7OUTSOURCE

Executive summary

The aim of this project was to know effectiveness of present performance appraisal system at JD sports. To accomplish this aim numbers of other issues like carrier planning, reward system, communication between employees and managers, training and development has been looked at form employees’ and organization’s perspective.

The project has been divided in to six chapters. Chapter one the introduction to the project when chapter two explained what is performance appraisal? What are the benefits of performance appraisal system? What are the purpose of performance appraisal system?, what are the limitation of performance appraisal system? And what are different methods of performance appraisal? Chapter three concerned with methodology it explain which strategy was chosen to collect the data. Chapter four explain the result of research and in chapter five it has been discussed.

The finding revealed that a JD sport has limited use of performance appraisal. It could be became an effective tool for organization and employees. JD sports need to elaborate some of the part of their present performance appraisal system.

In light of a number of recommendations were made, include- provide training for every employee, more concentrate on performance gap, future objectives of employees etc.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The main aim of this project is to identify the effective system of performance appraisal at JD sports. Performance management is basically concerned with performance improvement in order to achieve organization team and individual effectiveness. The word ‘Organization’ as stated by Lawson (1995) means to get the right thing done successfully. Secondly performance management is concerned with employee development. Thirdly, performance management is concerned with satisfying the needs and expectations of all organizations stakeholders. The author has looked at the present performance appraisal system at JD sports from the perspective of employees as well as the management. It will give a broad vision what the employee expects from management and how the management reacts on employees’ needs. To accomplish the main aim, a number of other issues like, career planning, reward system, communication between management and employee, training and development, etc. will be looked into.

History of JD sports

The first JD sports shop was opened in Bury, Lancashire in December 1981, named after the owners’ John Wardle and David Makin. The first big development in the business came after couple of years in spring 1983, when JD sports opened a shop in the Arndale Centre, Manchester. Things began to move on with a further two shops in Sheffield and Liverpool as the JD sports business began to build. In the mid 80s, company sales broke through the £3 million mark. This was undoubtedly helped by the growth of international sports brands, a growth that continued through the late eighties, and paralleled the success of JD sports.

By 1990 JD sports reputation for innovation in the sports retail business was building monument and the world cup gave the whole sports retail industry a massive boost when England reached the semi finals.

The JD sports brand recognition was building up and so were the number of shops. In 1995 JD sports had over 50 stores and were becoming a leader in its own area: Sports fashion.

In October 1996 with floatation on the London stock exchange the company JD sports became John David Sports plc, but the name above the store remained the same. By 2000 JD sports proudly stood at the top where it belongs as the UK’s number one sports fashion retailer. In 2002 the parent company changed its name to The John David Group Plc and acquired the first sports chain of UK store and began converting them to John David group. There are now over 300 JD sports stores in the UK.

Limitation

As is the case with all other primary research works, there are several limitations of this piece of work. The limitations of any research work do influence the methodology and the outcomes of the work. Time constraint, financial limitations and methodology limitations are the three types of limitations that affect this research. Among these, the most vital limitation is time constraint. Two months’ time is not enough to carry out any primary research work. Sufficient time should be provided to carry out data collection and data analysis up to a satisfactory mark to ensure it has minimum number of flaws and research gap.

Another major limitation is financial limitation. The cost involved in carrying out any primary research is quite high. Therefore, due to the time constraint and financial limitation, it was not possible to access the management of the stores located far away.

Moreover, there is a possibility that the responses received from the staff and the management of JD Sports are biased in some or the other way. It is possible that they might not have revealed some of the internal information or have given some incorrect information because of the risk that it was to be published in this paper. There is no other way to check the reliability of the data provided, except believing it to be true.

Rationale for selecting topic

Performance appraisal is today a central element in strategic human resource management (HRM). The purpose of performance appraisal is to improve the organization’s performance through the enhanced performance of individual. Here, it became very important that the effectiveness of performance appraisal system is beneficial to the organization as well as the employees.

Researcher found it very interesting to investigate and write about the important issues of HRM - effectiveness of performance appraisal at JD sports. The company follows traditional method of performance appraisal and appraises its employee every year.

