Training, Career Development and Performance Appraisal

Orientation and Socialization

Some say that the most important training occurs when employees start with a firm.
Orientation: the short-term process of informing new employees about what is expected of them in their new
job and helping them cope with the stresses of transition.
Socialization: the long-term process with several phases that helps employees acclimate.
Why conduct an orientation?
Reduces start-up costs
Reduces anxiety and hazing
Reduces turnover
Saves time for supervisor and coworkers
Establishes the link between effort & results
Employee learns values, standards and patterns of behavior expected by management

Employee Orientation Role of the Human Resources Department

How job performance contributes to organizational success
Conditions of employment
Security requirements
Pay and benefits
Tour of the facilities
Assistance to supervisory personnel

Employee Orientation Role of the Supervisor

Describes job duties, hours of work, etc
Covers basic safety rules and location of first-aid facilities
Show workplace facilities
Explains handling of overtime, sick leave, etc.
Advises present employees of new hires
Introduces new employees to present employees
Maintains close contact with new employee

- is supportive
- relieves anxiety
- stimulates feeling of belonging
Develop a Welcome Plan for new employees:
The first year is the most critical for any employee
Tend to feel frustrated and isolated
Learning new work patterns and procedures
Getting to know colleagues
In many organizations, one-third of turnovers occur during the first year
Each new employee may be assigned a buddy or sponsor.
Supervisors should create opportunities for socializing
TRAINING - CHAPTER 8
Training in the U.S.
25% of workforce participated in employer sponsored training
Training was concentrated in upper echelons:
7% of lower 10% of workers
49% of upper 10% of workers
Probability of training is greatest through age 40, declines after this

Needs Assessment
Level One: Organizational Analysis
External environment shortage of skilled workers or new technology?
Strategy and goals of the organization
Level Two: Task Analysis
What tasks are performed - KSAs
What behaviors and knowledge are essential
What learning is necessary
What type of instruction leads to learning
Level Three: Person Analysis
Identifying workers or groups who are weak or need certain skills
Examples of Sources and Methods for Data Collection for the Needs Assessment Stage of the Model of the
Training Process:
Written Sources
Employee files
Job descriptions
Request for training
Job specifications
Request for a job transfer Job analysis reports
Reasons mentioned for
Records of missed deadlines
-leaving the organization
Customer complaints
Accident reports
Performance appraisals
Equipment repair requests
Employee Complaints
Equipment down time
Employment tests
reports
Other Sources
Employees
Customers
Management
Consultants

Methods
Individual interviews
Work sample tests
Group interviews
Comment cards
Questionnaires
Focus groups
Observation
Examination of written sources
Job analysis
Performance appraisals
Testing

Focus of training
Skills most common, OJT and job aids
Retraining keep up with changing job demands
Cross-functional makes workers more versatile and flexible, job rotation

Team
Content tasks relate directly to team goals
Group processes relate to the way members function as a team
Creativity brainstorming
Literacy communication skills
Diversity how to respond to differences
Ethics clarify policies and help employees apply them
Customer service especially front-line service employees

Training and Development Methods

On-the-Job Experiences:
Coaching
Understudy and apprenticeship
Job rotation
Projects
Committee assignments
Lateral promotions
Mentoring and behavior modeling

Off-the-Job Experiences:
Seminars/lectures/ workshops
Management games (cases, role playing, in-basket
exercises)
Simulation and virtual reality
Sensitivity training
Computer instruction
Education

Comparison of In-House and Outside Training and Development Programs

In-House
Outside
Specifically designed program for organization
general concepts for most organizations
Cost per trainee is lower
cost per trainee is high
Convenient and easy to attend
inconvenient and travel adds to cost
frequently interrupted
better concentration
trainees leave training to attend to problems in the
trainees cannot attend to problems because they are
plant
not at the plant
makes use of instructors from the companymore
makes use of experts in the content area
involved in organizing program and selecting
have to accept what is offered with little input
instructors

Is the training worthwhile? Ways to evaluate: How to determine if training expenditures are worthwhile?
Levels of evaluation: reaction, learning (post; pre+post; pre+post with control group), behavior, and/or results.
Cost-benefit analysis:
Benefits increased productivity and quality; reduced errors and turnover; new capabilities
Costs trainer salaries; equipment, material, facility + transportation costs; lost productivity
Benchmark to other organizations or ASTD data
TRAINING AND THE LAW

