Employee Performance free essay sample

Employee Performance Team Names Here University of Phoenix HRM 300 March 24, 2013 Instructor Name Here Identified Two Jobs At Kudler Fine Foods there are many important roles within the organization that rely on the performance management system to ensure they are achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. The two positions discussed in this paper are the baker and the assistant manager. Both roles are extremely important roles in Kudler Fine Foods that rely on the roles and involvement of the performance management systems to ensure they are meeting the goals and objectives set by the organization as well as understanding their strengths and weaknesses within the organization. This paper will discuss the general function of performance management systems suggest two job evaluation methods for the baker and assistant managers positions, compare and contrast the possible compensations plans, and explain the importance of providing employee benefit plan to the baker and assistant manager for Kudler Fine Foods. General Function of Performance Management The general function of performance management is to provide a process that delivers a fair and accurate account of individual employee performance within an organization. Appraisal systems of any type generally provide assessment that is often viewed as judgment over a particular individual’s performance for a particular period of time. Such a system, or process is best practiced with goals are set in the beginning, and then followed up with feedback regarding the outcome of the goals current status. Growth of the individual within the organization is the ultimate desire of such a system, and such growth of the individual will not end until employment with the company in question no longer exists. Provided goals may come as part of a set of different functions within a job description that the individual needs to accomplish or improve upon, or the goals might be more tailored to the individual on personal growth issues. Regardless, when an individual is provided tangible goals that can be reached within the measured period of time there is opportunity for growth. The feedback provided by management, and the individual in the evaluation process is valuable in determining progress, and the next step to be taken in the growth process. The â€Å"appraisal system† has long been utilized to assist in the growth of employees in measureable goals, the actual performance guideline, and a comparison that performance with set standards (DeCenzo and Robbins, 2007). Kudler Find Foods briefly covers â€Å"performance evaluation† in their human resources â€Å"policy and procedure† online handbook. Exact details are not provided other than to demonstrate to the reader that â€Å"formal performance evaluations† will take place, and discuss performance, goals setting, strengths and weaknesses (Kudler Fine Foods, 2012). This demonstrates Kudler’s belief that performance evaluation is important, and in doing so within the online handbook communicates to the reader a sense of value will be placed upon their work ethic. Job Evaluation Methods Job evaluations are conducted within organizations to evaluate their employee’s job performances. There are three basic types of methods that organizations use to evaluate these performances; they are the ranking method, the factor comparison method, and the point method. The ranking method compares each position to other positions based on overall ranking assigned by the organization. Another method used is the factor comparison. This method uses a set of skills that are assigned a value; a list of jobs and a pay scale are created by assigning a value to each job based on the skill value. If an organization has a large number of employees, this is usually the organization’s preferred method. The third method commonly used is the point method. This method identifies a set of skills and subsections of each skill and assigns point values to each subset skill. There are two positions that are being evaluated at Kudler Fine Foods. These two positions are the Baker and the Assistant Store Manager position. The managers are trying to determine the best method for evaluating the positions within the organization. Baker’s Position There are two methods that are being tested for this position to evaluate this employee’s job performance. These methods are the factor comparison and the point method. Both of these methods could be effective for evaluating this position. Both of these methods are based on the employee’s skills. They are based on the skills of the individual only, not compared to other’s skills within the organization. However, using these methods could also be difficult to assess the baker’s skill level. Research would have to be done using other stores comparable to Kudler Fine Foods and their skilled baker’s. This research would have to collect data that would give the manager’s at Kudler an idea of what the job performance level should be as a baker. Assistant Store Manager There are two methods that are being considered to evaluate this position. They are the ranking and factor comparison method. The ranking method could be effective because the ranking could be completed by other Kudler employees. Determining the ranking system, could be based on previous assistant store manager employees at Kudler’s. Their job performance level is based on what impact they have on the organization as a whole and what they can do to improve the organization. The disadvantage of using the ranking method is the employee’s true job performance is not always accurately evaluated by just comparing the performance based on other employee’s within the organization. Using the factor comparison method could be the most effective method. This method assigns a value to each job that is performed by the employee. This method evaluates the actual job performed. Compensation Plans The best possible compensation plans for a baker’s position would be