Case Study Sheldon Bloom is the office manager for a large law firm. He has been with the company for five years. He supervises a staff of seven legal assistants. He loves everything about his job except conducting the annual performance appraisals. Not only do they take time away from his already busy day, but every year he also has to deal with two or three employees who disagree with his assessments. This year, to save time and make the process easier, Sheldon has decided he will no longer follow the firm’s standard performance appraisal process. He is not going to evaluate employees based on their job descriptions. He is not going to fill out the appraisal paperwork. He is simply going to call employees into his office and offer his thoughts on their performances. Today Sheldon is preparing to conduct the performance appraisal for Cynthia Keller. She has been with the law firm for one year. This will be her first performance appraisal. Cynthia’s work is above average, but Sheldon does not like her. He believes she is too loud and too bossy. Even though he knows she does above-average work, he cannot bring himself to give her an above-average rating. He figures since he does not use the evaluations to justify pay increases or bonuses, the poor rating he is going to give her will not matter anyway. When Sheldon meets with Cynthia and tells her that she received a poor rating, Cynthia is devastated. When Cynthia asks why she received a poor rating, all Sheldon says is that she needs to work harder at her job. Cynthia went into the meeting believing she had done a good job all year. Sheldon never had any complaints about her work; she was never asked to do anything differently. Cynthia leaves the meeting angry and confused. She believes Sheldon’s appraisal does not accurately reflect her performance during the last year. Respond to the following based on the case study above:
1. Identify two mistakes made by the manager in this case. [Write your response here…]
2. How did those mistakes affect the effectiveness of the performance appraisal process? [Write your response here…]
3. Do you think the evaluation process used by the manager was a fair assessment of the employee? Explain. [Write your response here…]