Text 18 Objective Performance Measures

Performance appraisal is a formal measurement of the quantity and quality of an employee's work within a specific period of time. Usually, performance appraisal occurs once, or at most, twice a year. There are several methods of performance appraisal, which differ in what aspects of performance are measured and how the measurement is made.

Objective performance measures count tangible products of work performance. These could be measures of quantity – such as the dollar amount of sales or the number of clothes sewn – or quality – such as the amount of scrap or the number of defect-free garments. For example, bank loan officers are evaluated on the dollar amounts of loans or the time required to process loan applications. Professional athletes are appraised variously on batting average, tackles made, points served, and minutes played.

Many organizations prefer objective measures because they appear to be unbiased, direct gauges of work performance. This is not always true, however. One reason is that these measures are influenced by environmental conditions. Sales volume, for example, may be affected by the number of competitors, the economy, and the size of the territory. Not all salespersons are comparable in regard to these factors, so comparisons are not quite fair. Another limitation of objective measures is that they cannot always describe all aspects of the job. For example, it is difficult and expensive to obtain measures of customer service, such as by contacting customers and asking their opinions as to how well employees have interacted with them. Equipment maintenance is another measure that is often difficult to gather. Thus, using objective measures exclusively often means that only part of the job is appraised. Moreover, very often this results in workers devoting most of their time to the parts of their jobs that are measurable and virtually ignoring the other parts.

2. Read text 18 more carefully. Try to guess the words underlined from the context. Then use your dictionary to check the words.

2. Comprehension check.

Working in pairs, take turns answering the questions.

1. What purpose does the performance appraisal serve?

2. What is the essence of objective performance measures?

3. What is the main advantage of objective performance measures?

4. Are there any minuses in objective performance measures?

Vocabulary 2

1. Match up each of the words and word combinations in A to its synonym or an explanation for it in B. Use your dictionary if necessary.

A B

trait	exactly
2. behaviour	financial plan
3. attitude	practical
4. enthusiasm	contribution
5. dependability	convincing
6. to direct	solving a problem
7. timely	on time
8. accessible	draft
9. feedback	report
10. to schedule	range
11. to meet the needs	hope
12. expectation	to satisfy the needs
13. accurately	a particular quality in someone’s character
14. scope
15. workable	to plan
16. budget	someone’s opinions or feelings about something
17. input
18. promptly	conduct
19. rapport	interest
20. outline	friendly and easy to talk to
21. presentation	relationship
22. persuasive	happening at the most suitable time
23. resolution	comment
	reliability
	to control or organize how a group of people does something

2. Complete the charts with the different parts of speech. Translate the obtained pairs of words into your mother language.

E.g. dependence / dependable – довіра, надія / надійний

Noun	Adjective
cooperation
dependence	dependable
time
access
	workable
	communicative
change
logic
	persuasive
	successful

Pre-reading task

Table 3 presents some personal traits and behaviours. Appraising them can be used when evaluating an employee’s performance. Study the table and say which of the two groups of measures (trait-based appraisals or behaviour-based appraisals) is, in your opinion, more helpful for performance evaluation.

Table 3