Job Evaluation Method, Essay Example

My company is a manufacturing company in which the goal of the organization is to produce gaskets for a number of different products and uses throughout the country.  We specifically work to create hydraulic seals, o-rings, and oil seals or gaskets for automotive and any other industries that have a use for these products.  Our company also sells and distributes these products ourselves, effectively eliminating the middle man from the process and keeping our necessary products at a very low cost.  Many of the gaskets we produce are rubber or may contain any number of applicable metals that meet the needs of our customers.  Within this company, I serve as a customer relations representative in the office.  Essentially, we are responsible for creating new orders and ensuring that our orders and both filled and shipped in a timely manner while communicating all stages of the production and shipment processes to the customer.

For this assignment, I interviewed Michael Roland, the head of Human Resources for our office.  He informed me that the office is split up between two different major departments.  The first department is made up of the manufacturing team, or what could be considered the factory workers.  These workers are managed by a manufacturing foreman that oversees the entire production process.  He oversees four assistant foremen that each manages a different aspect of the production process.  Nevertheless, the head foreman consults with the assistant foremen to evaluate each manufacturing employee.  The evaluation process is essentially a Managing by Objectives (MBO) evaluation method.  Each assistant foreman meets with his or her individual teams in order to determine effective objectives that would create individual, team and organizational success.  Each objective needs to be measurable and attainable, according to Roland.  At the time of the yearly evaluations, the head foreman sits down with each assistant foreman and individual employee to go over the detailed MBO objectives and whether they have been attained or not.  In cases that the evaluation shows that objectives were not met, the three individuals attempt to determine why they were not met and how this can be solved for next year’s evaluation.  In the end, this is more of a quantitative evaluation method for this specific part of the company.  Each evaluation is turned in to Michael Roland for processing potential bonuses based on objective achievement.

The second part of the company is the Administrative group.  This group is supervised by one main manager called the Director of Operations.  The D.O. has two assistant managers that oversee the financial (payroll and accounts receivable) and customer relations departments.  The D.O. performs individual performance evaluations for both departments.  This part of the organization is evaluated by a Critical Incident evaluation method.  The assistant managers periodically inform the D.O. of critical positive or negative performances by each employee.  As something positive or negative occurs for an employee, the assistant managers inform the D.O. and then a year-end evaluation is conducted.  This evaluation is not quantitative and does not directly involve annual bonuses.  Instead, if the overall sales increase for the company, the entire administrative part of the company receives a small percentage of bonuses.

Roland mentioned that this was an odd evaluation process for one single organization.  Before working with our company, he stated that he worked with human resources departments for other organizations in which every employee was evaluated based on quantitative criteria that would determine bonuses for all employees, regardless of their department or position within the company.  However, Roland did state that this format has worked very well and effectively motivates each department to improve upon each year’s annual evaluations.  There were very little negative statements made about the evaluation methods and the bulk of the interview was based on describing the key elements of how the evaluations are performed, describing the individual evaluation methods, and who is responsible for performing the evaluations.  Roland oversees the entire evaluation process and is responsible for reporting to the Vice President of Operations for bonuses and areas of strengths and opportunities for each department to improve upon.