HRM: Developing a Performance Appraisal Tool for Sales Representatives

This report presents a performance appraisal tool designed for Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives, utilizing a graphical rating scale. It begins with a job description outlining the responsibilities and required skills for the role, emphasizing the importance of communication and relationship-building with healthcare professionals. The graphical rating scale is then introduced as a method for evaluating performance across various dimensions such as communication, technology proficiency, knowledge, and customer satisfaction, with ratings ranging from poor to excellent. The report also discusses the advantages and limitations of graphical rating scales in performance appraisal, highlighting their simplicity and potential for quantitative comparison while acknowledging the risk of rater interpretation bias. The document concludes with a bibliography of relevant sources on performance appraisal systems and their effectiveness.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human Resource Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Job Description
For the development of the performance appraisal tool Pharmaceutical Sales
Representative is selected as the Job position. The tool can be used by the organization for
evaluating the performance of the employees working in the role and of sales representatives.
Graphical rating scales are used as the tool for rating the performance considering different
areas that ranges from poor to excellent. The scales can be used for reducing the complexity
of usability and interpretation but dues to its generality it is not applicable with job duties of
every employees.
Pharmaceutical Sales Representative works for a drug manufacturing company and
he/she is responsible for providing marketing materials and information to the doctors about
the medications. It is challenging and competitive task but can help in providing an important
service for the healthcare filed. For promoting the product sales representatives a meeting is
necessary with the general practitioners and other professionals in healthcare and shares
knowledge about the newest medicine and the existing product. The representatives
commutes in different location like clinics, hospitals and doctors office.
They works according to a schedule for the normal business hours and the schedule
may be flexible to weekends and some evenings. Minimum education skill for the
Pharmaceutical Sales Representative is a bachelor degree in marketing or sales and any other
degrees related to health care related fields. There is also need of strong interpersonal skill
such that they can communicate with the doctor and the medical Practitioners fluently and
establish a good relationship such that the prescribing habit of the doctor can be influenced.

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Graphical rating Scale
Title: Pharmaceutical Sales Representative
Date: March 11, 2019
Legend
1. Poor
2. Standard
3. Excellent
1. Poor 2. Standard 3. Excellent
Communication

Technology

Attentive

Knowledge

Customer Satisfaction

The graphical rating scale is the oldest methodology that is widely used by different types
of organization for performance appraisal. It has a scale that can be used by the person rating
Legend
Parameter

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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
the employee for indicating the performance of the employee on different job behaviour.
There are different dimensions that are considered for the development of the tool such as:
 Quantity
 Quality
 Interpersonal skills
 Judgement
 Cooperation
 Attitude
 Knowledge
 Initiative
 Managerial Skills
 Creativity
 Intelligence
 Problem Solving, etc.
The graphical rating scale of the ranges from poor to excellent and a point is given for each of
the ratings as given below:
 Poor = 1
 Standard = 2
 Excellent = 3
The graphical rating scales needs less time for development and allows quantitative
comparison and it can be developed by the HR professionals. There is restriction on the type
of response and range and it can differ from rater interpretations for the scales. It also fails to
implement a good mechanism providing specific non-threatening feedback.

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Bibliography
Bulto, L., & Markos, S. (2017). Effect of performance appraisal system on employee
motivation. Prestige International Journal of Management & IT-Sanchayan, 6(2), 25-
36.
Cleveland, J. N., Huebner, L. A., Anderson, K. J., & Agbeke, D. V. (2019). Lifespan
Perspectives on Job Performance, Performance Appraisal/Management and Creative
Performance. In Work Across the Lifespan (pp. 291-321). Academic Press.
DeNisi, A. S., & Gonzalez, J. A. (2017). Design performance appraisal systems to improve
performance. The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behaviour,
63-75.
Iqbal, M. Z., Akbar, S., & Budhwar, P. (2015). Effectiveness of performance appraisal: An
integrated framework. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(4), 510-533.