1. Think of the last time that you had a conflict with another person, either at work or at school. Using the guidelines for performance feedback, how would you provide effective feedback to the person?
The best approach would be to solve the problem/conflict. In solving the problem, the focus of feedback however, is not on the person but on the behavior of the person. Moreover, it would be even more effective if criticism is minimized. If effective performance is observed, then an effective feedback would be through praise.
Performance management, as I understand it, is an approach through which managers make sure that employee’s activities and outputs are in line with the goal of the organization, and is comprised of three parts, i.e., defining performance, measuring performance, and feeding back performance information.Generally, an organization uses performance management to improve the performance and develop the capabilities of the employees.With this aim, fairness plays very important role in delivering successful results.
Talking about fairness, it can be classified into three categories, namely: procedural fairness, interpersonal fairness and outcome fairness. In relation to performance management, procedural fairness describes the extent to which policies and procedures that determine the performance management are perceived as fair by all. Procedural fairness suggests that the employees should be given by managers the chance to partake in the development of the performance management system. It also suggests that managers should make sure the consistency of standards, and minimize rating error and biases in implementing performance management.
Interpersonal fairness pertains to the fair treatment by managers of their employees in the organization. This category of fairness suggests that the managers’ task is to give the timely and complete feedback to their employees. Also, the employees should be allowed to challenge the evaluation and be provided with the feedback with courtesy and respect.
2. (a) What is coaching? Is there one type of coaching?
Coaching occurs when a peer or manager works with an employee in the goal of motivating that employee, helping him to develop his skills, and providing reinforcement and feedback.
Coaching may take three forms: one-on-one with an employee, helping employee learn for himself and providing resources like mentor, courses or job experiences. First, coaching may be one-on-one with an employee, i.e., a manager working to encourage his subordinate and this may include giving feedback to the employee. Second, coaching may take the form of helping the employees learn for themselves. This is usually done by helping the employee find experts who can assist them with their concerns. This form of coaching will teach the employee in seeking feedback from other people. And, the third form of coaching is providing resources to the employee such as mentors, courses, or job experiences that the employee may not be able to gain access to without the help of the coach
(b) Why are many managers reluctant to coach their employees?
There are managers who are reluctant to coach their employees for varying reasons. Some managers have the reluctance to discuss performance issues even with/especially with a competent employee simply to avoid confrontation. This is especially true in organization where the manager is less of an expert than the employees; also, this happens in situations where the new manager has to deal with long term employees.
Another reason why managers may be reluctant to coach his employees is that, there are managers who are more effective in identifying performance problems than helping his employees solve the problems. Some managers also think and feel that employees tend to interpret their coaching as a form of criticism. So to avoid this negative interpretation of their effort of helping the employees, they rather choose not to coach. And, in times of company downsizing, managers feel that there is not enough time for them to coach their employees.
3. Organizational turnover is generally considered a negative outcome, and many organizations spend a great deal of time and money trying to reduce it. What situations would indicate that an increase in turnover might be just what an organization needs? Given the difficulty of terminating employees, what organizational policies might promote the retention of high-performing workers but promote voluntary turnover among low performers?
An example that justifies the need for increase in turnover will be the situation where newly hired employees bring new/fresh ideas, eagerness and interest which is found to be lacking in the existing employees of the organization.
In order to promote the retention of high-performing employees and at the same time promote the voluntary turnover of low performing employees, a policy that gives reward to high performing employees should be implemented. Such policy would tend to discourage low performing employees in the sense that they not be rewarded, and would simply push them to leave the organization voluntarily. On the other side, such policy would be very attracted to the high performing employees and will entice/encourage them to be more efficient and effective as long as the reward system is fairly implemented by the management of the organization.
