Performance Appraisal in Human Resource Management from HelpWithAssignment.com

Performance Appraisal Systems take a variety of forms and are central to Performance Management Systems.

Appraisal takes place annually between the manager and the employee. However there are number of trends that are changing the style and relationship of the appraisal. One important trend is to hold periodic reviews on a more regular basis. This allows for a more dynamic process of discussion and adjustment to objectives to counter the criticism that objectives set and reviewed annually do not fulfill to important aspects of the process.

The objectives should remain relevant and achievable. The process of dialogue allows for relationship building and coaching that needs to take place.

The main purposes for Performance Appraisal include:

• Evaluating Performances to enable a ‘rewards’ formula to be put into operation.
• Auditing to discover work potential, both present and future, of individuals and teams.
• Construction succession plans for corporate replacement planning.
• Discovering training needs for identifying gaps to be filled by formal training.
• Motivating staff to clarify and offer feedback on standards and objectives.
• Developing individuals advising on, conducting and explaining work methods to enable individuals to take responsibility for their own performance, training and development and working relationships through feedback, dialogue and information sharing.

The Approaches or Orientations in Performance Appraisal:

• Control Orientation: In this scheme, an assumption that a superior is controlling authority. This is often perceived by employees negatively. The “them and us” attitudes are formalized through power to judge via paperwork, which seals a view of how well somebody is perceived to work. This approach works best where clear targets are available, which can be judged obviously. It improves a standardized appraisal that is ‘felt fair’.
• Development Orientation: The development appraisal does not start from the manager in control but the need to deal with the uncertainty in the minds of the employees who genuinely want to know how they are performing and what the organization thinks of their contribution. The employees need support to enhance contribution and match their skills with organizational needs. This is a bottom up approach. The demand to develop and a learning climate are likely to evolve from such an attitude.

Types of Appraisals:

• Top-down Schemes: is the most traditional form of appraisal. This emphasizes both subordinate feedback and the lead on objective setting coming from the top. The problems faced by this type of appraisal is that it stresses traditional organizational hierarchies, there may be lack of impartiality and favoritism. There can be lack of full knowledge of the employee in some areas where manager’s span of control may be wide. To counter the problems an independent reviewer is often asked to review the outcomes to avoid any potential bias.
• Self Appraisal: Rarely used, as independent forms of appraisal but, encourages greater ownership and participation in the appraisal scheme through self-reflection and helps ensure full preparation for the appraisal discussion. In an open environment it allows managers to shift from a directive, informing style to counseling style, thereby assisting staff to form objectives and plans, moving from ‘telling’ and ‘selling’ to facilitating which is seen as a creative and more effective level of satisfaction and ownership.
• Upward Appraisal: It is increasingly used to reflect the growing trend for organizations to recognize that they have a duty to provide effective working systems for employees. Employees are invited to provide managers with a rating on such dimensions as effective communication, involvement in decision-making, clarity of objectives and goals and so on.
• Peer Appraisal: Involves members of teams evaluating each other. One of the arguments for this type of system is the pressure to treat internal working relationships as internal feedback systems to external customer feedback techniques. There are sensitivities involved and careful development of staff is required in using such schemes.
• Multi-dimensional Appraisal: It is also called ‘360- Degree Appraisal’. It is used to collect data from outside the immediate team and often from external customer feedback. Its key advantage is to overcome the criticisms of impracticalities and lack of knowledge of a single appraiser. The term refers to the various sources of data: boss, peers, customers and reporting staff, in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the performance relationships and retain positive employee relations.

Recent Trends in Performance Appraisal

• Reduction in paperwork
• Clarity of objective setting
• Emphasis on the quality of the review discussion
• Greater involvement of staff in the process

Disadvantages of Appraisals

• Overtime to complete the paperwork
• Vague objectives and inconsistent standards of objective setting.
• Emphasis on getting the review ‘over’ rather than on the quality of the interview process.
• Narrow individual orientation that ignores wider feedback and operating context.
• Failure to integrate appraisal issues within the wider organizational and operational reality.

