Team Building and Conflict Management

course
by Rashmi Mehrotra

Appraisal Surprise for a Fresher

Karan, a fresh post graduate of Indian institute of Technology (IIT),

started his career with a top notch semiconductor MNC Company
called KNTC Corporation as member technical staff in 2001. KNTC had
offices all across the globe with over 40000 employees world-wide at
that time. Karan joined along with six other fresh graduates from
various premier institutes. Though he had couple of other offers during
the dot-com boom, he chose KNTC for better prospects and global
exposure. Karan and a few other fresh graduates got into FSO division
in KNTC, which had been acquired by KNTC couple of years ago.

The FSO division had a policy that fresh graduates on joining, had to
work on testing of its products for first 3 to 6 months, this was with the
objective to help the freshers understand the products better. Thus,
Karan got his first assignment as a tester. He was in a testing team for
his first 3 months. As part of this project he worked with a US test team
and since there was no local test team, he was the only Indian in the
team. The test team reported to Suman, who was the Test manager,
she was located in Bangalore office. Karan got a lot of appreciation
from his US team lead for speedy execution of tests and finding a
couple of bugs. As test manager, Suman was aware about Karan’s
contribution.

Soon, Karan’s training period of 3 months came to an end. At the end

of this period, every new hire undergoes a 3 day orientation
program, where company policies, including appraisal process were
explained to the new hires. Karan and other fresh graduates attended
this program. During this program, Karan learnt about KNTC’s ranking
and rating appraisal method with 360 degree feedback. Karan also
learnt that employee should have one-on-one meetings with their
immediate managers at least once in a month to get feedback and
raise concerns, if any.

After successful completion of the training period (3 months), Karan

got the opportunity to move to a different development team. In this
new team, he reported to Siva. As this was his first development
assignment, Karan was handed a maintenance project which was very
complex and buggy. This module was earlier being handled by
Anil who had also written a good part of the code. Thus, Anil became
mentor to Karan. Karan soon discovered the software to have a lot of
problems and bugs. Karan consulted Anil for each and every bug fix for
discussions and guidance. Karan tried to be a good communicator and
made sure he kept both Anil & Siva updated with the status. Karan also
tried to have one-on-one meetings with his manager Siva regularly
(once in a month).

During the initial 6 months, Karan was also involved in one more new
development project, where he worked with Vivek. This was in addition
to the existing maintenance module that Karan had been working on.
Karan managed the extra load well and worked hard on both projects.
He also developed a good rapport with other team members including
Vivek.

As part of company policy, 6 months after he joined (probation period),

the company regularised Karan’s services after a brief review. He had
got good review comments from his manager, Siva.

During this time Suman had been promoted to Director of software

team, FSO division.

Soon after Karan had completed about eight months in the

organization, there was a re-structuring in the company, his new
manager was now Sunil. Sunil had been working as a developer in the
US office and had relocated as First line manager to India for the first
time. This was a promotion for Sunil based upon his good
performances and he thought rather highly of himself. As a best
practice, Karan did his best to continue the one-one-one meetings with
his new manager every month, although sometimes Sunil was not
available. Overall, in all his interactions, Karan got good feedback on
his performance.

KNTC had a policy where the employee performance is reviewed at

mid-year for pay adjustment (i.e.market adjustment), promotions and
giving alarm to low performers.

As time passed, the appraisal process started and according to KNTC’s

policy that each employee had to submit 3 names with whom they had
worked or had close interactions with respect to work for their 360
degree feedback. Karan had given the names of Anil, Vivek and Anand
for his 360 degree feedback. Karan had interacted with Anand (a peer)
during the year, in the course of fixing intra-module issues.
Just a month before handing over the ranking, rating and pay raise
letter to employees, Karan’s manager Sunil and his Director, Suman,
had a meeting and conveyed to Karan that he was one of the low
performers! Karan was in shock as Sunil’s feedback was totally
opposite of what had been said in earlier one-on-one meetings. Karan
learnt that the manager had given the rating based on negative 360
feedback from his peer Anil. Anil, it seemed, had expressed concerned
about lack of independent working by Karan, i.e., that Karan used to
consult him too frequently. Karan managed to get access to the 360
feedback given by Vivek and Anand, where he did not see any
negative comments except few lines in areas of development which
was a compulsory section to be filled.

Karan felt greatly demotivated and frustrated over the unfair rating.
Luckily, KNTC had a policy that the employee can challenge the
manager’s decision if he feels injustice. Karan challenged manager’s
decision and had repeated meetings with the Director, HR and group
head. Meanwhile, Director Suman had opted for a new position inside
KNTC and it was not easy to get access to her for clarifications, nor was
she concerned about Karan’s problems. A new director, Mohan, was
appointed and Karan shared all details of the past year with him. The
new Director requested inputs from all of Karan’s managers and also
went through his earlier review comments.

One fine day, Mohan, called Karan to his office and conveyed to him
that manager Sunil had made a mistake and had not followed the
evaluation process properly and he accepted the mistake made. Karan
got a pay rise 10% on par with his colleagues in mid- year. Later, Karan
came to know that his manager had compared him with engineers and
senior engineers with 3 to 5 year experience rather than fresh
engineers who had joined with him, though all were working in same
team. The KNTC appraisal system clearly talks about the buckets
system, wherein employees are put in appropriate buckets according
to their experience level for performance comparison.

Mohan went on to work closely with the HR department to analyse the

gaps in processes and work out solutions to ensure such mistakes do
not happen.

Karan soon moved into a new project with a new manager, he settled
down and continue to work for KNTC.

