NOTES ON PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

Feb. 10, 1999

Evaluating Personnel

Personnel evaluation can be irritating or irrelevant. A "satisfactory" evaluation in a service environment depends on an agreement between employer and employee about what the service relationship should be.

People are most crucial element in a service organization. The employer has a right to expect that employees will perform to the standards of the job description. The employee has a right to expect fair treatment, that is, equitable treatment compared to comparable work/salary/benefits that others have.

A job should be realistic, that is, one that can be performed satisfactorily with a reasonable amount of effort and with a reasonable chance of success. If job can't be completed, saying "do the best you can" is meaningless. Redesign job so that it can be completed through reducation in input, modification of technique, reduction of standards, or the like.

Subordinates want to be evaluated and they understand the need to be evaluated. The following five points are good management practice in respect to supervising staff:

Herb White, to whom I am indebted for many of these thoughts says:
Management must evaluate the needs of subordinates against the needs of the organization we are responsible for and look for ways to make the two fit or agree that they don't. ... As good managers,

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT SYSTEMS

A useful equation to bear in mind is:

PERFORMANCE = MOTIVATION X ABILITY

Schneider and Bowen (Winning the Service Game. HBS Press, 1995) say that there are four ways organizations fail to use reward effectively.

Definition of Motivation

To be motivated means to be: People are energized by needs: security, esteem, justice.

People are directed by pursuing goals that yield reward that gratify needs.

People persist in behaviors that regularly yield rewards that gratify needs.

TYPES OF REWARDS

Money can gratify security needs. It can gratify esteem needs (if you earn more than someone else in your peer grup). It can gratify justice needs (if those who work hardest and do the best work earn the most). These are big ifs and often the conditions are not met. Further, money may not be an available tool for the manager at the time it is needed.

Seven tests of an effective reward are as follows:

REWARDS OTHER THAN PAY

Jobs as a Source of Reward

Jobs need to possess five characteristics to be effective sources of rewards for employees.