In this essay I’ll compare four performance appraisal concepts, which can be applied to the annual evaluation of an engineer in the mid-sized manufacturing plant. I’ll explain advantages and disadvantages each of them in the given situation.
In my example the plant manager uses the plant’s current performance evaluation form, which contains three points: friendliness, neatness of workspace and attitude to work. I consider such evaluation to be very simple, because it takes into account only employee’s attitude to colleagues, to work place and to company’s goals. On my opinion, there’re many other factors, influencing on engineer’s affectivity, for example, his professional skills, special technical knowledge, ability to solve current working issues, teamwork and individual work, ability of quick decision making etc. I’ll take into account all these factors by choosing techniques to improve engineer’s performance evaluation.
Current evaluation form, used by manager, consists of common sets of evaluation criteria. On one hand, this method makes the process of evaluation short and quick, because manager uses only three values of rating: low, medium and high rates. On another hand, this technique depends much on the subjective manager’s opinion and his individual observations. For example, manager noticed engineer’s demonstration of poor attention and attitude towards co-workers when manager was talking to the group. He noted engineer’s uncommunicativeness, but didn’t identify reasons of such his behaviour.
360 degree method of performance evaluation, mentioned in the given task, is more advanced and therefore is widely used by modern companies. This technique is based not only on manager’s subjective evaluation, but also on opinions of supervisors, peers and subordinates. Each of these employees cooperates with engineer every day, working on common current project. In the working process they can evaluate engineer’s attitude not only to work, but also to colleagues, their ideas, opinions and comments.
Thus, supervisors, peers and subordinates allow making engineer’s performance evaluation more objective. Additionally, 360 degree method has some other advantages. “It helps identifying employee’s strengths, weakness and potential; open feedback can give new insights regarding the employee” (Saiyadain, 2009, 247).
There are also some disadvantages of 360 degree method. Firstly, an objectivity of supervisors, peers and subordinates, which may differ because of the selected employees for evaluation process. Secondly, it’s take too much time for evaluating and therefore manager has to wait for all feedbacks. Thus, an important factor of evaluation by supervisors, peers and subordinates is a specific selection of people for the performance evaluation process. They have to evaluate engineer’s work critically, objectively and timely.
Taking into account all these factors, I’d suggest the manager to use next three techniques in additional to 360 degree method to improve performance evaluation: competency mapping, weighted checklist and behaviour observation scale.
The first method allows evaluating engineer’s competence, paying attention to his education, working experience, personal effectiveness, skills of interpersonal communication etc. It’s important to notice, that competence should be viewed as a set of engineer’s knowledge and skills, which can be improved, but not a set of personal characteristics, which can’t be changed. …