For employees, performance appraisal evaluates their performance and shows their strength and weakness. On the basis of this, it provides a number of benefits like, reward, promotion, increment in the pay, career planning, motivation, job design, job rotation and other incentives. The performance appraisal system has a positive effect on company’s overall performance (Williams 1991).

As stated above, positive performance appraisal brings crucial advantage to the organization. It exhibits correct strategy of recruitment and selection, training and development and career planning. Performance appraisal feedback shows the staff is a valuable asset that brings trust and clear communication between the employees and the employer.

Performance Appraisal system:

Dessler, G (2000) defines performance appraisal as “evaluating an employee’s current and/or past performance relative to his or her performance standers.” So employees and managers both should be aware of what the actual performance standards are? Also, managers should provide feedback to his/her employees about their performance. The aim of effective performance system is to recognize the
weakness and improve the performance of the individuals as well as the organization.

According to Garry dessler (2000) the performance appraisal process itself contains three steps: define the job, appraise performance, and provide feedback:

- Define the job means making sure that you and your subordinate agree on his or her duties and job standards.

- Appraise the performance means comparing your employee’s actual performance with his or her standards, which have been set.

- Provide feedback, it gives result of his or her performance and gives guidelines to any development required.

CHAPTER TWO

Literature review

Performance appraisal system is focused in depth in this section. The various definitions of performance appraisal will lead towards the answer of the questions why performance appraisal is necessary; and what are benefits and problems linked to performance appraisal. Different performance appraisal methods will also be discussed in this chapter. Firstly, in this chapter, the meaning of performance will be explained. An explanation of the term performance management will follow the definition of performance, and lastly, performance appraisal system will be discussed in detail.

The Oxford English dictionary (2003) defines performance as: “The accomplishment, execution, carrying out, working out of anything ordered or undertaken.” Here, it gives broad meaning of the word that basically performance is a task, which is done to fulfill one’s target or goal.

Another definition of performance can be referred from Bernadin et al (1995). According to them “performance is defined as the outcomes of work because they provide the strongest linkage to the strategic goal of the organization, customer satisfaction and economic contributions.” Evaluating this definition, the term ‘performance’ means managing employees’ behavior and the outcomes related to the organization’s strategic goals.

In the words of Lawson (1995) “Performance management is basically concerned with performance improvement in order to achieve organization, team and individual effectiveness.” This definition gives an outline of the subject that focuses the improvement or development of the individuals.

A performance management process or system involves a series of processes designed to manage employee performance. It includes work and job design, reward, structures the selection of people, training and induction of people the assessment of employees.

Performance appraisal is only a part of performance management system.

Neo et al (2003) define performance appraisal as “it is the process through which an organization gets information on how well an employee is doing his or her job.” It is very straightforward definition, which highlights the subject.

Gary Dessler (2005) in his book says, “Performance appraisal is evaluating an employee’s current and/or past performance relative to his or performance standards.” This is depths definition, which emphasises on employees’ performance standards that have been set by the organization.

Latham et al (1981& 1982) define performance appraisal system in a comprehensive way. In their words “Performance appraisal is a formal structured system of measuring, evaluating and influencing an employee’s job-related attributes, behavior and outcomes to discover what level is he or she presently performing on the job: - that how productive the employees are and whether they can perform more effectively in future.” It is dynamic and multidimensional process. This definition gives a broad view of the performance of employees and their effectiveness, which lead to training, or promotion of the employees.

Performance appraisal is defined as a structured formal interaction between a subordinate and supervisor that usually take in the form of the periodic interview (annual or semi-annual) in which performance of subordinate is examined as well as opportunities are provided for improvement and skill development.

In the definition by Garry Dessler evaluates the current and/or past performance of employees where Latham et al and the website article go further giving broad view of appraising employee’s performance by giving feedback, training and reward. They more concentrate on development of employee rather than just considering the current or past performance against its performance standards.

According to Griffts et al “performance appraisal can be defined as a process that identifies, evaluates and develops employees’ performance to meet employee and organizational goals. It is not a process that happens once a year or every six months but it is the one that is carried out every day.” The appraisal identifies performance through observation and the collection of performance-based information evaluates this performance against a set of criteria or indicates and develops performance problems providing training and development activities and establishing higher goals.