For more details just visit our websites at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/human-resources-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

This article is in continuation with our previous articles on Human Resource Management such as Compensation & Rewards, Recruitment & Selection, Career Management.

Compensation & Rewards for Employees at HelpWithAssignment.com

A pay is a statement of an employee’s worth by an employer. An employee is given compensation based upon the contribution of that particular employee to the organization.

Pay is a perception of worth by an employee. The employee shall also feel his worth thanks to his pay. This must not be confused with the least earning employees are worthless, but the priority, importance and the level of hierarchy must also be taken into consideration.

Compensation is directly linked to the mission, objectives, philosophies and culture of the employees. It serves to mesh the monetary payments made to the employees with specific functions of the HR program in establishing a pay for performance standard. It is also a way to motivate employees through compensation.

Employees are compensated because of the following reasons.

• To reward the past performance of the employee.
• To remain competitive in the labor market.
• To maintain salary equity among employees.
• To mesh employees’ future performance with organizational goals.
• To control the compensation budget.
• To attract new work force.
• To reduce unnecessary turnover.

Compensation that an organization provides can be either above the industry standard, equal to that of industry standard or below to that of the industry standard. The ability of the compensation must be such that the employees must be motivated to perform to the best of their abilities. The level of compensation also determines the differential between recruiting new employees or working with senior employees. The pay scale raise and revision is of significant importance in an organization and will be subjected to the merit and seniority of the employees. The pay levels needed to facilitate the achievement of a sound financial position in relation to the products and services offered.

The basis for compensation

• Hourly work: Work paid on an hourly basis.
• Piece work: Work paid on the number of units produced.
• Salary workers: Employees whose compensation is computed on the basis of weekly, biweekly or monthly pay periods.
• Pay for performance: Refers to a wide range of compensation options, including merit-based pay, bonuses, salary commissions, job and pay banding, team/group incentives and various gain sharing programs where managers tie compensation to employee effort and performance.

Motivating Employees through compensation

• Pay Equity: An employee’s perception about the compensation received is equal to the value of work performed. Motivation theory explains that an employee under situations will respond to the compensation they have received by thinking over paid, or under paid.
• Expectancy Theory: A theory of motivation, this theory thinks that an employee in order to receive a good compensation must work hard to achieve it. They must also believe that good performance is valued by the employer will reward by providing expected compensation.
• Pay Secrecy: It is an organizational policy prohibiting employees from revealing their compensation information to anyone. This creates misconceptions and creates distrust in the employees about fairness pay and pay for performance standards.

Factors influencing Wage Mix

• Internal Factors: Compensation strategy within the organization, the worth of the job, relative worth of the employee and the employer’s ability to pay.
• External factors: Conditions of labor market, area wage rates, cost of living, collective bargaining, legal requirements.

Job Evaluation Systems

The systematic process of determining the relative worth of jobs in order to establish which jobs should be paid more than others within an organization.

• Job Ranking System: Oldest system of job evaluation by which jobs are arrayed on the basis of their relative worth.
• Job Classification System: A system of job evaluation in which jobs are classified and grouped according to a series of predetermined wage grades. Successive grades require increasing amounts of job responsibility, skill, knowledge, ability or other factors selected to compare jobs.
• Point System: It is quantitative job evaluation procedure that determines the relative value of a job by the total points assigned to it. Permits jobs to be evaluated quantitatively on the basis of factors or elements that constitute the job.

This article is in continuation with our previous articles on Human Resources which include Career Management, Maslow's Theory, Recruitment & Selection Strategies.

For more details on Human Resource Management please visit our website at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/human-resources-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

Recruitment & Selection Strategies at HelpWithAssignment.com

Recruitment:

Recruitment is the process of finding possible candidates for a job or a function. Advertising is commonly part of the recruiting process and can occur through several means; through newspapers, through professional publications, using advertisements placed in windows, through a job center, through campus interviews, etc.

