Chapter 17 - Human resource policies & practices

Selection practices

Training and development programs

• Four general skill categories
  • Basic literacy
  • Technical skills
  • Inter-personal skills
  • Problem-solving skills
• Training methods
  • @@Formal training@@
  • @@Informal training@@
  • @@On-the-job training@@: job rotation, apprenticeships, understudy assignments and formal mentoring programs.
  • @@Off-the-job training@@: activities such as live classroom lectures, public seminars, self-study programs, Internet courses, webinars, podcasts and group activities that use role-plays and case studies.

Performance evaluation

• Three types of behavior that constitute performance at work
  • @@Task performance@@: combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks.
  • @@Citizenship@@: actions that contribute to the psychological environment of the organization, such as helping others when not required.
  • @@Counter-productivity@@: actions that actively damage the organization, including stealing, behaving aggressively towards co-workers, or being late or absent.
• Methods of performance evaluation
  • @@Written essays@@
  • @@Critical incidents@@: way of evaluating the behaviors that are key in making the difference between executing a job effectively and executing it ineffectively.
  • @@Graphic rating scales@@: evaluation method in which the evaluator rates performance factors on an incremental scale.
  • @@Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS)@@: scales that combine major elements from the critical incident and graphic rating scale approaches: the appraiser rates the employees based on items along a continuum, but the points are examples of actual behavior on the given job rather than general descriptions or traits.
  • @@Forced comparison@@: method of performance evaluation where an employee’s performance is made in explicit comparison to others (e.g., an employee may rank third out of ten employees in her work unit).
  • Group order ranking: evaluation method that places employees into a particular classification, such as quartiles.
  • Individual ranking: evaluation method that rank-orders employees from best to worst.