Case Study – Appraising the Secretaries at Sweetwater University
CASE STUDY – APPRAISING THE SECRETARIES AT SWEETWATER UNIVERSITY
Rob Winchester, newly appointed Vice President for Administrative Affairs at Sweetwater University, faced a tough problem shortly after his university career began. Three weeks after he came on board in September, Sweetwater’s President Rob’s boss, told Rob that one of his first tasks was to improve the appraisal system used to evaluate secretarial and clerical performance at Sweetwater University.
Apparently, the main difficulty was that the performance appraisal was traditionally tied directly to salary increases given at the end of the year. So most administrators were less than accurate when they used the graphic rating forms that were the basis of the clerical staff evaluation. In fact, what usually happened was that each administrator simply rated his or her clerk or secretary as “excellent.” This cleared the way for all support staff to receive a maximum pay increase every year.
But, the current university budget simply did not include enough money to fund another “maximum” annual increase for every staffer. Furthermore, Sweetwater’s President felt that the custom of providing invalid feedback to each secretary on his or her year’s performance was not productive, so he had asked the new Vice President to revise the system.
In October, Rob sent a memo to all administrators telling them that in the future no more than half the secretaries reporting to any particular administrator could be appraised as “excellent.” This move, in effect, forced each supervisor to begin ranking his or her secretaries for quality of performance. The Vice President’s memo met widespread resistance immediately – from administrators, who were afraid that many of their secretaries would begin leaving for more lucrative jobs in private industry; and from secretaries, who felt that the new system was unfair and reduced each secretary’s chance of receiving a maximum salary increase.
A handful of secretaries
Rob Winchester, newly appointed Vice President for Administrative Affairs at Sweetwater University, faced a tough problem shortly after his university career began. Three weeks after he came on board in September, Sweetwater’s President Rob’s boss, told Rob that one of his first tasks was to improve the appraisal system used to evaluate secretarial and clerical performance at Sweetwater University.
Apparently, the main difficulty was that the performance appraisal was traditionally tied directly to salary increases given at the end of the year. So most administrators were less than accurate when they used the graphic rating forms that were the basis of the clerical staff evaluation. In fact, what usually happened was that each administrator simply rated his or her clerk or secretary as “excellent.” This cleared the way for all support staff to receive a maximum pay increase every year.
But, the current university budget simply did not include enough money to fund another “maximum” annual increase for every staffer. Furthermore, Sweetwater’s President felt that the custom of providing invalid feedback to each secretary on his or her year’s performance was not productive, so he had asked the new Vice President to revise the system.
In October, Rob sent a memo to all administrators telling them that in the future no more than half the secretaries reporting to any particular administrator could be appraised as “excellent.” This move, in effect, forced each supervisor to begin ranking his or her secretaries for quality of performance. The Vice President’s memo met widespread resistance immediately – from administrators, who were afraid that many of their secretaries would begin leaving for more lucrative jobs in private industry; and from secretaries, who felt that the new system was unfair and reduced each secretary’s chance of receiving a maximum salary increase.
A handful of secretaries