Posted: February 8th, 2015

Group Work 6

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

2. Write a job description for an undergraduate online student.
   B. Using the textbook – (pages 272-273 in Chapter 9 in the 14th Edition) – create a behaviorally anchored rating scale for undergraduate online students.
   C. Once you have completed the scale, design a compensation plan that is likely to motivate as well as educate undergraduate online students.
   D. Describe in depth and detail why your compensation plan is appropriate to the job of being a student

   Page 272.
   The supervisor’s narrative assessment helps the employee understand where his or her perfor-
   mance was good or bad, and how to improve that performance.
   Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
   A behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS) is an appraisal tool that anchors a numerical rat-
   ing scale with specific illustrative examples of good or poor performance. Its proponents say it
   provides better, more equitable appraisals than do the other tools we’ve discussed.45
   Developing a BARS typically requires five steps:
   1. Write critical incidents. Ask the job’s jobholders and/or supervisors to write specific
   illustrations (critical incidents) of effective and ineffective performance on the job.
   2. Develop performance dimensions. Have these people cluster the incidents into 5 or
   10 performance dimensions, such as “salesmanship skills.”
   3. Reallocate incidents. To verify these groupings, have another team who also know the job
   reallocate the original critical incidents to the cluster they think it fits best. Retain a critical
   incident if most of this second team assigns it to the same cluster as did the first.
   4. Scale the incidents. This second group then rates the behavior described by the incident
   as to how effectively or ineffectively it represents performance on the dimension (7- to
   9-point scales are typical).
   5. Develop a final instrument. Choose about six or seven of the incidents as the dimension’s
   behavioral anchors.46 We’ll look at an example.
   Figure 9-10 shows a BARS for one performance dimension for a car salesperson—the dimension
   “automobile salesmanship skills.”
   RESEaRCh InSIGht Three researchers developed a BARS for grocery checkout clerks.47 They
   collected many checkout clerk critical incidents, and then grouped or clustered these into eight
   performance dimensions:Knowledge and Judgment
   Conscientiousness
   Skill in Human Relations
   Skill in Operation of Register
   Skill in Bagging
   Organizational Ability of Checkstand Work
   Skill in Monetary Transactions
   Observational Ability
   They then developed behaviorally anchored rating scales for each of these eight dimensions.
   Each contained a vertical scale (ranging from 1 to 9) for rating performance from “extremely poor”
   to “extremely good.” Then they inserted specific critical incidents (such as “by knowing the price
   of items, this checker would be expected to look for mismarked and unmarked items”) to anchor or
   illustrate each level of performance. Figure 9-10 shows a similar BARS, but for a car salesperson.
   aDvantaGES The critical incidents along the scale illustrate what to look for in terms of superior
   performance, average performance, and so forth. The critical incidents make it easier to explain
   the ratings to appraisees. Clustering the critical incidents into five or six performance dimensions
   (such as “salesmanship skills”) helps make the performance dimensions more independent of one
   another. (For example, a rater should be less likely to rate an employee high on all dimensions
   simply because he or she was rated high in “salesmanship skills.”) Finally, BARS seem to be
   relatively reliable: different raters’ appraisals of the same person tend to be similar.48
   Mixed Standard Scales
   Mixed standard scales are somewhat similar to behaviorally anchored scales. They are called mixed
   scales because the employer “mixes” together all the good or poor behavioral example statements
   when listing them. The aim is to reduce rating errors by making it less obvious to the person doing
   the appraising (1) what performance dimensions he or she is rating; and (2) whether the behavioral
   example statements represent high, medium, or low performance. The supervisor rates the employee
   by indicating whether the latter’s performance is better than, the same, or worse than the statement.

   Page 273

   Suppose you want to appraise employees on the dimensions Quality of Work, Conscientious-
   ness, and Gets Along with Others. You write three “high, medium, low” behavioral examples for
   each of these three dimensions, as follows.49
   For Quality of Work
   1. Employee’s work is striking in its accuracy, there is never any evidence of carelessness in it.
   2. The accuracy of employee’s work is satisfactory; it is not often that you find clear evidence
   of carelessness.
   3. Frequent careless errors in this employee’s work.
   For Conscientiousness
   4. Is quick and efficient, able to keep work on schedule.
   5. Is efficient enough, usually getting through assignments and work in a reasonable time.
   6. There is some lack of efficiency on employee’s part. Employee may take too much time to
   complete assignments, and sometimes does not really finish them