Report: Performance Management Analysis at Expert Engineering Inc.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of performance management practices at Expert Engineering Inc., a leading global engineering firm. The study focuses on identifying and addressing intentional rating distortions that can undermine the effectiveness of employee performance evaluations. The report begins with an overview of Expert Engineering Inc.'s organizational structure and its performance management policies, including the selection of principals for performance evaluation. It then delves into various intentional rating distortion factors, such as leniency bias, halo effect, central tendency, similarity error, and recency bias, explaining how these biases can negatively impact the accuracy and fairness of performance assessments. The report concludes with recommendations for interventions, including training for raters using a multidimensional performance scorecard and implementing a three-level performance policy to mitigate the impact of individual biases and ensure comprehensive evaluation. The goal is to foster a more objective and professional performance management system.

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF PERFORMANCE
Management of Performance
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1MANAGEMENT OF PERFORMANCE
According to the comments of Jenter and Kanaan, (2015), the performance evaluation
of the employees is one of the important aspect of the human resource interventions from the
part of the modern business organizations. The concept of performance evaluation terms it to
be an approach that effectively evaluates the performance of the modern professionals in the
organizational context in meeting the desired quality of the services and the performances in
a professional manner (Feitelson, 2015). The study is based on a company named as Expert
Engineering Inc. The study identifies the possible intentional rating distortions that can affect
the success of the managers in evaluating the performances of the subordinate employees.
Other than this, the study provides a brief overview of the organizational situation at the
Expert Engineering Inc. In addition that, the study formulates precise interventions for
tackling the intentional rating distortion factors so that the performance of the employees gets
evaluated in a professional manner.
Organizational Overview:
Expert Engineering Inc. is the top most engineering firms across the globe. With a
detailed consideration towards the human resource management activities or more
specifically the performance management activities of the company, it is evident that the
company employs a handsome number of principals for the management of the performance
evaluation activities of their employees. The main reason behind the development of such a
performance evaluation policy is to ensure an unbiased and 360 degree evaluation of the
performance of their employees (Hosain, 2016). The policy is of great significance for the
success of the company in establishing a professional performance management system for
their employees. Having said that the company was involved in a recruitment drive where
they selected 9 graduate engineers from Purdue University And coincidentally the university
was the same university from which Demetri completed her graduation. Demetri was a
veteran engineer who was serving the organization for 15 years and at the same time, he was

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currently one of the principals appointed by the senior management of the company for the
purpose of performance evaluation of the employees. In such situation, the other principals
appointed for the management of the Performance evaluation at the organisation are fearing
the possibility of unchecked favouritism, unfair promotion related decisions along with the
performance ratings that are expected to be biased.
Intentional rating distortion factors:
According to the comments of Cheng, Hui and Cascio (2017), the leniency bias is one
of the primary rating distortions that affect the performance evaluation of the managers.
Considering the performance evaluation activities of the principals operating at Expert
Engineering Inc, it is understandable that the principals have the possibility of being lenient
positively and negatively. The positive leniency of the appraisers overstates the performance
of an employee and on the other hand, the negative leniency of the appraisers has the
tendency of understating the performance of an employee. Other than this, Pitsakis, Souitaris
and Nicolaou (2015), mentioned that one of the widely visible rater bias in the modern world
if business is seen to be the halo effect. The halo effect is a phenomenon where the overall
positive or negative impression of the rater towards an employee influences his or her rating
in each and every rating aspects for that particular employee.
As per the comments of Pitsakis, Souitaris and Nicolaou (2015), this creates a
situation where the principals responsible for the purpose of performance evaluation, have
certain liking or disliking over an employee and that personal feelings of the rater towards
that particular employee influences his or her rating for that individual. Hence, it is visible
that the principals appointed for the performance management and evaluation in the above
mentioned organization, have the possibility of getting affected by Halo effect. Apart from
that, Allred et al., (2016), claimed that central tendency is also a significant rater bias that

3MANAGEMENT OF PERFORMANCE
affects the success of the raters in evaluating the performance of the employees in a
professional and accurate manner. As per the comments of Allred et al., (2016), the central
tendency influences the raters in avoiding the extreme or accurate judgements through rating
the employees at an intermediate scale or position. The impact of such rater bias has the
ability to influence the raters in assessing the performance of an average, poor and excellent
performer as similar. As per the comments of Dey (2018), the situations where the rater
himself or herself is unable to avoid any sort of conflict or is uncomfortable with conflict and
tries to avoid low marks so that he or she is not getting involved in any sort behavioural
issues of the rater employees, the managers rate the employees at an intermediate position of
the rating scale.
The probability of the mentioned bias affecting the success of the principals
responsible for performance evaluation in Expert Engineering Inc, is notably high. In addition
to this, the similar to me or similarity error also affects the success of the raters in a
detrimental manner where the rater rates a particular employee on the basis of the similarity
the employee possess with him or her (Cheng, Hui and Cascio, 2017). Along with that, the
recency bias also has the potential to decrease the quality of the performance evaluation as it
influences the managers to decide on the basis of some recent incidents rather than the entire
tenure of an employee's performance when they are to evaluate the performances of the
employees (Rahmani, Lee & Human, 2017).
Recommendation:
The recommended intervention will be to provide training to the raters for evaluating
the performances of the employees through utilising a multidimensional performance score
card which will cover different aspects of the performance of the employees. Along with that,
the company is recommended to endure three level performance policy where the line

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managers, departmental managers and the principals will be responsible for the performance
evaluation of the employees and considerate towards the opinion of each and every level's
managers (Xia et al., 2017). The pool of raters will be important in ensuring that the rating is
not lenient from one part, is not influenced by any eater's personal likings towards an
employee, is not a result of the central tendency of a rater, is not influenced by the occurrence
of any recent incident and is not affected by the similarities that an employee have with a
particular rater or two.

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Allred, S. R., Crawford, L. E., Duffy, S., & Smith, J. (2016). Working memory and spatial
judgments: Cognitive load increases the central tendency bias. Psychonomic bulletin
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Cheng, K. H., Hui, C. H., & Cascio, W. F. (2017). Leniency bias in performance ratings: The
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Dey, N. (2018). Unit-14 Measures of Central Tendency. IGNOU.
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Hosain, S. (2016). 360 Degree Feedback as a Technique of Performance Appraisal: Does it
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Jenter, D., & Kanaan, F. (2015). CEO turnover and relative performance evaluation. the
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Pitsakis, K., Souitaris, V., & Nicolaou, N. (2015). The peripheral halo effect: Do academic
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