LUCKNOW UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

[ IMS ]

A
CASE STUDY
On

Policies and Performance Appraisal

Submitted To :- Submitted By :-
Dr. Priya Srivastava Pawan Verma
[PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT] MBA ( Finance & Control )
Semester - IV
Roll no. 180012135254

CASE STUDY
 Policies and Performance Appraisal

Kalyani Electronics Corporation Ltd, recently diversified its activities and started producing
computers. It employed personnel at the lower level and middle level. It has received several
applications for the post of Commercial Manager-Computer Division. It could not decide upon
the suitability of the candidates to the position, but did find that Mr. Prakash is more qualified for
the position than other candidates. The Corporation has created a new post below the cadre of
General Manager i.e. Joint General Manager and asked Mr. Prakash to join the Corporation as
Joint General Manager. Mr. Prakash agreed to it viewing that he will be considered for General
Manager's position based on his performance.
Mr. Anand, the Deputy General Manager of the Corporation and one of the candidates of
General Manager's position was annoyed with the management's practice. But, he wanted to
show his performance record to the management at the next appraisal meeting. The management
of the Corporation asked Mr. Sastry, General Manager of Televisions Division to be the General
Manager in-charge of Computer Division for some time, until a new General Manager is
appointed. Mr. Sastry wanted to switch over to Computer Division in view of the prospects,
prestige and recognition of the position among the top management of the Corporation. He
viewed this assignment -As a chance to prove his performance.

The Corporation has the system of appraisal of the superior's performance by the subordinates.
The performance of the Deputy General Manager, Joint General Manager and General Manager
has to be appraised by the same group of the subordinates. Mr. Anand and Mr. Sastry know very
well about the system and its operation, whereas Mr. Prakash is a stranger to the system as well
as its modus operandi. Mr. Sastry and Mr. Anand were competing with each other in convincing
their subordinates about their performance and used all sorts of techniques for pleasing them like
promising them a wage hike, transfers to the job of their interest, promotion, etc.
However, these two officers functioned in collaboration with a view to pull down Mr. Prakash.
They openly told their subordinates that a stranger should not occupy the 'chair'. They created
several groups among employees like pro-Anand's group, pro-Sastry group, Anti-Prakash and
Sastry group, Anti-Anand and Prakash group.

Mr. Prakash has been watching the proceedings calmly and keeping the top management in
touch with all these developments. However, Mr. Prakash has been quite work-conscious and top
management found his performance under such a political atmosphere to be satisfactory.
Prakash's pleasing manners and way of maintaining human relations with different levels of
employees did, however, prevent the emergence of an
Anti-Prakash wave in the company. But in view of the political atmosphere within the company,
there is no strong pro-Prakash's group either.

Management administered the performance appraisal technique and the subordinates appraised
the performance of all these managers. In the end, surprisingly, the workers assigned the
following overall scores.
Prakash: 560 points; Sastry: 420 points; and Anand: 260 points.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q.1. How do you evaluate the worker's appraisal in this case?

ANSWER –

Employee evaluations need to be fair and unbiased. They also need to be based on clear
expectations that employees know ahead of time.
Employees need to be given specific job requirements and have the opportunity to practice
before being evaluated.
If an employee’s work is not up to par, it is very important that a step-by-step process is in place
to improve this performance.
It is generally cheaper to keep current employees and improve their performance than it is to
recruit, hire, and train a new employee from scratch.
The workers evaluated Mr. Prakash on these lines:
a) He is a gentle person and able administrator displaying his high leadership qualities.
b) He can handle the things efficiently.
c) He recognises the people's work.
d) He is a good human as he did not fight with other internal employees.
e) He never wooved any employee nor put any negative feeling on anyone and remained as
a good person with the co. and its employees.
f) The employees thought that they will be secure and nicely look after by him.

These factors led to good appraise to Mr. Prakash by the employees.

Q.2. Do you suggest any techniques to avert politics creeping into the process of
performance appraisal by subordinates? Or do you suggest the measure of dispensing with
such appraisal systems?
ANSWER –

Performance appraisal is one of the functions of Human Resource Management for measuring
and evaluating the performance of the employees in an organisation over a period of time as
against the set standards.
Different methods are used for evaluating performance in different types of organisations and
360 degrees performance appraisal is one of them, helps improving performance of organisation
as a whole.
The company can use the data collected through feedback programs to monitor consistent
patterns and areas of weaknesses for employees within the organisation.
Thus as discussed in the above points, the top management can more effective and appropriate
training programs to overcome the weak areas. This will lead to improvement in performance of
various departments in the organisation and as a result, the overall performance of the firm goes
up.
A. Increased consistency in the performance

An all-round feedback helps in improving the consistency in the working patterns of an

organisation. The employees are more concerned regarding how others perceive them. This
motivates them to perform consistently towards achieving the organisational goal as this will
help them achieve their personal goal as well, which will further lead to individual growth. Thus
the employees will feel more content with their performance.
360-degree feedback allows employees to gain a more thorough understanding of their impact on
people they interact with every day. This method helps in motivating the employees who
undervalue themselves.

B. Improved superior subordinate relationships

In traditional appraisal system, the feedback is totally in the hands of the supervisor thus he can
be biased in his judgement. He can give good ranking to those in his good books or he can rank
employees on the basis of their recent performance while they expect to be ranked on whole
year’s performance. This can lead to differences between superior and the subordinates. The 360
degrees feedback helps in creating an environment of trust. The employees feel more motive and
work in teams towards achieving the common objective if the feedback is positive. Employees
tend to be more honest with each other and help each other.

C. Complete analysis of the subject

Since feedback is from many sources and every source has a separate relation with subject. So
everybody gives feedback from their own perspective and as per their experience and
expectations. “Supervisors, for example, may judge employees based on their output, while co-
workers judge others based on their pleasantness, and subordinates judge supervisors based on
their fairness.
Thus, this feedback provides a complete analysis of the person being reviewed and it has a
positive impact on him and can induce him to change as per the observations.
 D. Suitable for appraisal of top-management executives

This kind of feedback is suitable for the review of the top management as they don’t have many
people as their supervisor or boss who can rate them. Plus they are the people on whose
decisions the organisations operate so their decisions affect almost everybody from employees to
customers to suppliers. Subordinates can provide their opinion without any fear of being
confronted because this review is done on the principle of anonymity.

E. Helps creating happy employees

Employees are more satisfied with their performance after they are reviewed by many sources
and get a chance to improve their performance and enhance their skills through effective
training. Plus they feel happy by giving their views about their superior and this creates a sense
of belongingness as their views are considered important. After seeing that they can bring
positive change in the working of the organization.