TRAINING AS A REQUIREMENT - will training or educational preparation be used as the entry requirement
for a position or for a promotion? Criterion-related validity exists if persons with training perform better
than those without.
DECISION BASED ON TRAINING OUTCOMES - if used for personnel decisions (pay raises, separation,
etc.), then training result is a test.
THE TRAINING PROCESS - content and procedures may cause adverse impact (equipment used, training
materials biased)
SELECTION FOR TRAINING - discrimination exists when entry into training is biased (tests, application
procedure, etc.)
Training meets the courts good faith effort standard
In Kolstad v. American Dental Association (1999) the US Supreme Court ruled that:
Part 1 - An individual who is successful in a job discrimination lawsuit may collect punitive damages if
s/he shows that the discrimination was intentional and the employer acted with malice or reckless
indifference to the employees rights.
Part 2 The plaintiff cannot collect punitive damages from the employer if the managers actions are
contrary to the employers good-faith efforts to comply with Title VII.
The key for employers to satisfy the Courts good-faith effort standard rests on an employer implementing a
quality training program:
The extent to which an employer has adopted anti-discrimination policies and educated its
employeesis important in deciding whether it is insulated from punitive liability.
Training meets the courts good faith effort standard (cont)
Training must:
Focus on preventing harassment against all protected groups
Be provided to all new employees, especially new supervisors
Be effective.
Thus, employers should:
Make sure competent trainers deliver the training (if you outsource the training, check references)
Monitor the effectiveness of the training
Assure timing new employees and annually thereafter
Training and Development are a Shared Responsibility
Expatriate Orientation and Training
Adjustment in the Host Country
Culture Shock is an insufficient adjustment to a host culture. Its the cumulative effect of being exposed to
unfamiliar cues in a host country
Culture Shock is a major contributor to:
Premature return from the global assignment
Reduced performance while on assignment
Orientation and training can help to reduce the effects of culture shock.
What Influences the Adjustment Process?
Selecting candidates who have a track record of having worked successfully in the culture of the assignment
Global assignees personalities
Rigorous cross-cultural training can assist the global assignee develop realistic expectations of the new host
culture
Orientation
A good orientation might include:
Trial overseas living - a pre-visit to the new site
Pre-departure training about the host country
Intercultural business skills
Area studies and language learning strategies
Culture shock management and lifestyle adjustment
Host country daily living issues, including local customs and etiquette

Local laws, safety, health, and security

Meetings with repatriates who have recently returned home from the location to which the IA is
moving
Post-arrival adjustment - local sponsorship and assistance for arrival and orientation to the new locale
and assignment
Orientation
Provide a checklist, organized by date, of what the employee should consider doing:
when leaving the home country
when arriving in the host country
when leaving the host country - repatriation planning
Ways to Improve the International Experience
Offer concierge-type services to help expatriates set up their households
Family plans (spouse and children) help with spouse employment
Travel arrangements (hotel accommodations)
Communication links (web-based contacts)
Safety and crime prevention workshops (antiterrorist training)
Procedures for obtaining medical help (food and water precautions)
Provide opportunities for employees and their families to build social networks
Offer flexible, cafeteria-style benefits
expatriates can tailor the benefits to their individual needs
CAREER DEVELOPMENT - CHAPTER 9
Organizational Challenges in Career Development
Who will be responsible? Although organizations are ultimately responsible for meeting task needs, many
have concluded that employees must take an active role in planning and implementing the own personal
development plans.
How much emphasis is appropriate? Employees with an extreme careerist orientation can become more
concerned about their image than their performance.
How will the needs of a talented and diverse workforce be met? Companies need to break down the barriers to
advancement that some employees may face. Beware of:
Word-of-mouth recruitment
Failure to prepare managers to handle EEO requirements
Lack of equal mentoring
Organizational Career Development - Some of the tools traditionally used in the selection process are also
valuable for career development: assessment centers, psychological testing, performance appraisal, and
Promotability forecasts decisions made by managers regarding the advancement potential of their
subordinates
Identify people who appear to have great potential
Give them developmental experiences
Succession planning examining development needs to support the organizations strategic plans.
When succession planning is done informally (managers plan for their own replacements) it can often lead to
discrimination against women and minorities.