Selection:

The process used to identify and hire individuals or groups of individuals to fill vacancies within an organization. Often based on an initial job analysis, the ultimate goal of personnel selection is to ensure an adequate return on the investment – to make sure the productivity of the new hire warrants the cost spent on recruiting and training that hire.

Both Recruitment and Selection deal with all those activities associated with attracting candidates, work assessment and the design of selection criteria through to the actual selection activity. It is the attempt to provide a more strategic, systematic and objective approach to ensure more effective selection against subsequent job performance indices. An important theme is fairness in selection particularly in relation to equality of opportunity.

Recruitment is a positive process where more and more candidates are encouraged to apply. Selection is a negative process where unsuitable candidates are rejected.

Recruitment is concerned with tapping the sources of human resources where as selection is concerned with selecting the most suitable candidate through various interviews and tests.

Recruitment does not result in contract of service where as selection results in a contract of service between the employer and the selected employee.

Criteria for a successful Recruitment and Selection process

Effective

Efficient

Fair and legal

Perceived to be fair

Stages in Recruitment and Selection

Stage1, Determination of job roles: The organization must determine the job roles for a particular job. This shall include the type of work, the number of processes, the protocols that have to be followed and whether there are any targets associated with the job. This is called job analysis or job description.

Stage2, Determination of required attributes: In order to determine the required attributes, a number of plans are followed. One of them is Rodger’s 7 point plan, competency profiles are utilized.

Stage3, Finding and attracting applicant: Labor market analysis must take place in order to attract new applicants for the job. A number of recruitment sources like advertising with newspapers, advertising with recruitment agencies and consultancies, job centers, campus interviews, etc should be taken up.

Stage4, Choosing the right people: Even a large recruitment process is futile when the right persons capable of executing the job in the right manner are not selected. Selection of candidates must take place under a good framework using appropriate selection techniques.

Recruitment and Selection
Person Specification Frameworks, Rodgers’s 7 point plan, physical make-up, attainments, general intelligence, special aptitudes, interests, disposition, circumstances.

This article is in continuation with our previous articles on Human Resource Management which include Career Management, Maslow's Theory.

For more details on Human Resource Management you can visit our websites at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/human-resources-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

Torts in Law at HelpWithAssignment.com

A tort in common law is defined as a civil wrong that involves a breach of civil duty owed to someone else. This is in exception to contractual duty. A tort is similar to crime but crimes involve breach of duties toward the society in general. The aggrieved party who has been injured due to a tort may bring a lawsuit.

One who commits a tort is called tortfeasor. A person who suffers a tortuous act is entitled to receive damages, usually monetary compensation, from the person or people responsible or liable for those injuries. Tort law defines what a legal injury is and therefore, a person may be held for an injury that was caused. Legal injuries are not limited to physical injuries. They may also include emotional, economic, or reputational injuries as well as violations of privacy, liability for defective consumer products, copyright infringement and environmental pollution among many others.

In the law world, the most prominent tort liability is negligence. If the injured party can prove that the person believed to have caused the injury acted negligently, that is without taking a reasonable care to avoid injuring others- tort law will allow compensation.

Torts are categorized into negligence torts, intentional torts and standard torts.

· Negligence torts: The standard action in tort is negligence. The tort of negligence provides a cause of action leading to damages, to belief, in each case designed to protect legal rights, including those of personal safety, property and in some cases, intangible economic interests.

· Intentional torts: include those torts arising from the occupation or use of land. The torts of nuisance, trespass, etc come under this category. Intentional torts also include false imprisonment, the tort of illegally arresting or detaining someone and defamation, broadcasting false information damaging the plaintiff’s reputation.

· Statutory torts: Statutory torts are like any other, expect for the fact that these have been enacted by the legislature and not by courts. Examples include consumer protection laws, labor laws governing safety and health of workers, etc.