the individual incentive plan and the paying for performance plan. These two plans would cause the baker to want to perform at their best possible. The individual incentive plan pays the employee based on their performance at the job. This plan has many approaches including merit pay, bonuses for time savings, pay per completed piece, and commissions off of sales of the pieces. The best possible pay for the baker would be pay per completed piece. Since the baker would be baking all day they could be given a commission on pieces completed as long as those pieces met the standards set forth by the company. This fits in with the pay for performance plan. Since the baker would be wanting to make the best possible product and the most of that product the baker’s performance would rise and they would be rewarded for that rise in productivity (DeCenzo amp; Robbins, ,   2007). The best possible compensation plans for the Assistant Store Manager would be the group incentive and plant wide incentive plans. These two plans would cause the Assistant Store Manager to want to be involved as much as possible with the workings of the plant. The group incentive plan pays a group of individuals based on their performance. Having an active Assistant Store Manager helping the group would cause their productivity to rise thus causing more products to be available for sale. Using the plant-wide incentive program would make the Assistant Store Manager want to ensure that the plant was running at full capacity. If there were problems that caused the plant to lose productivity the Manager would want to fix those problems as quickly as possible thus causing productivity to rise once again (DeCenzo amp; Robbins, ,   2007). Importance of Employee Benefits The importance of providing employee benefit plans to employees working in the baker and CEO roles depend on what’s important to the individuals in those positions. One would think that management at Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) would go about the employee benefit plans process in one of several ways, depending on what’s more valuable to those decision makers. One approach could be to engage the services of a consulting firm which specializes in employee benefit plan designation and implementation, to acquire an independent evaluation of the creation and implementation of this process from beginning to a functional implementation in this whole process. Stakeholders in KFF could also create a committee who could agree on a creation of employee benefit plans that would suitable for the roles of the CEO and the baker’s positions. The importance of providing employee benefit plans to employees is to take are of employees’ needs, to stay competitive and employee retention. Companies like KFF need to attract and retain a CEO, which will mean that KFF will need to implement an ‘attractive’ executive benefit plan package. CEO pay and benefits will need to compete with other organizations in its same industry bracket. If KFF’s management believe their growth prospects are more attractive relative to its peers, then deferred stock-options may be a part of the CEO’s benefit plan. Compensation committees are concerned that organizations would like to incentivize the CEO for middle- to long-term and sustainable growth, with advocates like Warren Buffet emphasizing much more attractive stock-option grants for CEOs in the long-term, instead of short-term pressure for earnings. The process of designing an employee benefit plan for a baker’s role may not take as much effort as that of the C-suite. Depending on the skills and training of the baker, the baker’s employee plan needs to strike a balance between what KFF can reasonably be able to afford in it’s benefits selection and delegation for this role. KFF will need to live within it’s means, which means different things to different people. To be conservative in this plan and to pay attention to how established competitors in their same bracket may be a good place to start. Essentially the goal of this plan is to theoretically offer enough of an employee benefit plan that reasonable employees will deem as valuable, and a plan that KFF could afford. For certain companies, demographics like age, and other factors could help explain and shape the employee benefit plan process. If the baker’s are all young, in a college town, then a generous tuition plan may be more desirable. If the baker’s role is in a part of the country where folks are older, in a rural part of the country, then more generous retirement benefits may seem valuable. Simply put, KFF management will need to strike a balance between the needs of their employees to what the employees find as most valuable to them. The design and process of implementation of the entire employee benefit plan(s) is a balance between the skills of what people in the CEO and baker’s roles can benefit KFF, and how KFF can then give back to its employees. One of the conservative responses in this area of discussion lso has pay-for-performance features within it – deferred compensation: middle-to-long-term in various forms-profit sharing, 401(k) contributions and subsidizations, stock performance allotments, etc. , all point to organizations like KFF who value their bakers and CEO. Hopefully workers and KFF management will strike a ‘healthy’ balance between the integral role that ke y employees give back to their employer, and how the employer will then bestow back to their employees a valuable employee benefit plan that will take care of their employees’ needs, to the best of KFF’s abilities within budget and other constraints each side will work with. References DeCenzo, D. , amp; Robbins, S. (2007). Fundamentals of human resource management (9th ed. ). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. Kudler Fine Foods, (2012), Human Resources, Policy and procedures, Retrieved from https://ecampus. phoenix. edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Kudler2/intranet/policies-procedures. asp#performance