Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module Evaluating Work Performance Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998
Download ReportTranscript Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module Evaluating Work Performance Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998
Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module Evaluating Work Performance Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 Lesson Objectives At the end of this lecture, you should: Know why evaluating work performance is important Know how I/O psychologists help people evaluate work performance Understand one approach to developing evaluation tools Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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” Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 Example: Scheduling People 1 - “Often forgets to tell people when he has made changes to the shift schedule.” 23 - “Gives people a choice of shifts, whenever possible.” 45 - “Plans shifts so that no one person always ends up working the bad shift.” Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998 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 Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998