Stages of career development

Preparation for work Realistic job previews
Organizational entry Orientation programs
Early career
Training/Job rotation
Middle career
Training/Job rotation/Mentoring
Late career
Being a mentor
Managing a career:
At the individual level is like driving on a busy highway. Many decisions, taken in real time, affect where
youll end up. Clues are available from the behavior of other drivers, lane markings and road signs.
At the organizational level is the highway controllers problem. It involves designing the road system, signage,
speed limits, and policing.
Jungle Gym analogy
Each work role in the company represents a rung on the jungle gym, and managers make their careers by
scrambling over the frame (i.e. moving between positions).
Managers can move only to a vacant rung, so that one vacancy can trigger off a whole series of other moves.
Careers in one company can be different from careers in another company (three types).
Command-Centered Jungle Gym
Typical of retail chains or banks in which there are a great many similar jobs.
Careers consist of moving between a series of similar managerial posts commands that differ mainly in the
size of their responsibilities and prestige.
Promotion to higher ranks necessitates moves through specific units that are seen as providing significant
broadening experience.
Constructional Jungle Gym
Typical of a large consumer products multinational with varied subsidiaries throughout the world.
Careers are viewed as if they are constructed from a variety of different components, called experiences.
Managers enhance themselves by collecting as many types of experiences as they can, working in many parts
of the organization and many different types of jobs as possible.
Dont want to get stuck in one specialty need to become a generalist.
Measure progress on the basis of how fast the move, how many jumps they have made, and how big the jumps
were.
Evolutionary Jungle Gym
Diversified electronics firm.
Managers get involved in something new to the firm that they make their own venture. Esteem grows as the
venture grows.
Lifecycle of the venture drives career. Must be able to jump when business runs out of steam.
Jungle Gyms and Strategies
The career jungle gym is a product of the firms business strategy and its structure.

Because it defines career paths in a certain way, it tends to produce managers with particular competencies,
experiences and interests who are more competent in certain strategies than others.
Career jungle gyms are surprisingly durable. Managerial careers are exercises in deferred gratification: a
manager works hard today for ultimate reward at an indeterminate time in the future.
A firms jungle gyms are organizational-level phenomena, and are far from easy to see.
Jungle Gyms and Strategies
Command-Centered and Defender [Quality]: defender does one thing well and, over time, gets better at doing
it.
Constructional and Analyser [Cost reduction]: not a prime mover, but comes in when business is settled, and
analyzes and improves until it becomes one of the lowest-cost producers. Managers must understand the
various functions of the business and how they are interrelated. Requires generalists with broad
knowledge of how pieces fit.
Evolutionary and Prospector [Innovation]: main characteristics include inventiveness, flexibility and
nimbleness.
Glass ceiling
Women and men receive different developmental experiences during their careers
Womens assignments less visible, involve less risk and breadth of responsibility
Relatively dead-end staff jobs, lack of job rotation
Women receive less training
Women less likely to have a mentor
Women less likely to have an overseas assignment
International Implications of Career Development
Career issues in whether or not to accept a global assignment:
How well does this assignment fit with long-term career goals?
What kind of personal development and challenges will result?
assignment will make the individual more marketable to any company that needs globally
competent managers and executives
What are the career, family, financial, and personal risks and benefits associated with this global
assignment?

Other, less risky alternatives to a long-term international assignment

short-term international assignments (usually < one year)

traveling assignments (field trips)

Predicting success/failure of expatriate managers

Trends in Career Planning

More emphasis on self-directed careers - employees must get involved
Midcareer coming earlier - flatter organization = shorter ladder
More honest self-assess-ment - decide what employee and family really want
More rejection of job moves & promotions - say no to changes
More plateauing by choice - staying with satisfying jobs
More two-career planning - more than just one job at stake
Trends In Career Management
Strategic H.R. Planning - link organization HRM strategy to business goals and objectives
Succession planning - planning for executive replacement
Training managers in career coaching & counseling skills - must have effective counseling at all levels
Alternative career paths - alternatives to promotion: lateral moves, temporary assignments, early retirement
New H.R. movement systems - section responsible for overseeing careers
Legitimation of exit & downward movement
out on the savanna of Africa, a gazelle wakes up every morning knowing that day he must run faster than the
fastest lion or he will be eaten by sundown. Nearby, a lion wakes up knowing he must run faster than the
slowest gazelle or he will go to bed hungry. If you want to compete in todays world marketplace, youd
better be ready to run fast, too.
What this means to YOU
Be ready to run harder and faster to get your share, it wont be handed to you.
Expect to be a life-long learner
Competition in the flat world will be more equal and more intense
Be versatile, a Swiss-Army knife
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL - Chapter 7
Performance Evaluation - Uses
Developmental uses:
Goal setting
Reinforcing and sustaining performance - feedback
Basis for selection for training
Administrative uses:
Basis for rewards, promotion and separation decisions
Diagnose training and development needs
Evaluate success of training and development
Criterion to assess validity of selection devices
Control mechanism provides consistency between strategy and job behavior
Performance Appraisal includes:
Identification: determining what areas of work a manager should be examining when measuring performance.
Rational and legally defensible identification requires a measurement system based on job analysis.
Measurement: entails making managerial judgments of how good or bad employee performance was.
Management: the goal of any appraisal system. More than just noting what a worker does, it must also look
to what a worker can do to achieve organizational and personal goals. Feedback and coaching.

