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Do you use grid and scientific ways to objectively conclude, based on facts, that your employees meet the goals of your organization?

David Espina
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Joseph Michel Simon Boulanger
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    Joseph, Welcome to PMSE! To the extent possible, providing context for the question or the underlying reason for the question will help the community provide valuable answers. For example, why are you asking the question? What are you trying to accomplish/what challenge are you facing and trying to address? – Mark Phillips Apr 10 '13 at 13:58

4 Answers4

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There are several studies done in the 80's (Hunter & Hunter, 1982), still relevant today, that examined various job predictors and their validity to job performance. Those studies showed that job testing, simulation, cognitive testing and other psychometric testing were much higher in validity, i.e., they predicted job performance better than the others somewhere around a correlation factor of 0.5, than those other predictors such as interviews, experience, education with degrees and certificates. However, they showed that most relied on and valued more those weaker predictors, some of which had a validity near zero, such as experience. I bet most find considering experience as a weak indicator so counter intuitive they would simply dismiss the study.

Follow-on studies showed that increasing the formality and rigor of the interview, with discreet criteria and methods of scoring, multiple interviewers, various types of interviews, increased its validity a bit, but still weak.

So while your question is a bit polling in nature, I think there is evidence out there that suggests most organizations do not have a sophisticated, reliable, and valid selection process.

David Espina
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No.

Because SE won't permit me to answer with three letters, I'll expand.

No, as a PM, my responsibility is to close the project. I am not involved in employee evaluations.

MCW
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  • Oh! I answered this question from the perspective of employee selection, not performance. – David Espina Apr 10 '13 at 12:48
  • Interesting; I'm not involved in employee selection either. Are most PM's involved in employee selection or is that line management. (actually I'm a bad test case, because I'm actually program management, managing projects that manage work.) – MCW Apr 10 '13 at 12:55
  • As PM, no, I don't get involved in who hire whom, but I do get a say as to whom I will bring onto my project...at least to a degree. Sometimes it is forced upon me, sadly. :) – David Espina Apr 10 '13 at 13:01
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My experience has been a bit different from Mark's, as a PM I am often asked to contribute to performance evaluations as I am in a reasonably good position to assess team members from a wide range of functional units.

Every organization that I've worked for has tried to objectively document performance metrics of one type or another that are aligned in some way to organizational goals. That being said, these metrics are used more to support a conclusion already made rather than come to make that conclusion.

Doug B
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Step 1: Did the individual deliver value concurrent with his/her peers?

If yes: Determine if the individual consistently delivered more value than his her peers? {

  If Yes: reward

  If No: Stay the same

}
If no: Determine why not.

This is the framework for evaluations.

Andrew Clear
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