Материал: Никова Тхе Басиц Иссуес оф Манагемент ин Усе 2016

Ex. 8. Essay writing.

1.What kind of benefits are mentioned in the text?

2.What other kind of benefits can you think about?

3.What kind of benefits are very important to you, taking into account your family situation, your health, your marital status?

Think about it and write a one page essay on «Job with the perfect system of benefits for me and my family».

Ex. 9. Independent research.

Find information on how the following issues are regulated by the Russian Labour code and correspondent laws:

♦healthcare insurance;

♦retirement payments;

♦workers compensation;

♦unemployment insurance;

♦leaves of absence;

♦time off;

♦family assistance.

Prepare a short report on benefits that are covered by the Russian Labour code.

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Text 11. Assessing Employee performance

Creating and implementing a structured performance appraisal process is a serious challenge. For one thing, performance appraisals create additional work for supervisors. The process also puts pressure on employees by forcing everyone to establish specific goals, which some may view in the short term as simply «busy work». What’s more, the very nature of appraisal systems puts both employees and supervisors into situations that most people find uncomfortable. Being, in effect, «graded», makes many employees feel as though they are back in school. And most managers find it difficult to be both candid and constructive when they are conducting an appraisal session that involves negative feedback.

But the long term benefits of an effectively structured and administered performance appraisal process far overweight the time and effort the process requires. Here is what a well-designed, well-implemented performance appraisal system can do for your company.

Performance appraisal system:

♦creates criteria for determining how well employees are truly performing – and, to that end, makes it clear how their job descriptions and responsibilities fit in with company and departmental priorities;

♦provides an objective basis for key human resources decisions, including merit pay increases, promotions, and job responsibilities;

♦verifies that reward mechanisms are logically tied to outstanding performance;

♦motivate employees to improve their job performance;

♦confirms that employees possess the skills or attributes needed to successfully fulfill a particular job;

♦gives underperforming employees the guidance that can lead to better performance;

♦helps employees clarify career goals;

♦validates hiring strategies and practices;

♦assesses training and staff development needs.

All performance appraisal systems are driven by the same objective: to establish a systematic way of evaluating performance, providing constructive feedback and enabling employees to continually improve their performance.

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The basic ingredients in all systems are pretty much the same:

♦setting performance criteria;

♦developing tracking and documenting procedures, determining which areas should be measured quantitatively;

♦deciding now the information is to be communicated to employees. Where the different methods vary is in the following areas:

♦The degree to which employees are involved in establishing performance evaluation criteria

♦How employee performance is tracked and documented

♦How performance is rated and how it's aligned with corporate priorities, objectives, and goals

♦The specific types of appraisal tools used – in some cases certain approaches are more appropriate for evaluating managers and professionals than other employees

♦The amount of time and effort required to implement the process

♦How the results of the appraisal are integrated into other management or HR functions

♦How the actual appraisal session is conducted

Appraisal methods that are most commonly used today are:

♦Goal setting or management by objectives (MBO), created by influential business thinker Peter Drucker in 1954. It is still an extremely popular appraisal system because of its focus on results and the activities and skills that truly define an employee's job. In a typical MBO scenario, an employee and manager sit down together at the start of an appraisal period and formulate a set of statements that represent specific job goals, targets, or deliverables. They should be as specific and measurable as possible. Instead of writing «improving customer service» you should write «reduce the number of customer complaints by 5 percent». At a later date – six months or a year later – the employee and the manager sit down again and measure employee performance on the basis of how many of those goals were met.

♦Essay appraisals – less popular, than it was a few years ago. Supervisor periodically compose statements that describe an employee’s performance during the appraisal period. The statements are usually written on standard forms and they can be as general or as specific as you want.

♦Job rating checklist – is the simplest method to use and has a variety of approaches. To implement this approach, you supply each eval-

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uator with a prepared list of statements or questions that relate to specific aspects of job performance. The questions typically require the evaluator to write a simple «yes» or «no» answer or to record a number (or some other notation) that indicates which statement applies to a particular employee’s performance. Often the responsibility for developing the list lies with the HR department. A more sophisticated variation to this method is to establish a weighted rating system in which a number is used to reflect the relative importance of each criterion being evaluated. The weighted variation presents a clearer picture of how employee strengths and weaknesses measure up against the priorities of the job.

♦Forced choice methods – usually come in two forms: paired statements and forced ranking. In the paired statements method, evaluators are presented with two statements and must check the one that best describes the employee, it’s either one or the other. In the forced tanking method, a number of options are listed, allowing the evaluator to select a description that may fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

♦Ranking methods compare employees in a group to one another. All involve an evaluator who asks managers to rank employees from the «best» to the «worst» with respect to specific job performance criteria.

♦Multi-rater assessments are also called 360-degree assessment. The employee’s supervisors, coworkers, subordinates and, in some cases, customers, are asked to complete detailed questionnaires on the employee. The employee completes the same questionnaire. The results are tabulated, and the employee then compares her assessment with the other result.

Regardless of how much time you take to gather feedback and incorporate it into a new performance appraisal system, you may still face objections. Employees often feel threatened by appraisal systems. For the supervisors and managers it creates additional paperwork and requires extra time. Make sure that employees understand what role the appraisal will play in influencing the things they care about: raises, promotions, and so on. Try to keep forms and paperwork to a minimum. Train evaluators and audit their performance to see whether follow-up training is needed.

Vocabulary:

performance appraisal – оценка эффективности работы; challenge – сложная задача;

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