PSY 435 Week 3 Performance Appraisal and Training Example

Rating Crews and Training New Hires: Performance Appraisal and Training Transfer at a Solar Company

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/435: Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Week 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The company, staff and figures are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Hiring the right people is only the first step. Organizations must also judge how well people perform and help them improve. This paper examines Desert Sun Solar's performance appraisal and training systems after its 120 new installers start work and redesigns both using research.

The Problem

Six months after the hiring push, Desert Sun's leaders noticed a puzzle. Crew leads rated ninety-two percent of installers as "exceeds expectations" on the annual form, yet safety observations showed that some installers regularly skipped fall-protection steps and callback rates, return visits to fix problems, varied threefold across crews. New hires had all completed a two-day classroom safety course with high satisfaction ratings, but rooftop audits found no improvement in harness use after the course.

Rating Formats and Errors

The current form uses graphic rating scales, such as "Quality of work" from one to five, with no description of what each number means. Such scales invite rater errors. Leniency, rating everyone high, is common when ratings affect pay and when raters must work closely with those they rate. Halo error, letting one impression color every rating, makes a friendly installer look strong across the board. Recency error weights the last few weeks over the whole year, so a strong June can erase a careless March.

Behaviorally anchored rating scales attach specific behaviors, drawn from the critical incidents collected in the Week 2 job analysis, to each rating level. For safety, a five might read "consistently checks own and coworkers' anchors before stepping onto the roof," and a two "needs reminders to clip in." Anchors make ratings more consistent and more useful for feedback.

Beyond the Form

DeNisi and Murphy (2017) looked back over a hundred years of appraisal studies in one leading applied journal. Early work focused on rating formats and rater errors, with limited gains; later research turned to rater motivation, the social context of appraisal and the purposes ratings serve. They argued that improving how organizations manage performance day to day, through goals, feedback and coaching, matters more than perfecting the annual rating.

At Desert Sun, crew leads rate leniently partly because they work side by side with installers on hot roofs and depend on their goodwill, and partly because low ratings cut raises. A better form will help, but the deeper fix is to separate developmental feedback from pay decisions and to make feedback frequent.

When Feedback Hurts

Kluger and DeNisi (1996) combined over six hundred effect sizes from studies of feedback interventions. On average, feedback improved performance modestly, but in about a third of cases it reduced performance. Feedback that pulled attention toward the person, as in "great job, you're a natural" or "you're sloppy," tended to do worse, while feedback that kept attention on the work and on the next step tended to help.

For crew leads, the implication is concrete: "You're careless" is likely to backfire; "Your anchor was clipped after you stepped on the roof; clip first next time" focuses on the task. The redesign introduces weekly five-minute, task-focused check-ins on the roof.

Telling an installer he is careless puts the spotlight on him; telling him where the clip goes puts it on the anchor.

Why the Safety Course Did Not Transfer

Blume et al. (2010) pooled research on whether trained skills reach the job and found that both the learner and the workplace mattered: brighter, more conscientious and more motivated trainees used more of what they learned, and so did trainees whose supervisors and coworkers backed the new skills. Transfer was stronger for open skills and when it was measured soon after training, and supportive work environments mattered a great deal.

Desert Sun's course taught fall protection in a classroom with slides and a quiz. Installers then returned to crews where some experienced workers skipped steps to save time, and crew leads rarely mentioned safety. With no practice in realistic conditions and little support afterward, the knowledge stayed in the classroom.

Multisource Feedback for Crew Leads

Crew leads themselves need feedback. A short multisource survey, completed twice a year by each lead's installers, peers and manager, would show how leads coach, communicate and support safety. Used for development rather than pay, such feedback can reveal blind spots, such as a lead who believes he explains tasks clearly while his crew reports confusion. Results will go to each lead privately with a coach to help interpret them.

The Training Redesign

A needs analysis, combining audit data, callback records and the job analysis, identified three priorities: fall protection, wiring connection quality and customer communication. Each will be trained with hands-on practice on the mock roof used for the Week 2 work sample, followed by on-roof coaching from designated safety mentors during the first month. Crew leads will be trained to reinforce safe behavior and will be evaluated partly on their crews' safety audits, creating supervisor support.

Evaluating Training

Training will be evaluated at four levels: reactions, with a short survey; learning, with a hands-on skills check; behavior, with unannounced rooftop audits at one and three months; and results, with injury rates and callbacks by crew. Comparing crews trained early with crews trained later provides a rough but useful comparison group.

Connecting the Systems

The new appraisal and training systems feed each other. Anchored ratings and audit data identify individual training needs; training targets those needs; follow-up ratings show whether behavior changed. Separating development from pay reduces leniency and makes the data honest. Over time, the company will also be able to check whether installers who scored well on the Week 2 work sample earn higher anchored ratings, a first step toward validating its selection tools locally.

Conclusion

Desert Sun's lenient ratings and ineffective safety course reflect common problems: vague rating forms, appraisal tied too tightly to pay, feedback aimed at the person and training without practice or support. Research on a century of appraisal, on feedback interventions and on training transfer supports behavior-based ratings, frequent task-focused feedback and hands-on training reinforced on the job, evaluated by behavior and results rather than satisfaction alone.

References

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309352880

DeNisi, A. S., & Murphy, K. R. (2017). Performance appraisal and performance management: 100 years of progress? Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 421-433. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000085

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254