Chapter 8

Performance
Management and
Employee
Development
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 Overview
 Personal Developmental Plans
(importance, benefits, short-term and long-term objectives,
design a high-quality developmental plan, successful
implementation)

 Direct Supervisor’s Role in the design and

implementation of a developmental plan

 360-degree Feedback Systems

(its advantages and risks, evaluate its quality)

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Stakeholders in the Development
Process
 Employees
• Help plan their own development
• Improve their own performance
 Managers
• Help guide the process of
development
• Support success of process

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Personal Developmental Plans
 Specify actions necessary to
improve performance
 Highlight employee’s
• Strengths
• Areas in need of development

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Personal Developmental Plans
Answer…
 How can I continuously learn
and grow in the next year?
 How can I do better in the
future?
 How can I avoid performance
problems of the past?

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Personal Developmental Plans:
Overview

 Developmental Plan
Objectives
 Content of Developmental
Plan
 Developmental Activities

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 Overall Objectives of a
Developmental Plan

 Encourage…
• Continuous learning
• Performance improvement
• Personal growth

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Specific Developmental Plan Objectives

 Improve performance in current job

(meet standards)
a developmental plan includes suggested
courses of action to address each of the
performance dimensions that are deficient

 Sustain performance in current job

provides tools so that employees can continue
to meet and exceed expectations

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Specific Developmental Plan Objectives
 Prepare employee for advancement
Take advantage of future opportunities and
career advancement

 Enrich employee’s work experience

Even if career opportunities within the
organization are not readily available, a good plan
provides employees with growth opportunities
and opportunities to learn new skills.

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Content of Developmental Plan
1. Developmental objectives
• New skills or knowledge
• Timeline

2. How the new skills or knowledge

will be acquired
• Resources
• Strategies

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 Content of Developmental Plan
(Continued)
3. Standards and measures used to assess
achievement of objectives
4. Based on needs of organization and
employee

 objectives included in the developmental plans

should be practical, specific, time oriented,
linked to a standard, and developed jointly by
the supervisor and the employee.

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Content of Developmental Plan
(Continued)

5. Chosen by employee and direct

supervisor

6. Taking into account

• Employee’s learning preferences
• Developmental objective in
question
• Organization’s available resources

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 Developmental Activities
“On the Job”
An employee can reach the objectives stated in
their developmental plans through:
On-the-job training (paired with a coworker or

supervisor)
Mentoring (one-on-one relationship between

manager and employee)

Job rotation (assigned to a different job on a

temporary basis)
Challenging temporary assignments

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 Developmental Activities
In Addition to “on the Job”
 Courses
 Self-guided reading
 Getting a degree
 Attending a conference
 Membership or leadership role
• In professional or trade organizations (allows
( an
employee to receive publications and attend
informal and formal meetings in which employees
have an opportunity to learn about best practices
in their industries)

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 Direct Supervisor’s Role
 Explain what would be required for
the employee to achieve the desired
performance level

 Refer employee to appropriate

developmental activities that can
assist the employee in achieving her
goals

 Review and make suggestions

regarding developmental objectives
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 Direct Supervisor’s Role
(Continued)

 Check on employee’s progress toward

achieving the developmental goals

 Provide motivational reinforcement to

motivate employee to achieve the
developmental goals
Such as, rewards, or more challenging and
interesting work

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Feedforward Interview (FFI)
Goals:
• Understand the types of
behaviors and skills that
individuals have that allow them
to perform well

• Think about ways to use these

behaviors and skills in other
contexts to make further
improvements in the future

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Steps of a Feedforward Interview
FFI includes a meeting between the supervisor
and employee and involves the following three
steps:
1.Elicit a success story
2.Uncover the underlying success factors (both
the personal and contextual factors that led to the
success story)
3.Extrapolate the past into the future
(asking questions that will lead to an employee’s
ability to replicate the conditions that led to
success in the past into the future)

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360-Degree Feedback Systems
Tools to help employees, particularly
those in supervisory roles, improve
performance by using performance
information gathered from many
sources
 Superiors
 Peers
 Customers
 Subordinates
 The employee

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360-Degree Feedback Systems
(Continued)

 Anonymous feedback

 Most useful when used

• For DEVELOPMENT
• NOT for administrative purposes

 Internet used for collecting data

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360-Degree Feedback Systems
(Continued)

 Employees also rate themselves on the

various performance dimensions and
compare self-perceptions with the
information provided by others

 A gap analysis is conducted to examine

the areas for which there are large
discrepancies between self-perceptions
and the perceptions of others

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 Is the 360-Degree Feedback
System Always Beneficial?
 Most effective for individuals who:
• Are high in self-efficacy
• Perceive a need to change
• Believe change is feasible
• Set goals and take action
 Less effective for individuals who:
• Are low in self-efficacy

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Necessary Organizational Norms
that support 360-degree system
Include:
 Cooperation
 Openness and trust feedback
 Input and participation valued
 Fairness

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Overview of 360-Degree Feedback
Systems
 Advantages of implementing 360-
Degree Feedback Systems

 Risks of implementing 360-Degree

Feedback Systems

 Characteristics of a Good 360-Degree

Feedback System

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 Advantages of 360-Degree
Feedback Systems
 Decreased possibility of biases (in the
identification of employees’ weaknesses
because it is collected from more than one
source)
 Increased awareness of expectations
(others’ expectations about their
performance)
 Increased commitment to improve
(because information about performance is
no longer a private matter)
 Improved self-perception of performance
(are likely to change as a result of the
feedback received from other sources)
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 Advantages of 360-Degree
Feedback Systems
 Improved performance (evaluation of
others + developmental plan, is likely to
lead to performance improvement)
 Reduction of “undiscussables” (providing
feedback in an anonymous way make such
feedback easier)
 Increased employee control of their own
careers (it gives an employee a realistic
assessment of where they should go
with their careers)

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Risks of 360-Degree Feedback Systems
• Unconstructive negative feedback
hurts
• Are individuals comfortable with the
system? (User acceptance is crucial)
• If few raters are providing feedback,
anonymity is compromised, and the
results is likely to be distorted.
• Raters may become overloaded (it
mostly happened twice a year)
• Stock values may drop

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Characteristics of a Good 360-
Degree Feedback System
 Anonymity
 Observation of employee
performance (take feedback from those
who only observe performance)
 Avoidance of survey fatigue
 Raters are trained
 Used for developmental purposes
only (at least initially)
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Characteristics of a Good 360-
Degree Feedback System
 Emphasis on behaviors
 Raters go beyond ratings (provide
constructive comments on how to improve
performance)
 Feedback interpretation (person
interested in the employee’s development)
 Follow-up (Once feedback is received, it is
essential that a developmental plan is created
right away)

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photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
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States of America.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc.

publishing as Prentice Hall
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