The burden to prove a tort vests with the plaintiff. It is his duty to prove the defendant’s negligent tort or intentional tort. The plaintiff owns a duty of care. A duty of care is a relationship which exists between a plaintiff and the defendant. There must be a breach of that duty and the plaintiff suffered damages as a result of that breach.

The defendant has to take proper care not to damage or cause injury to the property, emotion, reputation and to the person himself. And lastly, the damage must be significant and not remote.

Nuisance: Legally, the term nuisance is used in three ways, to describe an activity or condition that is harmful or annoying to others. To describe the harm caused by the before mentioned activity or condition and to describe a legal liability that arises from the combination of the two.

Defamation: Defamation is tarnishing the reputation of someone. They are of two types. One is slander and the other is libel. Slander is spoken defamation and libel is printed or broadcast defamation.

Liabilities, defenses and remedies:

· Vicarious liability: One person is liable for the wrongful act of another on the basis of the legal relationship between them.

· Strict liability: when a party is liable for a tort even where there is no intention to commit wrong and no negligence. These torts are no longer available.

· Negligent liability: The defendant’s conduct does not confirm with the standard of conduct that the law says reasonable.

This article is in continuation with our previous article on Law

For more details you can visit our websites at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/law-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

Career Management at HelpWithAssignment.com

When the word career comes to anyone’s mind, they tend to think differently and the perception about career is different for different people. Even scholars and researchers define the term differently. In normal sense, career is used to describe a sequence of related jobs that a person takes up during his/her tenure.

Researchers Greenhaus and Schein came up with good definitions for the word career in a technical sense saying, “the pattern of work related experiences that span the course of a person’s life.”

An individual and an organization have interests in an individual’s career and both parties may take actions to influence that career. These set of related activities are referred to as career planning and career management.

Career Management can be defined as an ongoing process of preparing, implementing and monitoring career plans undertaken by the individual alone or in concert with the organization’s career systems. It may include activities that help the individual develop and carryout career plans, but the focus is on taking actions that the organization’s anticipated HR needs will be met. At its most extreme, career management is largely an activity carried out by the organization. An example of such an activity is succession planning, which is typically carried out by senior management to determine which employees can and should be prepared to replace people in positions of greater responsibility.

Typically, career management revolves around the employee’s role, the organization’s role and the goals of both the individual and the organization.

The organization’s role is to establish a favorable context. The management of an organization does this by providing management support, providing collaboration between line managers and HR managers, training management personnel and setting goals which include planning human resources strategy, changing HR policies as and when required, providing for job rotation, providing outplacement service, announcing the program and explaining its philosophy to the employees.

Successful Career management practices include:

· Placing clear expectations on employees.

· Giving the employees the opportunity for transfer.

· Providing a clear and thorough succession plan.

· Encouraging performance through rewards and recognition.

· Giving employees the time and resources they need to consider short and long term career goals.

· Encouraging employees to continually assess their skills and career direction.

Career opportunities and requirements for a particular job include

· Competency Analysis: Competency analysis measures three basic competencies for each job: know how, problem solving and accountability.

· Job Progressions: The hierarchy of jobs a new employee might experience, ranging from starting a job to jobs that require more knowledge and/ or skill.

· Career Paths: Career paths include the lines or ways for advancement in an occupational field within an organization. There are a lot of possibilities in career paths like promotion, transfer, demotion or exit.

· Promotion: A promotion can be defined as a change of assignment to a job at a higher level in the organization. Principal criteria for determining promotions are merit, seniority and potential.

· Transfer: The placement of an individual in another job for which the duties, responsibilities, status and remuneration are approximately equal to those of the previous job.

· Demotion: Demotion is defined as the downgrading of work. An employee who was given greater responsibility, after demotion will be given lower level in the organization.

· Exit: an employee who quits the organization is defined as exiting.