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360 Degree feedback format used at KNTC

Appraisee Name ________________ Date _______________

Appraisal Period ________________

Feedback respondent name __________________

Relationship of respondent to appraisee : Subordinate/Peer/Superior

( tick the appropriate one)

State 3 major 1. Examples

accomplishments of 2.
the individual 3.
List the strengths of 1. Examples
the Individual 2.

List areas of 1. Examples

development( at least 2.
one)

Any additional comments ____________________________________________

Signature____________________
Organisation structure

Director FSO

First level line First level line First level line

manager manager manager
1 2 (test mgr)

Senior Member Senior Member

Senior Member
Technical Staff 1 Technical Staff 1
Technical Staff 1

Senior Member Senior Member Senior Member

Technical Staff 2 Technical Staff 2 Technical Staff 2

Member Technical Member Technical

Member Technical
Staff Staff
Staff 1
(fresher)

Member Technical
Staff 2
(fresher)
Case Analysis

The above case revolves around the dynamic nature of the

organization, wherein engineers get allotted to multiple projects and
teams during the course of the year, as per organization needs and
priorities. The role of the Manager is always crucial, both ensuring
timely deliverables as per company targets/goals and also for
mentoring, developing and driving the team entrusted to him. Several
issues and gaps have come to light which led to the undesirable result
of demotivating a good resource and loss of valuable company time in
the course of sorting things out.
A summary of issues is as follows -

Issues :

1. As we can see in the sequence of events there were too many

and too frequent changes in reporting structure. Although the
engineer Karan did not seem to have any issue with the same,
the organisation’s tracking and record management may not
have been suitably robust.
2. The process of Transfer reviews was possibly not followed,
wherein as part of the handover the old manager has to do a
review with employee and handover the same to new manager.
3. Sunil was also new to the management role. Formal training of
managers with regards to the appraisal process and 360 degree
feedback mechanism does not seem to be happening.
4. Possibly the concerned manager had an insensitive or ‘I-know-it-
all’ attitude towards the appraisal process. Maybe he was lacking
in maturity.
5. It appears that the current manager (Sunil) did not take feedback
from previous managers. He should also have taken inputs from
the employee’s personal file wherein the probation period review
feedback would be recorded.
6. If frequent consultation or lack of independent working was a
concern to the mentor(Anil), he should have escalated this to the
manager during the early stages only, instead of waiting for the
year end to raise the point.
7. Manager or mentor did not set any expectations for Karan on
frequency of consultations.
8. There was no formal process for freshers to have written Key
Result Areas(KRAs) with targets that are measurable and
specific.
9. As a fresher Karan felt that he should share maximum
information (by consultation) and confirm his thoughts/approach
so as not to make any mistake in the initial stages.
 10. Though Suman, the director, was aware about Karan’s
contribution (she had been his manager during the training
period), she was not sufficiently involved in the assessment.
11. Sunil made mistakes by (i) not taking 360 degree feedback
properly and (ii) not putting Karan in the correct ‘bucket’ for
comparison with peers. The 360 degree feedback is a powerful
tool and needs lot of maturity for analysis and also it needs
proper understanding to write feedback through this tool. For
instance, if ‘–ve’ strength is observed only once during the year,
it’s not appropriate to mention it there. Sunil should have
thought the from the fresher’s view before considering frequent
consultation as an issue.
12. Due to the mistake or incompetence of his manager Karan had to
suffer a lot and went through emotional trauma & frustration to
attain his reasonable appraisal.
13. Overall the impact was undesirable with respect to Karan's time
investment, and emotions. A lot of time and effort to review and
rectify the same was also put in by the Director, subsequently…
which was an unnecessary overhead had things been done right
in the first place.

Possible Solutions

Firstly, a company of the size and stature of KNTC would be expected

to have a good, well-established appraisal system. The 360 degree
appraisal process involves the appraisee receiving feedback from
people (named or anonymous) whose views are considered helpful and
relevant. The feedback is typically provided on a form showing job
skills/abilities/attitudinal/behavioural criteria and some sort of scoring
or value judgement system. The appraisee should also assess
themselves using the same feedback instrument or form. The 360
degree respondents can be the appraisee's peers, up-line
managers/execs, subordinate staff, team members, other staff,
customers, suppliers - anyone who comes into frequent contact with
the appraise. As an organization, it can provide a framework under
which each employee can be appraised in an unbiased manner.
However, at the end of the day it is used by different kind of people
within organization. Mistakes may happen. The organization should
have some checks in place to reduce the probability of the ineffective
handling of the processes and procedures. In-order to avoid these
types of issues in future, organization must provide timely training to
supervisors and managers for proper rating.
Secondly, comments should be reviewed by two level managers [here,
Director FSO along with immediate mgr] to bring more accuracy and
balance into the system.

Thirdly, all appraisal concerns should be addressed by committee [by

ombudsman] who are totally independent so that results are without
bias.

Fourthly, for effective appraisal system, the employee, should broadly

classify his objectives and specify measurement criteria at the start of
tenure or year and the same should be approved by his first line
manager. During mid-term or full year, employee & manager can
evaluate the performance against these given measurement criteria.
Thus manager would have enough data to compare and provide a
logical rating. (along with the 360 degree feedback).

Also, freshers should be given training on communications with

peers/colleagues and also given guidance during initial month with
regards expectations from them.

Leadership , team-building and mentoring trainings should be part of

the company strategy for developing good managers. It should be
mandatory for all new managers should undergo such trainings, as well
as training on the appraisal processes and 360 degree concepts.

Finally, research suggests that 360-degree feedback and performance

appraisals aim at different outcomes, and that both 360-degree
feedback and traditional performance appraisals should be used
together in evaluating overall performance.

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