Criteria for Conducting Evaluation

Once a company has determined, through job analysis and design, what kind of performance it expects from its employees, it needs to develop ways to measure that performance. Five criteria should be considered when designing performance evaluation measures. First, strategic congruence—alignment with an organization’s corporate strategy, goals, and culture—should be assessed. Next, the company must verify that each measure is valid (relevant) and reliable (consistent). Acceptability of the performance measure is also an important factor to consider. Finally, specificity—the amount of guidance the measure provides employees—should also be evaluated. In this exercise, please read the mini-case and answer the questions that follow. Heavenly Handbags was almost ready to roll out the newest version of its performance evaluation form to its sales associates. It had decided to revamp the performance evaluation process to make it more effective and use it as a means to improve employee performance. One element that was added to the form was diversity effectiveness. Heavenly Handbags wanted to emphasize a factor that it believed would give it a competitive edge over other organizations. It created a behavioral diversity measure that assessed employees' ability to interact with a variety of customers, their use of cultural norms when interacting with co-workers who were different from themselves, and their ability to promote awareness of diversity in the organization. These behaviors were consistent with the overall approach and culture of the company. It also included a measure of actual sales, regardless of geographical area. Heavenly Handbags assessed with its new performance measure not only for the consistency with the organizational viewpoints, but also because it produced common results. In order to assess this aspect, it did two things. First, it had multiple raters evaluate the same individuals to ensure that they gave similar ratings. Then, the raters evaluated individuals across multiple time periods to review the consistency over time. Another element evaluated on the performance measure was the relevancy of the content. Heavenly Handbags wanted to make sure that the measure assessed all aspects of performance that were relevant to the job and that employees could understand why they were measuring each factor, including sales, service, diversity, and interpersonal skills, and that the measures of these factors were fair. Finally, Heavenly Handbags clearly identified the guidelines and expectations that would be used in evaluating performance.

1) Having multiple raters evaluate the same employee's job performance to ensure consistency is a way to assess which of the following?

A)Validity    

B) Test–retest reliability

C) Internal consistency

D) Interrater reliability

2) Since comparing actual sales figures across different regions is dependent on the territory rather than the actual performance of the sales associate, this measure may be

A) Deficient

B) Valid

C) Contaminated

D) Unreliable

3) The range to which a performance management system derives employee job performance that is in line with its strategy, goals, and culture is called

A) Specificity

B) Validity

C) Strategic congruence

D) Internal consistency

4) Evaluating individuals across multiple time periods would provide Heavenly Handbags information related to

A) Test–retest reliability

B) Content validity

C) Interrater reliability

D) Internal consistency

5) Examining the factors included in the performance measures at Heavenly Handbags, and determining whether the people using them consider them fair, satisfactory, or adequate, is known as

A) Strategic congruence

B) Test–retest reliability

C) Internal consistency

D) Acceptability