focus on only job-relevant issues

Study why and how rating errors happen


Exercise: Evaluate Your Boss Think of your boss and the things he or she

does at work On a blank piece of paper, choose one or

two dimensions of work performance from the following list: Training others Planning work for others Assigning tasks to others Scheduling people Observing others’ work


Exercise: Evaluate Your Boss Next, for each area/dimension you have

chosen, write three sentences Sentence A: Give an example of very poor

performance in this area Sentence B: Give an example of acceptable

performance in this area Sentence C: Give an example of excellent

performance in this area Make a rating scale from 1 to 5, where 1

corresponds to sentence A, 3 to sentence B, and 5 to sentence C


Example: Scheduling People

1 - “Often forgets to tell people when he has made changes to the shift schedule.”

2 -

3 - “Gives people a choice of shifts, whenever possible.”

4 -

5 - “Plans shifts so that no one person always ends up working the bad shift.”


Exercise: Make your rating Using your example statements as a guide,

make a rating of your boss on the scale you designed.

In an actual work setting, I/O psychologists would spend much time and effort with workers and supervisors to make sure that: All of the performance areas made sense

for the job being rated All of the example statements fit the areas All of the scale values were fair


Conclusions

Performance evaluation is an important issue both for companies and for workers

With careful design and appropriate use, performance evaluations can support productivity and fair allocation of rewards

Industrial-organizational psychologists specialize in making sure that performance evaluations are designed correctly


industrial-organizational psychology learning module e valuating work performance prepared by the...

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