Summary

Different authors give their view on performance appraisal. Garry Dessler defines performance appraisal as assessment of employee, where as Griffits et al define it as effective tool of improving performance of employee and organization’s performance. These different definitions will help to look effectiveness of current performance appraisal system at JD sports.

Why Performance appraisal is necessary?

Kramar, McGraw, Schuler(1997) explain two main purposes of performance appraisal from organization’s perspective. The first purpose is to develop an individual while the second purpose is to evaluate an individual.

As per the above definition provided by Griffits et al, performance appraisal is also considered as an effective tool of development. Development could be of various types: Research, feedback, management, and career development, human resource planning, performance improvement and communication. Here, Garry Dessler pointed out the evaluation of individual performance. Kramar’s evaluation purpose included decision on payment, promotion, demotion, retrenchment and termination.

Garry Dessler(2005) identified a number of purposes of performance appraisal. First, the employers translate specific strategic goals as the employee goals and carry out periodic review of employees’ performance. Second, the appraisal lets the boss and subordinates develop a plan for correcting any deficiencies. Third, the feedback exhibits strengths and weakness of the employees, which provides his or her career opportunities. Fourth, performance appraisal always affects the employees’ salary increment and promotion decisions.

Martin Fisher (1995) identified some of key objectives of performance appraisal from the organization’s point of view. According to him, performance appraisal helps in reviewing past performance, in assessing training needs, in developing individuals, in auditing the skills within an organization, in setting targets for future performance and finally, in identifying potential for promotion.

These are the positive objectives of performance appraisal. Further, he also explains some of negative opinions of performance appraisal from the employees’ side. Sometimes, the employees believe that it is barrier to their promotion and gives ground for disciplinary. So Fisher explains that performance appraisal should have a specific objective related to the organization’s strategy.

The National Australia group ltd expresses the employees’ viewpoint, as stated below, towards the performance appraisal regarding their expectations.

- When performance is assessed, it needs to be as objective as possible.

- An individual needs to be offered encouragement and support to perform well.

- An individual should be trained so it gives correct result of strategic goals.

- One should get enough time to judge him before appraisal

- Appraisal system should be fair to everyone.

- Personnel should receive feedback from manager on job performance and problem areas.

There are two main purposes of performance appraisal; 1) to develop an evaluation system and 2) to develop a feedback system (accessed 30th March 2005).

The main focus of evaluation system is to identify performance gap (if any). This gap is the short fall that occurs when performance does not meet the standards set by the organization as acceptable.

Second, the main aim of the feedback system is to inform the employee about the quality of his or her performance. However, the information flow is not exclusively one way. The appraisal also receives feedback from the employees about job problem etc.

When examined the effectiveness of performance appraisal system, we need to look at it from the viewpoint of an employee as well as an organization.

Employee viewpoint

When employees look at the positive aspect of performance appraisal they would like to be responsible to fulfill the organization goals. Moreover, they also expect required training if there is any performance gap. If employees are able to meet the standards they would definitely look for some or the other reward or promotion.

Organization viewpoint

From an organization’s viewpoint, one of the most important reasons for having a system of performance appraisal is to establish and up hold the principles of accountability.

What are Benefits of performance appraisal?

An effective performance appraisal scheme offers a number of opportunities and identifies existing problems in an organization. It also encourages employees to perform better towards the organization goals, which lead to a number of benefits to the organization, as well as the employees.

Martin Fisher discovers a number of benefits of a successful performance appraisal scheme from an organization’s perspective as well as employees’ perspective.

Organizations’ perspective:

Following points can be highlighted from an organization’s point of view:

1. Improved performance throughout the organization due to: -

- More effective communication of organization objective and values.

- Increase the sense of cohesiveness and loyalty.

- Improve relation between managers and staff

- Managers who are better equipped to use their leadership skill and to motivate and develop their staff.