Identification
What Types of Performance to Measure?
Trait-based systems assess abilities or other personal characteristics (e.g. pleasant personality)
Behavior-based systems measure the extent to which an employee engages in certain behaviors on the job (e.g.
contribution to team success)
Results-based systems measure the organizational results of employees behavior (e.g. job completion,
financial results, etc.)
Measurement

Category Rating Methods

Graphic Rating Scales - Checklist Forced Choice
Pros
1 Less time-consuming and costly to develop
2 Quantitative results facilitate comparison across individuals
3 Forces appraiser to consider several performance dimensions
Cons
1 Affords no control over rater errors
Comparative Methods Ranking Paired Comparison - Forced Distribution
Pros
1 Effective with a small number of ratees.
2 Paired comparison method is helpful in making personnel decisions.
3 Control leniency-harshness and central tendency errors.
Cons
1 Unidimensional.
2 Difficult to discriminate between employees in the middle.
3 Unwieldy when ranking many employees.
Narrative Methods Critical Incident - Essay
Pros
1 Provides detailed feedback.
2 Can identify employees unique aspects.
Cons

1
2

Very unstructured/difficult to make comparisons across individuals.

Can be unduly influenced by appraisers writing ability.

Special Methods Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales - Management by Objectives

Pros
1 Forces rater to think in terms of job behavior.
2 Incorporates importance of job dimensions into appraisal.
Cons
1 Costly, time-consuming, and difficult to develop.
Management
Challenges to Effective Performance Measurement five challenges:
Rater errors and bias
The influence of liking
Organizational politics
Focus on individual or group
Legal issues
Research Results
1. RATER CHARACTERISTICS
Females lenient toward males, not females
Younger raters (and low self-confidence) less lenient
Increased psychological distance leads to more critical ratings
2. RATEE CHARACTERISTICS
Females in position stereotyped as male position are rated lower
Ratings more accurate when good performance, but given more weight when unfavorable performance
3. METHODS
Comparative: Zero sum, thus poor motivation. Best for making comparisons (e.g. for promotion)
Rating scales: best for development
M.B.O.: motivates superior performance. Best when hard to compare individuals.
4. RATING PROCESS
Rater training reduces rater errors, Stress performance requirements
Secret evaluations more accurate, but do not motivate
Organizational Politics and Evaluation Issues
1. WHAT IS EVALUATED: Performance vs. Person?
Criteria: should come from job
Criteria: depend on purpose (performance vs potential)
Multiple criteria: activities and results
Criteria weights?
2. WHEN AND HOW OFTEN TO EVALUATE:

When: frequent, end of cycle

How often: annually, semi-annually
3. WHO EVALUATES:
Supervisor: knows performance
Committee: offsetting biases, additional information
Peers: must be trust and non-competitive
Field Review: by HRM Office
Self evaluation: input from ratee
Combination
Multiple Appraiser 360 degrees
4. INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP FOCUS managers need to consider team performance appraisal at two levels:
(1) Individual contribution to team performance
(2) performance of the team as a unit
Outcome measures may need to be complimented with measures of process. Achieving a result is important,
but so, too, is interpersonal relations.
Measures must reflect criteria that the team can influence.
Legal Issues with Performance Assessment
Brito v. Zia Co. 1973 - Performance appraisal is considered a test and must be validated
Should be job related: based on job analysis.
Should be objective and standardized - not based on subjective supervisory ratings.
Should use trained supervisors who have substantial contact.
Should use more than one appraiser.
In practice, courts have used less stringent criteria: they simply want to determine if discrimination occurred,
i.e. are similarly employed individuals treated differently?
Should provide subordinates with honest, accurate and fair feedback, then make decisions consistent with this
feedback.
Performance Management for international assignees and foreign managers
Issues affecting expatriate performance
Expectations: roles may be defined in one country, but performed in another
If a PCN identifies too closely with host subsidiary concerns, he or she may be recalled
Role conflict and role autonomy are important elements in expatriate job satisfaction and task performance
If it takes 3-6 months to adjust to the new environment, when should an appraisal be done?
Should HR provide a numerical difficulty factor to adjust each dimension or the total appraisal score?
Who should do the evaluation?
Parent-country managers- may not be able to take contextual criteria into account, but can put expatriate
performance in a broader organizational context
Host-country managers- can take contextual criteria into account, but may have culturally-bound biases and
cant put expatriate performance into a broader organizational context