Mary the employee

Mary works in the customer service department for the large insurance company WE-SAVE-U. Her job is to answer the telephone promptly and to handle all customer questions arising from these calls. She can deal with some of the calls herself, but others have to be passed on to the specialist departments.

She is also expected to write letters to customers based on conversations that she has had with them. She works within a team of four, reporting to James, the supervisor. She gets along well with the other team members and enjoys their company.

Mary has worked for the company for about two years and is starting to feel a bit bored with the job. She knows she is typically good with the customers and passes on questions to other departments politely. In spite of this, Mary knows she has been making more mistakes on her letters, although she could not quantify the actual number.

Jane, the administrative assistant, has jokingly mentioned the increase in these mistakes, and Mary has promised her that she will try to improve. Again, there is no issue in the way she answers the phone, at least no one has told her that there are issues, and she is not aware of any customer complaints about her work.

It is performance appraisal interview time, and Mary is feeling apprehensive. James has been so busy lately that she has had little opportunity to communicate with him. Mary is not sure how aware he is of the mistakes she has been making; with luck, they could have escaped his attention. However, he will definitely discuss the times when he has had to question some of the information Mary has sent out to customers. Still, Mary believes she is better than the others in the team, so she is confident that these small mistakes will not be discussed.

James- the supervisor

James is the supervisor of a team of four in the customer service department of the large insurance company WE-SAVE-U. The job of the customer service department is to answer the telephone promptly and to handle all customer questions arising from these calls. The team can deal with some of the calls, but others have to be passed on to the specialist departments. The team also writes to the customers, to whom they have spoken, confirming their telephone call. He is about to conduct the appraisal interview with Mary, a member of his staff.

Mary has been working in the team for about two years, and for the first 18 months, her work was impressive: She has been accurate in her written communication, pleasant and polite to the customers, and enthusiastic in her approach to all aspects of her work. However, within the past six months, some of these standards have been slipping; in particular, she takes longer than the allowed time for breaks, the standard of letter writing has dropped, and her tone of voice when she first picks up the telephone is abrupt. With regard to her meal breaks, on at least three occasions within the past month, she has taken longer than the one hour allowed for lunch. James cannot remember the actual days when this occurred, although he does recall it as it caused others in the team to be late in going to lunch and therefore annoyed them. On two of these occasions, Mary knew James was displeased by the look he gave her. He had been meaning to speak to Mary about the fall in the standard of letters she has emailed to Jane, the administrative assistant, to finalize and send out. Time has been so tight that he has not spoken to Mary, and he knows it will be an issue in this interview. Standards such as spelling and organization started falling about four months ago, causing Jane to actually complain to you.

In addition to this, James has had to take calls from customers who have needed to have the information in letters they have received from Mary clarified. The third example of falling standards is in Mary's tone of voice when she picks up the phone. James personally has heard her on two occasions: The first time it happened, Mary was on her way to lunch when she picked up the phone and simply said, "Yes" in an offhand manner. She soon changed her tone and the call seemed to go well. On the second occasion, she said, "Well?" to the customer in a blunt tone. Once again, this was rectified and the rest of the call seemed to pass smoothly. James will use the appraisal interview to raise these issues.

Read the scenario above, answer the following questions. Consider each person's position, their perceptions and where communication was missed. Consider how these interactions or lack of interactions/feedback will impact the performance appraisal meeting.

1. What is Mary's perception of her performance? How did she come to this conclusion?

2. What is James' perception of Mary's performance? How did he come to this conclusion?

3. How were the critical issues raised by both Mary and James prior to their meeting?

4. How successful do you believe James would be in rating Mary low in her performance? Why?

5. If you were Mary, do you believe that performance concerns addressed (from your perspective), for the first time would motivate you to improve your performance? Why or why not?

6. Looking back on the previous lesson, what is one important area James could address in the performance meeting that may motivate Mary to improve her performance?