M A N A G E M E N T

Are Appraisals Really Any Good? Job evaluations, unless properly handled, can be damaging if not outright dangerous

JVlORE AND MORE CHEMICAL COMPA­NIES are raising serious doubts about the value of conventional ways of judg­ing job performance. In many compa­nies, job appraisals consist of lengthy annual reviews of an employee's capa­bilities. The supervisor, filling out a form, answers dozen of questions about the worker's personality, working hab­its, job competence. Or the worker may be summoned into the supervisor's office and flatly to ld what his superiors think of him.

Sometimes, says Philip R. Kelly of American Cyanarnid's personnel rela­tions staff, these procedures can do more harm tlian good. They can be extremely damaging to worker morale. Employees may resent being annually "raked over the coals." The supervisor himself may thoroughly dislike the or­deal of passing all-knowing judgment on his associates. He may particularly dislike being cast in the role of amateur psychiatrist.

"The job of delving into a worker's thinking, personality, and ambitions can be extremely complex, says Kelly. All too often, t h e appraiser in judging personality and performance may re­sort merely to quick, shallow answers. Actually, he may have no skill in evalu­ating people. Despite all his efforts to be objective, has opinions may be heavily clouded by subjective, emo­tional factors,

The employee himself may resent having his personality dissected "under a microscope," He may feel, quite justifiably, that actually he does not have full command of all the factors affecting his job performance. Work­ing conditions beyond his control may have a major bear ing on his work re­sults. Here t h e prime responsibility may be that of management.

• Early Interest. The first wave of interest in job appraisals came in the 1920's, Kelly told the New York Chap­ter of the American Institute of Chem­ists. The prime objective initially was to help in arriving at proper salary

schedules based o n job performance. Later, the emphasis switched to the use of job appraisals in helping to im­prove individual performance and job satisfaction. After World War II, a major emphasis was on using apprais­als to select outstanding employees for training as managers. All of these continue to b e important objectives of appraisal programs.

However, a new look is developing, says Kelly. New stress is being placed on the use of appraisal interviews as two-way discussions between the em­ployee and his supervisor. The super­visor doesn't merely a t t empt to pass detached judgment. H e discusses in­formally. T h e employee bas a chance to express his own. views. The atmos­phere is one of mutual consultation.

They discuss the job to be done, its relation to the over-all company effort. They discuss the factors affecting job performance. They discuss t he indi­vidual's work and possibly whether the employee is actually in the right job or not.

The supervisor gets a better idea of how the employee sees his own job. Both have a chance to comment on how work performance can b e improved. Their discussion is on a mutual ex­ploratory basis. From this, not only can the company benefit but the em­ployee himself can achieve greater job satisfaction.

Heart-to-heart talks once a year are, of course, not t h e full answer, says Kelly. Obviously, there is no substitute for continuing opportunities at all times for employees a n d supervisors to dis­cuss their mutual problems.

• Know t h e Objec t ives . The first step for any company setting up a job appraisal program is to define the com­pany's basic objectives, emphasizes Ernest Dale of Cornell's graduate school of business administration. These aims should also b e made per­fectly clear to t h e employees.

Periodic attempts to evaluate em­ployee initiative, enthusiasm, imagina­

tion, professional skill, and scores of other factors can be immensely diffi­cult, says Dale. Sometimes, they can even b e dangerous. Furthermore, in today's era of team research, it is espe­cially difficult to determine the specific contributions of the individual. His achievements may be too dependent upon the efforts of others.

A possible yardstick in judging job performance, he says, is the individual's "span of discretion." This is the length of time that h e can work effectively without being supervised and without reporting to his superiors. In any sys­tem of job evaluation, Dale emphasizes, there must always be a direct link be­tween performance and compensation.

Pay Standard Needed Devise more realistic standards and

policies in salary administration to keep pace with industrial progress, says R. E . Hollerbach, Parke-Davis research personnel director.

He told the American Management Association's fall conference on person­nel that many standard salary adminis­tration techniques have failed to do this and points to how his firm seeks to right the situation. Parke-Davis ad­justs salaries of its professional employ­ees each spr ing to compensate for the steadily mounting starting pay offered new technical people coming out of college. This does much to keep "career chemists" at Parke-Davis con­tented and productive, Hollerbach says.

Starting salary range for new gradu­ates is set by the firm's sa'lary review board each winter. Initial pay scales for 1958's college crop may climb 5 to 107c, trends today show. If they do, Parke-Davis will see tha t its "old" pro­fessional workers' pay is adjusted ap­propriately.

One troublesome area for salary ad­ministrators i s in the clerical salary field. Here i t is difficult, Hollerbach declares, to set wages because clerical responsibilities are often rather vague. On the other h an d , production-line jobs have definite job descriptions, making it easier t o fix production workers' pay .

"ν τ ^r • American bus inesses need to de­velop new products if they are to grow, Armstrong Cork executives say. They told the general sales meeting of t h e insulation division, Oct. 3 and 4, tha t new products , as long as they remain specialties, have a wider profit margin than they have when they ultimately become staple items.

4 4 C & E N O C T . 21, 1957