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Answer the questions to the case Appraising the Secretaries at Sweetwater U at the end of Chapter 6. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200 words.
Case Incident:Appraising the Secretaries at Sweetwater U
Rob Winchester newly appointed vice president for administrative affairsatSweetwaterStateUniversity faced a tough problem shortly after hisuniversity career began. Three weeks after he came on board in SeptemberSweetwaters president Robs boss told Rob thatone of his first tasks was to improvetheappraisal systemused to evaluate secretarial and clerical performanceatSweetwaterU.Themain difficulty was thattheperformance appraisal was tied to salary increases givenattheend oftheyear.Therefore most administrators were less than accurate whentheyusedthegraphic rating forms thatwerethebasis oftheclerical staff evaluation. Each administrator simply rated his or her clerk or secretary as excellent. This clearedtheway for all support staff to receive a maximum pay increase every year.
Butthecurrentuniversity budget simply did not include enough money to fund another maximum annual increase for every staffer. FurthermoreSweetwaters president felt thatthecustom of providing invalid performance feedback to each secretary was not productive so he had askedthenew vice president to revisethesystem. In October Rob sent a memo to all administrators tellingthem thatinthefuture no more than halfthesecretariesreporting to any particular administrator could be appraised as excellent. This move in effect forced each supervisor to begin ranking his or hersecretariesfor quality of performance.Thevice presidents memo met widespread resistance immediatelyfrom administrators who were afraid thatmany oftheirsecretarieswould leave for lucrative jobs; and fromsecretaries who felt thatthenew system wasunfair. A handful ofsecretarieshad begun quietly picketing outsidethepresidents home ontheuniversity campus.Thepicketing caustic remarks by disgruntled administrators and rumors of an impending slowdown bythesecretaries(there were about 250 on campus) made Rob Winchester wonder whether he had madetheright decision by settingup forced ranking. He knew however thatthere were a few performance appraisal experts intheSchool of Business so he setup an appointment withthem to discussthematter.
He met withthemthenext morning. He explainedthesituation as he had found it:Thepresent appraisal system had been setup whentheuniversity first opened 10 years earlier. A committee ofsecretarieshad developed it.Under thatsystemSweetwaters administrators filled out forms similar totheone inFigure 6.8. This once-a-year appraisal (in March) had run into problems almost immediately since it was apparent fromthestart thatadministrators varied widely intheir interpretations of job standards as well as in how conscientiouslythey filled outtheforms and supervisedtheirsecretaries. Moreoverattheend ofthefirst year it became obvious to everyone thateach secretarys salary increase was tied directly totheMarch appraisal. For example those rated excellent receivedthemaximum increases those rated good received smaller increases and those given neither rating received only across-the-board cost-of-living increases. Sinceuniversities in generalandSweetwaterin particularhave paidsecretariessomewhatlower salaries than those in private industry somesecretariesleft in a huff thatfirst year. From thattime on most administrators simply rated allsecretariesexcellent in order to reduce staff turnover thus ensuring each a maximum increase. Intheprocessthey also avoidedthehard feelings aroused bythesignificant performance differences otherwise highlighted by administrators.
TwoSweetwaterexperts agreed to considertheproblem and in 2 weeksthey came back tothevice president withthefollowing recommendations. Firsttheformused to ratethesecretarieswas grossly insufficient. It wasunclear whatexcellent or quality of work meant for example.They recommended instead a form like thatinFigure 6.2. In additionthey recommended thatthevice president rescind his earlier memo and no longerattempt to forceuniversity administrators to rateatleast halftheirsecretariesas less than excellent.Thetwo consultants pointed out thatthis was in fact anunfair procedure since it was quite possible thatany particular administrator might have staffers who were all excellentor conceivably although less likely all below standard.Theexperts said thattheway to get alltheadministrators to taketheappraisal process more seriously was to stop tying it to salary increases. In other wordsthey recommended thatevery administrator fill out a form like thatinFigure 6.2for each secretaryatleast once a year andthenuse this form asthebasis of a counseling session. Salary increases would be made on some basis other thantheperformance appraisal so thatadministrators would no longer hesitate to fill outtherating forms honestly.
Rob thankedthetwo experts and went back to his office to pondertheir recommendations. Some oftherecommendations (such as substitutingthenew rating form fortheold) seemed to make sense. Nevertheless he still had serious doubts as totheefficacy of any graphic rating form particularly if he were to decide in favor of his original forced ranking approach.Theexperts second recommendationto stop tyingtheappraisals to automatic salary increasesmade sense but raised a practical problem: If salary increases were not to be based on performance appraisals on whatwerethey to be based? He began wondering whethertheexperts recommendations werent simply based on ivory-towertheorizing.
QUESTIONS
Do youthink thattheexperts recommendations will be sufficient to get most oftheadministrators to fill outtherating forms properly? Why? Why not? Whatadditional actions (if any) do youthink will be necessary?
2.
Do youthink thatVice President Winchester would be better off dropping graphic rating forms substituting instead one oftheother techniques we discussed in this chapter such as a ranking method? Why?
3.
Whatperformance appraisal system would youdevelop forthesecretariesif youwere Rob Winchester? Defend your answer.
Figure 6.8A Graphic Rating Scale with Unclear Standards
Note:For example what exactly is meant by good quantity of work and so forth?
For example one study found that raters penalized successful women for their success.50Earlier studies had found that raters tend to demean womens performance particularly when they excel at what seems like male-typical tasks. The researchers found it is only women not men for whom a unique propensity toward dislike is created by success in a nontraditional work situation.51
The bottom line is that the appraisal often says more about the appraiser than about the appraisee.52This is a powerful reason for having the supervisors boss review the rating or for using multiple raters.53