A career span of a person is divided into 5 stages based on the age of the person.

· Stage 1 Preparation for work (ages 0-25): Develop occupational self-image, assess alternative occupations, develop initial occupational choice, pursuing necessary education.

· Stage2 Organizational entry (ages 18-25): Obtaining job offers from desired organization(s), select appropriate job based on complete and accurate information.

· Stage 3 Early Career (ages 25-40): Learn job, learn organizational rules and norms, fit into chosen occupation and organization, increase competence, pursue goals.

· Stage 4 Midcareer (ages 40-55): Reappraise early career and early adulthood goals, reaffirm or modify goals, make choices appropriate to middle adult years, remain productive.

· Stage 5 Late Career (ages 55-retirement): Remain productive in work, maintain self-esteem and prepare for retirement.

Often employees want to change job because of one reason which is career plateau. A career plateau is a situation where the probability of moving up the career ladder is rather low.

The types of plateaus that have been observed include:

· Structural Plateau: Structural Plateau is defined as a situation where the chance of advancement is very low or there is no advancement at all.

· Content Plateau: Content Plateau is defined as the situation where the job is no longer any challenging. This is also a demotivating factor for many employees. People want jobs that are challenging.

· Life Plateau: Life Plateau is a situation where there is a danger of crisis of personal identity. Every person is unique and the uniqueness is especially seen in someone’s work. An organization is a good place to improve the individuality and self-esteem of a person. If the job is threatening to endanger the personal identity of a person, then this paves the way for life plateau.

This article is in continuation with our previous article on Human Resources Management Maslow's Theory.

For more details on Human Resources Management you can refer to our websites at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/hr-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

Game Theory Bayesian Games at HelpWithAssignment.com

In games of complete information, the players know not only their own preferences, but also the preferences of other players as well. In many situations of economic interest, however, there is likely to be considerable uncertainty on the part of each player regarding the preferences of his or her opponents.

To incorporate this possibility, we introduce Bayesian Games, or games of incomplete information. Complete games are characterized by three things: players, actions and payoffs. Bayesian Games build on the static games of complete information.

In Bayesian Games, each player can be one of a certain number of types. Each player knows his or her own type, but cannot observe the type of the other players directly. From the perspective of a given player the others’ types are random draws from some given prior distribution.

The type of a player influences that player in two ways. First, the player’s payoff in the game can depend on both the actions chosen, and on the types of all players. Thus, the combination of types influences each player’s payoff. Second, each type of each player has its own set of possible actions in the game, but we frequently assume that the set of possible actions does not depend on the type of player. Given his type, each player in the game selects an action from those available.

Similar to dynamic games, in Bayesian Games a strategy for each player is a plan which specifies an action for each possible type. Knowing another player’s strategy in a Bayesian Game does not yet allow a player to predict the other’s action for certain, because other players’ type is unknown.

However, given the other player’s strategy and the player’s prior distribution each player can figure out his or her expected payoff from the actions that are available to him or her.

Of the actions available, each player will choose some particular action. Therefore, given his or her type, the strategy of each player and the prior distribution, each player can figure out his or her expected payoff from the actions that are available to him or her. Of the actions available, each player can therefore figure out a best possible action or actions for each of his or her own types. The best possible action for each of his or her types is a player’s best responses to each other then the strategies constitute a Bayesian Nash Equilibrium.

An Example of Bayesian Game: Take It Or Leave It Offer

As in the standard Take it or leave it offer game, there are two players: a buyer and a seller. Each player’s type is his value for the good, v_B; v_S.

Both values are independent draws form a uniform distribution on [0; 1]; so that Pr (vi ≤ x) = x. The buyer is given the opportunity to make a take it or leave it offer to the seller of a price p at which he or she will be willing to buy the good. If the price exceeds the seller’s value, then the seller accepts, if it isn’t the seller rejects the proposal. What price will the buyer choose? Given his or her value v_B the buyer selects her price to maximize her expected payoff

Max Pr = (v_S > p) (v_B - p)

p

max p (v_B - p)

p

p* = v_B/2

Thus the buyer "shades" her bid by half in order to trade o¤ the chance that her offer is rejected with her payoff if it is accepted. This leads to a outcomes that can be bad socially.

