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Appraising The Secretaries at Sweetwater U Session 8 Que

Here are potential responses to the questions: 1. The PMS development and implementation process outlined had some flaws. It did not properly define performance standards or get buy-in from key stakeholders like administrators and secretaries. Tying ratings directly to pay raises also discouraged honest evaluations. 2. The purpose of the PMS for secretaries was to evaluate their job performance. Administrative support likely impacts university operations and productivity. 3. The experts' recommendations to improve the rating form and stop tying ratings to pay may help, but additional actions like training on the new system and defining clear standards may be needed to get full buy-in. 4. Performance feedback was managed through annual ratings, but these lacked substance and honesty due to issues

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58 views4 pages

Appraising The Secretaries at Sweetwater U Session 8 Que

Here are potential responses to the questions: 1. The PMS development and implementation process outlined had some flaws. It did not properly define performance standards or get buy-in from key stakeholders like administrators and secretaries. Tying ratings directly to pay raises also discouraged honest evaluations. 2. The purpose of the PMS for secretaries was to evaluate their job performance. Administrative support likely impacts university operations and productivity. 3. The experts' recommendations to improve the rating form and stop tying ratings to pay may help, but additional actions like training on the new system and defining clear standards may be needed to get full buy-in. 4. Performance feedback was managed through annual ratings, but these lacked substance and honesty due to issues

Uploaded by

n.demarin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Appraising the Secretaries at Sweetwater U

Rob Winchester, newly appointed vice president for administrative affairs at


Sweetwater State University, faced a tough problem shortly after his university
career began. Three weeks after he came on board in September, Sweetwater’s
president, Rob’s boss, told Rob that one of his first tasks was to improve the
appraisal system used to evaluate secretarial and clerical performance at
Sweetwater U. The main difficulty was that the performance appraisal was
traditionally tied directly to salary increases given at the end of the year.
Therefore, most administrators were less than accurate when they used the
graphic rating forms that were the basis of the clerical staff evaluation. In fact,
what usually happened was that each administrator simply rated his or her clerk
or secretary as “excellent.” This cleared the way for them to receive a maximum
pay raise every year.

But the current university budget simply did not include enough money to fund
another “maximum” annual raise for every staffer. Furthermore, Sweetwater’s
president felt that the custom of providing invalid feedback to each secretary on
his or her year’s performance was not productive, so he had asked the new vice
president to revise the system. In October, Rob sent a memo to all
administrators, telling them that in the future no more than half the secretaries
reporting to any particular administrator could be appraised as “excellent.” This
move, in effect, forced each supervisor to begin ranking his or her secretaries for
quality of performance. The vice president’s memo met widespread resistance
immediately—from administrators, who were afraid that many of their
secretaries would begin leaving for more lucrative jobs, and from secretaries,
who felt that the new system was unfair and reduced each secretary’s chance of
receiving a maximum salary increase. A handful of secretaries had begun
picketing outside the president’s home on the university campus. The picketing,
caustic remarks by disgruntled administrators, and rumors of an impending
slowdown by the secretaries (there were about 250 on campus) made Rob
Winchester wonder whether he had made the right decision by setting up forced
ranking. He knew, however, that there were a few performance appraisal experts
in the School of Business, so he decided to set up an appointment with them to
discuss the matter.

He met with them the next morning. He explained the situation as he had found
it: The current appraisal system had been set up when the university first opened
10 years earlier. A committee of secretaries had developed it. Under that system,
Sweetwater’s administrators filled out forms. This once-a-year appraisal (in
March) had run into problems almost immediately because it was apparent from
the start that administrators varied widely in their interpretations of job
standards, as well as in how conscientiously they filled out the forms and
supervised their secretaries. Moreover, at the end of the first year it became
obvious to everyone that each secretary’s salary increase was tied directly to the
March appraisal. For example, those rated “excellent” received the maximum
increases, those rated “good” rated “excellent” received the maximum
increases, those rated “good” the standard across-the-board cost-of-living
increase. Because universities in general—and Sweetwater, in particular—have
paid secretaries somewhat lower salaries than those prevailing in private
industry, some secretaries left in a huff that first year. From that time on, most
administrators simply rated all secretaries excellent in order to reduce staff
turnover, thus ensuring each a maximum increase. In the process, they also
avoided the hard feelings aroused by the significant performance differences
otherwise highlighted by administrators.

Two Sweetwater experts agreed to consider the problem, and in 2 weeks they
came back to the vice president with the following recommendations. First, the
form used to rate the secretaries was grossly insufficient. It was unclear what
“excellent” or “quality of work” meant, for example. They recommended instead
a form. In addition, they recommended that the vice president rescind his earlier
memo and no longer attempt to force university administrators to arbitrarily rate
at least half their secretaries as something less than excellent. The two
consultants pointed out that this was unfair, since it was quite possible that any
particular administrator might have staffers who were all or virtually all
excellent—or conceivably, although less likely, all below standard. The experts
said that the way to get all the administrators to take the appraisal process more
seriously was to stop tying it to salary increases. In other words, they
recommended that every administrator fill out a form for each secretary at least
once a year and then use this form as the basis of a counseling session. Salary
increases would have to be made on some basis other than the performance
appraisal, so that administrators would no longer hesitate to fill out the rating
forms honestly.

Rob thanked the two experts and went back to his office to ponder their
recommendations. Some of the recommendations (such as substituting the new
rating form for the old) seemed to make sense. Nevertheless, he still had serious
doubts as to the efficacy of any graphic rating form, particularly compared with
his original, preferred forced ranking approach. The experts’ second
recommendation—to stop tying the appraisals to automatic salary increases—
made sense but raised at least one very practical problem: If salary increases
were not to be based on performance appraisals, on what were they to be
based? He began wondering whether the experts’ recommendations weren’t
simply based on ivory tower theorizing.

Questions:

1. Evaluate the PMS development and implementation process outlined in


the above case study. Are there any ways by which you believe the PMS
development and implementation process could be involved
2. What is the purpose of Sweetwater University’s PMS for secretaries? Does
the performance of administrative secretaries impact on the performance
of the University?
3. Do you think that the experts’ recommendations will be sufficient to get
most of the administrators to fill out the rating forms properly? Why?
Why not? What additional actions (if any) do you think will be necessary?
4. How was performance feedback managed within this PMS?
5. Does the PMS provide a sound basis for identifying training and
development needs?
6. Do you think that Vice President Winchester would be better off dropping
graphic rating forms, substituting instead with another performance
management technique? If so, what technique and why?
7. What performance appraisal system would you develop for the
secretaries if you were Rob Winchester? Defend your answer.

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