quick go couriers assignement

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For Academic Purpose Only

Performance Management & Appraisal System – Gaurav Vatsa

Quick-Go Couriers

Quick-Go Couriers is a metro-city-based mid-sized firm that employs 600 people in its rapidly

growing commercial parcel collection and distribution business, which it has operated successfully

throughout India since the firm’s establishment seven years ago. The firm has separate departments

covering customer service, parcel collection and distribution, vehicle maintenance, accounts, legal,

marketing and human resources. Most of its line employees and supervisors work in customer call

centres, distribution centres and vehicle maintenance facilities located strategically across the

country. The firm could best be described as having a cost-defender competitive strategy, a

mechanistic organisational structure and a tradition management culture.

Kaushik, Quick-Go’s human resources manager, is proud of his and the firm’s achievements.

When it comes to people management, Kaushik ’s approach is down-to-earth and pragmatic.

Previously a despatch driver himself, Kaushik has little time for managers who spend their time

reading the latest management books, chasing university degrees or agonising about the options for

‘best practice’ people management. Kaushik also believes in ‘buying’ rather than ‘building’ skilled

staff. In-house training and development, he says, is just a waste of everyone’s time – and of the

firm’s money.

He is especially proud of the one-page form that he has designed for use in the firm’s once-

a-year performance assessment round. The form, which is reproduced below, is applied to all of

Quick-Go’s non-managerial employees, including call centre staff, parcel despatch people, drivers,

vehicle maintenance workers and administration staff. The form is straightforward and can be

completed in just a few minutes, so that supervisors are not tied down in unproductive paperwork.

The assessment outcomes are then used to determine which employees will receive the Rs.25,000

annual bonus that the firm pays to its best performers and which employees will be dismissed.

Under Kaushik’s system, the top 20 per cent of employees get the bonus and the bottom 10 per cent

are ‘let go’.

But this year’s performance assessment round did not go as smoothly as Kaushik might have

hoped. This year, for the first time, three employees, all known to each other and all recruited from

the same competitor firm less than eighteen months before, challenged the accuracy of their

assessments, wrote a letter of complaint to the managing director, and threatened legal action

unless changes were made to the way in which they and their fellow employees are assessed.

To Kaushik’s astonishment, the problem, they argued, lay in the form itself. Kaushik’s initial

inclination was to dismiss the complaints as nothing more than sour grapes, since none of the

complainants has made it into the bonus cut. Then, feeling that his integrity had been challenged, he

decided to commission a human resources consulting firm to confirm the worth of his assessment

form.

The firm he chooses is none other than the one for which you happen to work and for which you

are the resident expert on performance management systems. So the task of providing an expert

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opinion on Kaushik’s form falls naturally to you. Specifically, you agree to provide brief (200–400

word) written responses to each of the following four questions:

1. What are the specific type or types of performance management technique(s) present in

the instrument?

2. What are the instrument’s main strengths?

3. Are there any features in the instrument that may compromise assessment validity,

reliability and felt-fairness?

4. Are there any ways in which the instrument, and the approach to performance

management that it reveals, might be improved?

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Quick-Go COURIERS

ANNUAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT FORM

Name:

Position:

Branch & Division:

Instructions: Draw a circle around the applicable number for each question.

1. Quantity of work is the amount of work an individual does in a working day.

2. Accuracy is the correctness of work duties performed.

1 2 3 4 5

Makes frequent

errors

Careless;

makes

recurrent

errors

Usually

accurate;

makes only

average number

of mistakes

Requires little

supervision; is

exact & precise

most of the time

Requires

absolute

minimum of

supervision;

almost always

accurate

3. Alertness is the ability to grasp instructions, to meet changing conditions and to resolve

unexpected problems

1 2 3 4 5

Slow to catch

on

Requires more

than average

instruction and

explanation

Grasps

instructions

with average

ability

Usually quick

to learn and

understand

Exceptionally

keen and alert

4. Respect and courtesy, the key to making his/her job opportunities.

1 2 3 4 5

Does not meet

minimum

requirement

Does just enough

to get

By

Volume of work is

satisfactory

Very industrious;

does more

than required

Superior work

production

record

1 2 3 4 5

Blunt,

discourteous

antagonistic

Sometimes

tactless

Agreeable and

pleasant

Very polite

and willing to

help

Inspiring to

others in being

courteous and

pleasant

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5. How mentally flexible is this person in his/her thoughts and approach to any presented task?

6. Dependability is the ability to do required jobs well with minimum of supervision.

7. How readily does this person offer to help out by doing that which is apart from his/her own

job?

8. What is your appraisal for this person’s overall performance in the past 12 months?

9. Attendance (state problems if any)

Rank order of this employee in this department: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Total number of employees: . . . . . . . . . . .

Rated by

Name: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Signature: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

Date: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 3 4 5

Rigid Average Flexible

1 2 3 4 5

Requires close

supervision; is

unreliable

Requires

prompting

Sometimes

Usually takes care

of necessary tasks

with reasonable

promptness

Requires little

supervision.

Is reliable

Requires absolute

minimum

supervision

1 2 3 4 5

Resists Normal Readily

1 2 3 4 5

Poor Below Average Average Above Average Excellent

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