If the seller’s value were known, whenever the buyer’s value was larger the parties would transact; thus the party who values the good most would always receive it and the collective payoff is as large as possible.

When the seller’s value is unknown, the buyer shades his bid, so in order for trade to occur, the buyer’s value has to be larger than twice the seller’s value, which occurs less often. Thus, because a value is private, it is more difficult to trade and the collective good is harmed.

This is in continuation with our previous articles on Economics, Auctions, Prisoners' Dilemma and Cutting a Cake, Battle of the Sexes

For more details you can visit our website at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/economics-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com

Game Theory Auctions Continued at HelpWithAssignment.com

As we have discussed about Auction games in our previous articles, we shall now speak about the background of these auction games.

We have discussed that there are 4 types of auctions

First Price Auction;

Second Price Auction:

All-Pay Auction:

Lottery:

In these type of auctions we have seen that in the First Price Auction, the item is sold to the bidder who quotes the highest price.

In the Second Price Auction, the item is sold to the bidder who quotes the highest amount but he will pay the second highest price that was quoted.

In All-Pay Auction, all the bidders will write down their numbers but, the item is sold to the highest quotation. But all the bidders will have to pay even though they have not received the item.

In Lottery, all the bidders will have an equal chance of winning the item. All of the bidders will pay their share of the price, but only one person will receive the item. So, there is a chance that anyone in the bid can win the lottery.

Here, we have discovered a fact: the first three types of auctions, all resulted in the same revenue for the seller, but the fourth auction type did not result in the same revenue. Furthermore, the first three auction types always sold the good to the buyer who had the highest value of an item, but in lottery, if both buyers enter, there is a chance that the buyer whose value is lower can also win the lottery.

We will use the technique of mechanism design and apply this technique for the design of auctions. We will use techniques to determine which auction format will raise the most revenues for the seller among all the conceivable auction formats.

We shall retain the assumptions of symmetric, independent and private values. Each player’s type, v_i represents his or her value for the seller’s good. Given her value for the good v_i, the quantity of the good that she receives, q_i, and the payment that she must make p_i, each buyer’s payoff was assumed to be:

U_i (q_i p_i/ v₁ v₂) = v_iq_i - p_i

The goal of mechanical design is to represent any auction in a simple way. The rules of any auction can be potentially very complicated, but ultimately all of the rules boil down to just a quantity of the goods sold to player i, q_i (b₁, b₂) given the bids of both players and a payment required of player i, p_i (b₁, b₂) given the bids of both players.

q₁ (b₁; b₂) = 1 if b₁ > b₂

= 0 if b1 < b₂

p₁ (b₁; b₂) = b₁ if b₁ > b₂

= 0 if b₁ < b₂

First Price Auction

so that the high bidder wins the auction and pays his or her bid. The lottery, for example, could be written

q₁ (b₁; b₂) = 1 if b₁ = 1 and b₂ = 0

= 1/2 if b₁ = 1 and b₂ = 1

= 0 if b₁ = 0

p₁ (b₁; b₂) = p if b₁ = 1

= 0 if b₁ = 0

Lottery

Another type of auction, which we have not considered is the "Tullock Lottery," in which

your chance of winning the good is just your share of the total of the bids

q₁ (b₁; b₂) = b₁/b₁+b₂

p₁ (b₁; b₂) = pb₁

Tullock Lottery

This is in continuation with our previous articles on Economics, Auctions, Prisoners' Dilemma and Cutting a Cake

For more details you can visit our website at http://www.helpwithassignment.com/economics-assignment-help and http://www.helpwiththesis.com