2. Improve overview of the tasks performed by each member of staff.

3. Identification of idea for improvement.

4. Expectation & long-term view can be developed.

5. Training & development needs identified more clearly.

6. A culture of continuous improvement & success can be created & maintained.

7. People with potential can be identified and career development plans formulated to

8. Cater for future staff requirements.

9. The message is conveyed that people are valued.

Employees’ Perspective:

Following points can be highlighted from an employee’s point of view:

1. Increase motivation

2. Increase job satisfactions

3. Increase sense of personal valued

4. A clear understanding of what is expected & what needs to be done to meet expectations.

5. The Opportunity to discuss work problems & they can be overcome.

6. The Opportunity to discuss aspirations & any guidance, support or training need to fulfill these aspirations.

7. Improve working relationship with the manager.

As stated by the American Compensation Association (1996), from the point on view of organization, it is important to develop performance management on the basis of open, honest, positive, two-way communication between supervisor and employee throughout the period. This means instant feedback to team or individual on the things they have done well or not so well. If the people can provide with the information they need to monitor their own performance so much the better. The aim is to provide intrinsic motivation to identify their strength and overcome to their weakness. It also provides information for human resource planning, to assist succession planning, to determine suitability of promotion for particular types of employment and training.

Appraisal offers a valuable opportunity to focus on work activities and goals, to identify and correct existing problems, and to encourage better future performance. Thus the performance of the whole organization is enhanced. Almost universally, where performance appraisal is conducted properly, both supervisors and subordinates have reported the experience as beneficial and positive.

Motivation and Satisfaction: - Performance appraisal creates two kinds of effects on employee, positive and negative. When performance appraisal give reorganization to employee for work and effort, it will create positive impact and individual will be motivated and the power of social reorganization as an incentive has been long noted. The recognition of individual is greater strength to reduce absenteeism and turnover rates.

Training and development: - Performance appraisal offers excellent opportunities perhaps the best that will ever occur for a supervisor and subordinates to recognize and agree upon individual training and development needs. Performance appraisal can make the need for training more pressing and relevant by linking it clearly to performance out comes and future career planning.

Recruitment and induction: - performance data reflects the succession of organization’s recruitment and induction practices. Example, how well are the employee performing who were hired in last two year? Appraisal data can be used to monitor the effectiveness of changes in recruitment strategies it is possible to assess whether the work force is improving, staying steady or declining.

Employee evolution: - though often understated or even denied, evolution is a legitimate and major objective of performance appraisal. But the need to evaluate (i.e. judge) is also an ongoing source of tension, since evaluation and developmental priorities appear to frequently clash yet its most basic level; performance appraisal is the process of examine and evaluating the performance of an individual.

Problems with performance appraisal

Where there are many benefits of performance appraisal, there are many problems linked to it:

“Management is institutionally empowered to determine and/or regulate certain aspect of action of others” Wilmot (1984).

According to Barbara toweleny (1993) performance appraisal is defined as a managerial activity “The provision of data design to ensure that resource are used efficiently in accomplishing organizational objective the role of appraisers is structured through setting the agenda, Management is inextricably linked to control over the labor process.”

Barbara toweleny further considers performance appraisal to operate as a form of Panepticon.

The process performance appraisal takes this form because it combines hierarchy, unilateral observation & a normalizing judgment. Anonymous and continuous surveillance are methods of articulating a monitoring role.

Beard well & Holden (1997) stated that appraisal scheme is met by many employees with distrust, suspicion and fear. For example, (Kinnie &Lowe’s) Study of PRP argues, “People are very apprehensive about their appraisal. Most people working on the shop floor have probably never come out of any formal taste they have taken very well they thus feel they have everything to fear and nothing to gain- This is at the heart of their disquiet about whole system and why in principal m they infinitely prefer a collective system for security. They also fear they will have the wool pulled over their eyes, and are not skilled negotiators.” Thus, there is a real need for employee to be involved completely in appraisal process and objective- setting process. The appraisal scheme should be setup in the atmosphere of openness with agreement between management, employee and employee representatives (Grayson, 1984) as quoted by Bear well and Holden (1997).

Carlton and Sloman (1992). A review of the appraisal system in merchant bank revealed the following problems: -

Manager was hostile to what they perceived as bureaucracy & disliked from filling.

Rating linked to pay were disliked as one line manager said performance appraisal is a load of rubbish you decide on the rating you want to put in the box & then Makeup a few words of narrative in other section to justify it.

Rating drift occurred. Manager tended to overrate people because of the link between appraisal and pay. As one manager commented when challenge “I know that performance did not justify the rating but I thought it would de- motivate him if I marked him down.”

