Quiz 8: Performance Management And Appraisal

What is performance appraisal?

Allison found several job duties that were listed on her subordinate's job description which are no longer part of the job. Also, the company recently updated its strategic plan. Based on the new plan, Allison will add some related job duties to her subordinate's job and communicate with her subordinate about the changes. Allison is engaged in ________.

_______________ is the process of identifying, measuring, managing, and developing the performance of the human resources in an organization.

Alyssa's manager has asked her to complete a review of Alyssa's past six months on the job. Next week, Alyssa will sit down with her manager to go over the review and receive her manager's feedback on her work for the past six months. Alyssa and her manager are engaged in ________.

The performance appraisal process always begins with the __________ in step one.

Which performance appraisal method is most associated with file folders of positive and negative performance of employees?

The performance management approach that requires managers to keep a record of specific examples of good/bad performance is the:

Charlie beat his deadline three times this month. Kara, his supervisor, puts a note in his file so she will remember his efforts during his performance evaluation later this year. Kara's note represents a ________________.

To provide accurate performance appraisals, Samantha keeps a box of index cards on each of her employees. When an employee does something particularly well or particularly poorly, Samantha writes the event down on a card and puts it in that employee's box. It appears Samantha is using the ______ method of performance appraisal.

Whenever an employee has a major achievement, Anna asks that employee to send her an email describing the achievement. Likewise, if an employee makes a mistake, Anna asks the employee to send her an email describing the mistake and what happened. When it's time to do performance appraisals, Anna brings all the emails she received from each employee together to create an appraisal. It appears Anna is using the ________ method of performance appraisal.

To be accurate, objectives should be SMART. What does the M in SMART stand for?

In what type of method are annual performance goals established jointly between the manager and employee?

As part of her job as a stock clerk, Breanna is required to take inventory to identify items to be restocked. At the beginning of each quarter, Breanna and her manager set a goal for reducing the amount of time it takes to get items restocked. This quarter, her goal is to reduce the time by 10%. At the end of the period, Breanna will review her numbers with her manager. If she has reduced the restock times by 10%, she will receive a raise. Breanna's performance appraisal is done using the ______ method.

Essays are most associated with the _______________ type of performance appraisals.

Megan is considering who to promote into a new position. She asks each of her supervisors to write an appraisal of their employees describing each employee's strengths and weaknesses. Megan is requesting supervisors use the ________ method of performance appraisal.

Craig is starting a new business and looking for an easy-to-use performance appraisal method that he can apply to every job in the organization, from the top manager to the cleaning staff. Craig should probably adopt the ______ method of performance appraisal.

What is probably the most commonly used form during formal performance appraisal?

I have a scale with above average, average, and below average. This scale is called a(n) _____________.

If a manager considers one employee at a time and circles a number/word on a continuum to signify the degree to which that employee meets a criterion, he/she is likely to be using a(n):

"Coming to Appointments: 30 minutes early, 15 minutes early, 5 minutes early, on time, 5 minutes late, 15 minutes late, never arrive." This scale would most likely be associated with what performance appraisal method?

Which performance management technique involves the description of a large number of actions on the part of the employee, and then classifies these incidents into performance dimensions along a continuum?

Cole's performance appraisal describes his actions along a continuum. For example, when it comes to customer service, he receives a 1 if he regularly ignores customers, a 3 if he regularly greets customers, and a 5 if he regularly greets customers and asks how he can help. It appears Cole is using the ______ method of performance appraisal.

If it is predetermined that 5% of students will pass this exam and 95% will flunk, what kind of performance appraisal system is being used?

In the ______ method, the manager compares an employee to other employees rather than to a standard measure of performance.

When a manager makes an evaluative decision, such as who should be recognized as Employee of the Month or who gets a promotion, they are __________________ their employees.

Jeffrey was just named Employee of the Month. To decide who would receive this honor, management must have used the ________ method of performance appraisal.

Which one of the following is NOT true of peers as a source of performance information?

According to the text, when supervisors are being evaluated, _____ may provide information about their managerial practices that we would be unable to find out using other means.

When using subordinates to evaluate employees' performance, ________ must be maintained.

According to most research, how do employees (especially younger and less experienced employees) generally view their ability to do their job?

As individuals become more knowledgeable and skilled in their work, how will they view their ability to do their job?

If 360-degree evaluations are the best, why are they not always used?

______________ analyze individual performance on all sides.

The type of performance management system where a company analyzes the performance of an individual "from all sides" is known as:

Trevor is well liked by his manager and all his coworkers. He is fun to be around and makes people laugh. His work performance is average, but his manager gave him an excellent rating on his performance appraisal. It is likely his manager made an error due to _______.

Brisa recently had a baby. When she returned from maternity leave, her manager assumed that she would want to work fewer hours and would be distracted by things at home. Although Brisa's performance remained as high as it had been before the baby, her boss gave her lower marks on her performance appraisal. It is likely his manager made an error due to _______.

