Introduction
Human resources have a great influence on an organization’s development (Christensen, 2005, p. 17-18). One of the important tools that might be employed by HR-managers to improve their subordinates’ effectiveness is a feedback in the form of a performance appraisal. It can be used to tell the employees what exactly they need to do, and how to do it (A handbook for measuring employee performance, n.d., p. 7). Our paper is a summary of an interview with Ms. Deborah Hebert, the Administrative Assistant to the Hospital Director at a city hospital, who has recently received a performance appraisal from her director.
The Summary of the Interview
During the interview, Ms. Hebert, who recently had received a quarterly performance appraisal from her director, expressed her satisfaction with the feedback provided by her reviewer. According to Ms. Hebert, the assessment highlighted both her strengths and weaknesses, and stressed the areas she had improved on.
The performance appraisal was, in general, positive; among other issues, it evaluated Ms. Hebert’s strengths, mentioning her skill in dealing with documents (medical ones in particular) efficiently and without mistakes; highly assessing her successes achieved while communicating with insurance companies; and noting her exceptional performance related to logistics and supplying the hospital with medication and medical equipment. The Administrative Assistant was deemed to be very reliable when it comes to paperwork and written communication.
On the other hand, Ms. Hebert also received some critical remarks on her ability to deal with the hospital’s personnel. The Administrative Assistant was reported to experience problems while working in a team; according to the performance appraisal, she had tended to do a large part of work herself instead of evenly distributing the tasks among other members of her team. Given her meticulous approach to any work she does, the Administrative Assistant had spent too much time on work that should have been done by others, and thus had lagged behind on her other responsibilities a number of times.
The Administrative Assistant was also deemed not to be flexible enough while dealing with the hospital’s stakeholders. Ms. Hebert had failed to persuade two of the stakeholders to provide the hospital with necessary equipment. Even though she had soon been able to compensate for this setback on her own by enlisting the help of some other hospital’s partners, the performance appraisal stressed that this issue required some special attention.
A certain problem concerning time management was also mentioned. The performance appraisal highlighted Ms. Hebert’s exceptional diligence, but pointed out that the Administrative Assistant quite often stays at work after her workday is over. The hospital’s Director emphasized that Ms. Hebert had certainly made some progress on the issue, for her stays at work had became somewhat shorter than before, but they still had not disappeared.
During the interview, Ms. Hebert emphasized that she was pleased to receive a positive performance appraisal and to have her hard work appreciated. She was also glad to see that her endeavors to compensate for her setbacks had been noted. On the other hand, Ms. Hebert, being grateful for the critical remarks, highlighted that she had also expected to receive some more recommendations about improving her performance, as well as feedback from the director on her work with the customers, which, even though it is not Ms. Hebert primal area of responsibilities in this particular hospital, still plays a major role in the institution’s life.
Conclusion
As we have seen from the interview, the Hospital Director’s Administrative Assistant was grateful for the feedback she received in the form of a performance appraisal, at the same time expressing a wish to get more critical remarks about her work. This example allows us to conclude that the performance evaluation can be useful to both stimulate employees to improve their work in future and to show them their mistakes. The fact that Ms. Hebert had expected more critical remarks indicates that workers sometimes want their mistakes to be pointed out to enable them to increase their efficiency. Therefore, a performance appraisal tool should not be ignored while working with human resources.
References
A handbook for measuring employee performance. (n.d.). Web.
Christensen, R. (2005). Roadmap to strategic HR: Turning a great idea into a business reality [Google Books version]. Web.