The separation of appraisal & pay decision was considered to be impossible because manager only fills in one from & if they do not perceive a clerk link salary they will not do it.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL BIAS: -

The completion of performance appraisal can be very subjective rather than objective this can result in biasness, meaning that employees are not fairly evaluated.

The purpose of appraisal is to ensure that employees receive fair and honest assessment of their performance over the past year, and to develop a plan to improve their effectiveness in the future. But the reported by Institute of manpower & Equal opportunity commission, appraisal were found to be riddled with person bias, For example assertiveness was valued more in men than women.

This is important to the research in biasness because JD Sports has an ethnic/racial mixture of staff. It will be carefully looked at while conducting the research.

Methods of appraising performance

Performance appraisal can be measure in many different methods. According to Kramar, McGraw, and Schuler (1997) there are six major approaches to measure performance appraisal: Comparative standards, absolute standards, objective-based, direct or objective indices, accomplishment records, mean-based.

Comparative standards: In comparative standards there are several ways to accomplish comparative standards like: straight ranking, the superior list the subordinates in order from best to worst on the basis of overall performance. Alternative ranking is to put the best subordinate at the head of the list and the worst subordinates at bottom. Pair comparison method each subordinate is compared to every other two at a time. Forced distribution methods are used because the superior must assign only a certain proportion of subordinates to each of several categories on each factor.

Absolute standards approach: It allows superior to evaluate each subordinate’s performance independent of the other subordinates and often on several dimension of performance. These approaches can take either a qualities or quantative form.

The qualitative forms of performance appraisal are the narrative essay, the critical incidents form, weighted checklist and the forced choice form.

The quantitative forms are graphic rating scale, behaviourally anchored rating scale and the behavioural observation scale.

Objective-based approaches : The two most common types of out put performance measuring system for managerial employee are management by objective and responsibility centres.

Management by objective: It involves setting specific measurable goals with each employee and then periodically reviewing the progress made.

Responsibility centres: Under this approach profit, cost or revenues centres are established and the performance of the managers of those centres is evaluated in relation to one or a combination of the criteria.

Direct index approach : This approach measures subordinates performance by objective, impersonal criteria such as productivity, absenteeism and turn over. For example a manager’s performance may be evaluated by the number of employees working for him or her who resigns or by the absenteeism rate of that manager’s employees.

Accomplishment records : Accomplishment records suitable for professionals who claim “my record speaks for its self’ or who claim they are unable to write standards for their job because every day is different

Means-based approach : The means-based approach to performance appraisal focuses on the way in which individual achieve performance out comes.

CHAPTER THREE

Methodology

Research methods should be simple effective and efficient in concern with time and money.

To analyse performance appraisal at JD sports it is more appealing to carry out a qualitative research rather than a quantitative one. The objective of qualitative research is to gain qualitative understanding of the underlying reason and motivation of issue in hand. The procedures of qualitative research are classified either as direct or indirect.

According to business project manual of Sunderland university, qualitative research aims to explore meaning, understanding and experience by looking at how people view their world, emphasis the process of how things occur, it does not start with a theory and proceed to some kind of test but rather allows the researcher, the data is not structured before collection as a questionnaires, but rather takes the from of people’s description of views or feelings.

To collect qualitative data, questionnaires distributed among mangers and employees at JD sports. Here, we took our sample size 20 which include manages and employees from different store. In managers we distributed the questionnaires to the store mangers and area mangers because they can only appraise to their employee while in employee we include the assistant managers, supervisors and sales assistant. And they do not have authority to appraise their employee.

The researcher has focused effectiveness of performance appraisal system from the prospective of management as well as employees. He also had chance to speak to some of employees and mangers, which made even clear why people feel and how they do.

Questionnaire is easiest way of collecting data. They are quite economical interim of materials, money and time as compared to the research data they provide and are also easier to arrange, than say, personal interviews (Denscomble, M, 2003, pg 159). More over they allow anonymity, which can encourage frankness, when sensitive area are involved (Robson, C. 2002 pg.234). Open and close end questions have been used. The closed end questions response can be given in yes or no. Multiple-choice questions have also been used where any one appropriate answer has to be chosen. While answers to the opened ended questions can be given in one or two lines. The aim of open questions is to give opinion, feeling, and accurate information.