On the first week of his new sales job, Bryan closed a huge sale. Although his work since has been average, he still receives excellent performance appraisal reviews. It is likely his manager is making a _________ error.

Han believes that all his employees do a good job. When he gives performance appraisals, he rates everyone as "average" because he thinks that doing a good job is an average rating. In reality, several of Han's employees are excellent and several are below average. It appears Han is making a(n) _________ error in his performance appraisals.

Duran went to the same college as his manager. The two often speak of the college's sports and traditions together. Although Duran is a below-average performer, his manager gives him an average rating on his performance appraisals. It is likely his manager made an error due to _______.

When Myra was completing a performance appraisal on one of her employees, she rated the employee high on reliability and conscientiousness. The next item on the form was accuracy. Even though the employee was only average on accuracy, Myra gave her a high rating. Myra had just given her a high rating on two other items. It is likely Myra made an error due to _______.

Daniel knew his performance appraisal was coming up in one month. He spent that month coming to work early and staying late. As a result, he got an excellent rating on his performance appraisal when his performance for the entire year had only been average. It is likely his manager made an error due to _______.

Brenda dislikes having to fill out performance appraisals on her employees. She vows to sit down and finish them all in one afternoon. She decides to start with her lowest-performing employee to get the worst out of the way. Next, she appraises an average performer but gives excellent ratings. After appraising that first employee, the average performer looks excellent to her. It is likely Brenda made an error due to _______.

Marc's manager saw him come back late from lunch one day. Marc was late because he had been working out a problem with a client. However, Marc's manager assumed Marc just took a long lunch because Marc is a slacker. It is likely his manager made a(n) _______ error.

"You came early to class and therefore you must be a good overall student." What type of performance appraisal error is involved here?

Rating everyone high on this exam would be associated with what error?

Five people will get a scholarship today. Four good and one average person interviewed in the morning. Four bad and one average person interviewed in the afternoon. The four good people in the morning got the scholarship, and because the average person in the afternoon looked so good compared to the bad people in the afternoon, that person got the scholarship in spite of being identical to the average person in the morning. What performance appraisal error is demonstrated here?

_________ is mentally classifying a person into an affinity group and then identifying the person as having the same assumed characteristics as the group.

___________ error occurs when the rater evaluates subordinates that he or she considers similar to himself or herself as a better employee.

If a student evaluates her professor low on all evaluation criteria due to dissatisfaction with the professor's grading, the student has likely committed which rater error?

Tammy is evaluating employees on the 2nd shift. Sara, whose son attends Tammy's alma mater, receives a higher ranking than her peers. Tammy is exhibiting _________ toward Sara, which affects the outcome of the evaluation.

Adam evaluates everyone in his department as "average""”no one is a great employee, but no one is a bad employee, either. Adam is exhibiting a distributional error known as ________________ in his evaluations.

To avoid performance appraisal problems, managers should do all of the following EXCEPT:

To avoid problems in the appraisal process, which of the following should generally be minimized?

In step one of the evaluative performance appraisal interview, the appraiser should open the interview with ________.

Which of the following is NOT a step in preparing for the developmental performance appraisal interview?

Performance appraisal describes the process of identifying, measuring, managing, and developing people in an organization.

Acceptability means that the use of the measure is appropriate to the people that must use it.

Performance management tools need not be valid and reliable, so long as they are highly acceptable by management and employees.

Performance appraisals allow management to make decisions about employees within the organization.

Physical actions or behaviors can be directly observed and are therefore more likely to be a valid assessment of the individual's performance.

With the critical incidents method, managers simply have a file folder for each employee, which can be hard copy or electronic.

Critical incidents are commonly used for developmental decisions and evaluative decisions.

Communication is the key factor in determining MBO's success or failure.

BARS cannot be customized to every different type of job.

Supervisors are always the best person to assess employee performance.

Peer evaluations can give us good insight into the inner workings of a group or team.

Attribution error states that similar marks may be given to items that are near each other on the performance appraisal form, regardless of differences in performance on those measures.

Explain three main reasons for conducting performance appraisals.

Identify the necessary characteristics of accurate performance management tools.

What are the three major reasons for performing performance appraisals?

Briefly describe the three primary options for what can be evaluated in performance appraisals.

What is the key difference between BARS and the Graphic Rating Scale?

What are the key problems with 360-degree evaluations?

List and describe three distributional errors in performance appraisals.

Describe three common problems in performance appraisals.

The first step in the performance appraisal process is:

What would be an example of informal performance appraisal?

In step two of the performance appraisal process, "develop standards" refers to ___________________.

In step three of the performance appraisal process, "informal performance appraisal" refers to __________________.

In step four of the performance appraisal process, the common practice is to have a ______ performance review once or twice a year.

