Industrial-Organizational Psychology Learning Module Evaluating Work Performance Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP © 1998
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Transcript 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