Here, Non-probability sampling methods have been chosen, because on the bases of the results any mathematical calculations are not going to be made. As a non-probability type has different methods we have used convenience sampling and purposive methods.

According to Sunderland University manual Convenience sampling methods means, to choose most easy and available members of population, such as family, friends and neighbours and work colleagues.

Under the purposive sampling method accurate information through targeted member of populations can be obtained, as employees of JD spots who were working more than a year and who have already been involved in the performance appraisal system are taken into consideration. JD spots follows standard graphic rating performance appraisal methods. They conduct performance appraisal every one year.

The researcher takes the help of Microsoft excel to exhibit his result. The result of close end questions will be presented in the form of graphs, charts and diagrams, while open-ended questions are quite difficult to present so the results to those will be presented in positive or negative form.

CHAPTER FOUR

The result of research

In this section the result of research has been presented.

As mentioned in the methodology a sample size of 20 was chose from managers and employees of JD sports. The researcher has taken 10 managers and 10 employees from different branches of JD sports.

The main aim of this research is to find out effectiveness of current performance appraisal system at JD sports.

As it is mentioned in the methodology above that a qualitative research method has been carried out for this research rather than quantitative. Here, researcher has chosen convince sampling methods and purposive sampling methods to know effectiveness of performance appraisal system at JD sports.

First, the result received from managers has been presented.

When the question was asked to the mangers regarding how they feel about performance appraisal, all of them answered positively. All managers agreed it to be a very good and an extremely useful tool.

Mangers were asked, “how many staff have you interviewed for their appraisal.”

In responding the question asked above, 5 of the managers agreed to have interviewed 4 employees each for their appraisal. One of the managers responded of having interviewed 5 of his staff members. 2 of the managers had appraised the performance of 3 of their employees each, whereas another 2 of the managers had surprisingly interviewed 10 of their staff members each for the purpose of their performance appraisal.

Time is very important when appraising employee. There should be enough time for discussion. The managers were also asked about the time spent on each of the interviews taken. They spent for appraising. Forty percent (40%) managers spent ½ hours but less than 1 hour, 50% managers spent 1 hour but less than 2 hours, while 10% managers spent less than ½ hour.

Managers were asked if they usually found the interviewee talking most of the time in the interview. Eighty percent (80%) managers answered positive, when twenty percent (20%) managers answered negative.

Do you feel that the interviewees were being frank in discussion of their job or promotion with you in the interview?

Eighty percent (80%) mangers were agreed that employees always frank with their promotion, when twenty percent (20%) managers said employee were not frank with their promotion.

Did anything you learnt in the appraisal cause you to modify your assessment of the interviewee?

Fifty percent (50%) said yes in one or more cases, while fifty percent (50%) denied for having helped it ever.

Later the managers were asked if they think that the appraisal have, either directly or indirectly, led to an improvement in the job performance of the interviewees.

Ninety percent of managers agreed that appraisal had directly or indirectly led to improvement, whereas only ten percent disagreed for the same. When they were further asked about the kind of improvement, the various answers received were: motivation, goal oriented performance, etc.

Managers were then asked how they motivate the employee. The managers answered offering them performance related pay, reorganizations, building their strength and work on their weakness.

“What steps do you think you will take if you find any performance gaps?” When this question was asked to managers eighty percent gave positive replay that they will give training, personal talking, discussion, where twenty percent said they will take disciplinary action

When researcher ask “who do you think benefits most from the appraisal, the employer or the employee.” All the managers replied both, employees and employers both benefit to some extent.

Second, researcher has presented the outcomes of JD sports’ employees about their current performance appraisal system.

The employees were further asked if they think performance appraisal is useful. Ninety percent (90%) employees believed performance appraisal is useful tool while ten percent (10%) of the employees believed it is not a useful tool.

When researcher asked to employees how many time they had given an appraisal interview. Eighty percent (80%) employees gave once, ten percent (10%) employees gave twice and ten percent (10%) employees did not follow manual performance appraisal interview.

Communication

When researcher asked employee if managers mentioned any part of the job they had done particularly well. All employees replied one hundred percent (100%) positively. The managers have mentioned good part of their job.