When the ad manager looked at the employee's proposed advertisement and said "you must do better than that," the performance measure did not meet the test of being:

Which of the following performance characteristics deals with a factual measure of the process that we mean to measure and that works the same way each time it is used?

In performance appraisals, ________ means that a specific form provides enough information for everyone to understand what level of performance has been achieved by a particular employee within a well-identified job.

Jenna creates a very generic evaluation form which she can use for most employees, regardless of the types of jobs the employees perform. This evaluation form is too generic and will not be useful for modifying employee behavior. Jenna's form is not _________.

Jungmin's job as a biomedical engineer involves conducting research on the engineering aspects of the biological systems. Most important are his written reports on his findings. Jungmin's supervisor based Jungmin's performance appraisal on the reports. It is likely that Jungmin's performance appraisal is _________.

Sean has two supervisors who both provide appraisals on Sean's performance. On a scale of 1-5, both supervisors gave Sean a 4.2. It is likely that Sean's performance appraisal is __________.

Ryan's manager provided him with a performance appraisal that covered the past six months. Ryan asked his manager what the appraisal was based on. Ryan contends that his manager only came to Ryan's work area once or twice in the past six months and could not possibly know enough about Ryan's work to write an appraisal. What aspect of good performance appraisals does Ryan's appraisal appear to be missing?

Brittney recently read that once-a-year performance appraisals are ineffective. In response, she is asking all her managers to begin providing monthly performance appraisals to all their employees. Each manager has 30 employees and balks at the idea of providing that many performance appraisals each month. What aspect of good performance appraisals does Brittney's plan appear to be missing?

Casey's performance appraisal indicated that she was good at managing client relationships. Casey asked her supervisor for more details and was simply told, "You just do a good job in that area." What aspect of good performance appraisals does Casey's appraisal appear to be missing?

At Acme Global, customer service is an important priority. However, Michael's latest performance appraisal focused on his lack of critical thinking and his lack of knowledge of the company's technology. What aspect of good performance appraisals does Michael's appraisal appear to be missing?

When a performance appraisal process is valid, what does that mean?

If bad weather in a sales territory were to occasionally cause a significant drop in sales for a particular salesperson, and total sales is a performance criterion on their evaluation, the measure has not met the test of being:

Communication with our __________ can help identify issues within the work environment which can be fixed.

In performance appraisal, communication is about:

Richard received a low score on his performance appraisal because he did not create project-specific data management plans as part of his job as a clinical data manager. However, Richard has not received training on creating such plans and will likely get a low score on this part of his appraisal again next year. This suggests Richard's appraisal falls short of which reason for conducting performance appraisals?

During his performance appraisal, Julian mentioned that he was having difficulty keeping client records uptodate because the computer system was antiquated. As a result, the department decided to replace both the software and hardware in Julian's department. As a result, Julian's department's performance increased. This is an example of the _______ reason for conducting performance appraisals.

As a result of his last performance appraisal, Deron finally got the promotion he has been seeking for three years. His supervisor agreed with Deron that his performance had improved and that Deron was ready to take on more responsibility. This is an example of the _______ reason for conducting performance appraisals.

From a business perspective, __________ is the willingness to achieve organizational objectives.

Bree went into her performance appraisal interview expecting to hear what a great performer she was and that she was getting a promotion. Instead, her manager pointed out some important areas in which Bree needed to improve if she wanted to continue to advance in the organization. As a result, Bree plans to focus on those areas of improvement in hopes of getting the promotion next year. This is an example of the _______ reason for conducting performance appraisals.

What are traits?

Evaluation of a salesperson's "tenacity" and "enthusiasm" is known as a ________ appraisal.

Some evaluation items like attitude, initiative, and promotability are difficult to measure _______.

Nicole is rating her employees on _______ when she assigns them scores on items such as "conscientiousness" and "critical thinking ability."

In considering two employees for a promotion, Keith decided to nominate the more attractive and extroverted candidate. It appears Keith based his promotion appraisal on ________.

When evaluating employees based on behaviors, we are assessing them based on ________.

Samuel's supervisor is reviewing his attendance and punctuality record as part of an annual evaluation. This type of evaluation is known as a _________ appraisal.

When appraising a paramedic, Derrick based his appraisal on the individual's performance on emergency diagnostic and treatment procedures. It appears that Derrick is basing his appraisal on ________.

When appraising an automobile mechanic, Mac based his appraisal on the individual's performance doing routine maintenance and repairs on cars. It appears that Mac is basing his appraisal on ________.

Max is evaluating Murray's performance by using data about accounts that Murray manages. Murray maintained 100% of his existing accounts and added additional services to 35% of his existing accounts. Max is evaluating Murray using a __________ appraisal.

Alexander supervises three workers who repair watches in the jewelry department. He bases his performance appraisal of the workers on the number of watches each employee repairs each week. It appears that Alexander is basing his appraisal on ________.