Performance Appraisal Role-Play Analysis: Three Scenarios

Role-Play A: Manager A and Employee A

In this scenario, the manager meets with the employee to conduct her performance appraisal. When asked how she feels she has performed over the past year, the employee states that she is satisfied with her performance and believes she is doing well because she has not received any feedback to the contrary. There are two key concerns with this situation. First, employees should receive regular and systematic feedback throughout the appraisal period — not just once a year (Ash & Quarry, 2010). Second, a yearly appraisal period is too long. Performance appraisals should be conducted at least twice per year, if not more frequently, in order to give equal weight to both strong and weaker periods of performance (Pardue, 1999). Because we tend to remember recent events most clearly, a long appraisal period risks allowing recent poor performance to overshadow earlier strong performance.

The manager should also ask the employee for feedback on how he can better support her in her role (Ash & Quarry, 2010). Ideally, the employee should receive a review at the beginning of the appraisal period so that she understands what is expected of her and how her performance will be evaluated (Pardue, 1999). This makes the appraisal process more effective by ensuring there are no surprises when the formal review meeting takes place.

The manager relies solely on the employee's customer service rating — an 80% satisfaction score — without providing feedback on any other job functions. He does not ask the employee to describe her responsibilities, which means he has no way of knowing whether she fully understands her role. Most positions carry several requirements, many of which may not have quantifiable metrics but should nonetheless be considered in an overall performance assessment. The manager should have the employee's job description on hand when preparing for the meeting (Pardue, 1999).

The manager also dismisses the relevance of the employee's past performance to her current appraisal. This is a counterproductive approach, as it fails to identify why a previously strong employee has experienced a decline in performance — or why a struggling employee may have improved. Understanding performance trends over time is essential to meaningful evaluation.

The manager's attitude toward the employee's mother's illness is insensitive and overlooks a plausible explanation for her drop in performance. While job performance is naturally the employer's primary concern, promoting work-life balance is an important organizational objective. Employees have lives outside of work, and events will sometimes affect their performance. Managers who want to retain good employees must demonstrate compassion and understanding.

The employee requests training and the opportunity for a promotion, both of which the manager ignores. This is a significant oversight. The employee is clearly motivated by the prospect of advancement, and denying access to training removes a key source of motivation to improve. Understanding employees' career goals also helps managers design appropriate development and improvement plans (Pardue, 1999).

The manager does not keep track of the employee's goals and objectives, leaving her to manage this entirely on her own — an unrealistic expectation. Rather than collaborating on a concrete improvement plan, the manager simply tells her to do better. Without joint goal-setting, the employee has no clear target to work toward. She is unlikely to improve by simply "working harder" when she does not know what is causing customer dissatisfaction or what behaviors need to change.

The manager's response to learning that the employee is looking for another job further reveals his limited understanding of employee motivation. The employee has mentioned several times that she has worked for the company for two years without being promoted. The manager should recognize that the absence of reward for good past performance will not motivate her to address her current performance issues.

Role-Play B: Manager B and Employee B

Finally, the manager should not discuss pay raises during the performance appraisal meeting. Compensation conversations should be reserved for a separate meeting in order to encourage honesty during the appraisal itself (Ash & Quarry, 2010).

In this scenario, the employee begins the meeting with a poor attitude and unprofessional behaviors, including chewing gum and answering her phone during the review. It is evident that she does not understand the purpose of the meeting, is not taking the appraisal seriously, and has not prepared despite knowing about it in advance. She is defensive and argumentative. For his part, the manager fails to set a clear tone at the outset — explaining the goals of the review might have helped him guide the conversation more effectively.

The employee equates her performance with the number of hours she works and perceives herself as a diligent employee. The manager does a reasonable job of explaining the company's minimum requirement of a 90% customer satisfaction rate, but he does not address any of the other functions of her role (Ash & Quarry, 2010). He makes several attempts to understand why her performance has declined so that he can identify the specific behaviors or issues responsible — a necessary step in developing an achievable improvement plan (Pardue, 1999).

Despite the manager's efforts, the employee fails to grasp how her performance affects the organization as a whole and expects the company to resolve the problem without taking personal responsibility. Her request for a raise and a promotion — given her current performance — further demonstrates that she does not connect individual performance with organizational rewards (Pardue, 1999). Her disclosure that she is already looking for other employment signals that she is unlikely to be motivated to improve.

The manager is appropriately sensitive to the employee's family situation and expresses a genuine desire to support her improvement — an offer she declines. He attempts to involve her in creating an improvement plan, but he should not have allowed the meeting to end without one in place. No follow-up meeting was scheduled and no formal plan was established — largely because of the employee's resistance, but the manager, as the person in authority, should have insisted on working through this process and helped her understand the connection between performance and reward (Ash & Quarry, 2010).

Conclusion

Pardue, H. (1999). Performance appraisal as an employee development tool. Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from