Consider this scenario: John Hopken is the new supervisor of a team of 12 computer programmers. He has been in

his position for 10 months, after being promoted to his position from programmer (where he had been in place for 8 years). The promotion was hard-won; four others on his team also applied for the promotion, and when he got his promotion, the other four employees who didn’t get the position were rather disgruntled. One of them lashed out in a meeting early on and called him a yes-man, but otherwise most of the issues have been undercurrents and rumor based. These four employees are referred to as Competitors 1, 2, and 3 and Competitor Yes-Man for the purposes of this question.

During the year, five older members of his team resigned—four through regular retirements and one after being accused of falsifying expense reports. None of the five were in the group of four who had competed against him for his position. John filled all five position openings with outside hires. Three of them had similar backgrounds to John’s—they all went to his alma mater for their computer degrees and like basketball. In fact, last week John and the three of them attended a Bulls game together. These employees will be referred to as Bulls 1, 2, and 3. The other two employees were both females he hired because HR told him he had to. (Up until now, there were no females on the team.) We’ll call them Lady 1 and 2. They don’t like basketball. Lady 1 was hired 6 months ago, and Lady 2 was hired last month.

Now, it is performance appraisal time. Assume each of these employees does a similar amount of work, produces relatively similar amounts of code, and does a good job. None of them create waves, and the new people have gotten their work under way and are working hard. Other than the yes-man meeting and one comment on the men’s room wall saying that “Hopken is a jerk,” things have mostly gone smoothly. John figures that one of the Competitors wrote that. 

John is told by HR he has to do performance appraisals this month. He is told to rate his people on a scale of 1–4, where 1 is “not meeting expectations,” 2 is “too new to rate,” 3 is “meeting expectations,” and 4 is “exceeding expectations.” HR said that he must have no more than two 4s, no more than eight 3s, and at least two 1s or 2s. He asks an HR representative what “too new” means, and she says it applies to anyone who has not been in the position for 3 months or more.

He looks at the paperwork and his list, and 20 minutes later has his ratings done with a paragraph scribbled out to provide to his workers. 

Here are his ratings.

Bulls 1: 4

Bulls 2: 4

Bulls 3: 3

Lady 1: 3

Other 1: 3

Other 2: 3

Other 3: 3

Competitor 1: 3

Competitor 2: 3

Competitor 3: 3

Lady 2: 2

Competitor YM: 1

Please answer the following questions.

(1.) Identify and describe the six factors that distort performance appraisals. 

(2.) Describe whether you think that any of these six factors were present in the appraisals done here. Justify your decision either way. 

(3.) Name three ways you would consider improving the process for performance appraisal at this company.

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