The question was also asked to employee whether there was any mention of or discussion of weaker aspect of their performance in the job during the interview.

Seventy percent (70%) employees replied positively there was mentioned of weaker aspect of their performance in interview. While thirty percent (30%) employee replied there was not mention of weaker aspect of their performance in interview.

Feedback: - It is very important for employee how they feel about their mangers and their decision about their assessment.

Do you feel that the interviewer had made a reasonably fair assessment of your performance in job?

Ninety percent (90%) employees were agreed that their manager had made fair assessment of their performance in job, where ten percent (10%) employee refuse of their manager’s decision

Promotion: - when employee asked if there had been any mention of promotion during interview by you or their mangers.

Sixty percent (60%) employee believed there was mention of promotion during their appraisal interview; Forty percent (40%) employees believed that there was not any mention of promotion during appraisal interview. Then researcher asked if there was mention of promotion what kind of promotion they had received. Sixty percent of employee replied there were: pay raise, more responsibility, position raise, and transfer for full time employee and became leader in their section.

Training and development: - The employees of JD spots were asked whether they were undergone any training. Sixty percent reply positive they had received training and forty percent (40%) had not received any training.

Employees of JD sports were also asked if they received any training improved their performance? Sixty percent had under gone in training out of that eighty three percent (83%) employee had believed that their performance had improved.

Motivation: - when researcher asked whether performance appraisal motivate the employee of JD sports?

Ninety percent (90%) employee replied they motivated by performance appraisal and ten percent (10%) replied they were not motivated by performance appraisal.

Performance gap: - when employee were asked whether they believed that action are taken when performance gaps are identified, seventy percent (70%) said YES, thirty percent replied negatively.

Benefits: - when employee asked about benefits fifty percent (50%) received some benefits when forty percent did not received any benefits and ten percent employee did not give any answer.

Time: - The researcher believed time is important during appraisal interview. When employees were asked how long their appraisal interview take forty percent said around fifteen minutes, fifty percent said around half an hour when only ten percent employee said more than half and hours but less than one hours.

Then employees were asked whether it is enough time to discuss all their queries and problems with their managers. Seventy percent said YES and thirty percent said NO

Working condition: - Researcher wants to know about how employees feel about working condition at JD sports. Most of the employee believed working condition is reasonable when some give suggestion that it could improve and only a few employee has complain about working condition.

The researcher asked what incentives did the employees get, if any, to perform better. The answers received were: encouragement, more money, gifts, and reorganization.

CHAPTER FIVE

Discussion of result

This chapter will show the discussion of results obtained.

The main aim of this project is to identify effectiveness of present performance appraisal system at JD sports. To accomplish main aim, a number of other issues will be looked into like carrier planning, reward system, communication between management and employees, and training and development.

Effectiveness of performance appraisal system

When researcher asked question to managers, whether they think the appraisal either directly or indirectly led to improvement in the job. Ninety percent (90%) managers agree that it that it improve the performance, this confirms the Martin Fisher’s (1995) view that performance appraisal has numbers of benefits. He further explains benefits from organizations’ perspective that it improves performance throughout the organization. When researcher asked further to managers how do they feel about performance appraisal, all managers gave a positive reply and said it is a very useful tool. When researcher asked to the employee of JD sports if they think performance appraisal is useful, ninety percent employee said it is useful and effective tool. This view of employee prove the definition of Grift et al that performance appraisal is an effective tool of measurement and evaluate employee’s performance to meet organization’s and employees’ goal.

Communication

Communication is bridge of effective appraisal system between managers and employees. When question was asked to the managers weather they feel employees were being frank enough in discussion of their job or promotion with them in the interview, eighty percent (80%) managers said employees were always frank with managers but here, it still not effective communication. Researcher further asked managers that if they usually find the employee did the most of the talking in the interview. Eighty percent (80%) managers replied positively. As American Compensation Association (1996) stated it is important to develop performance management on the basis of open, honest, positive, two-way communication between supervisor and employee throughout the period. Garry Dessler (2000) in his purpose of performance appraisal explains that the employer translates specific strategic goal in employees’ goal and carry out periodic review of employees’ performance and the appraisal lets the boss and subordinate to develop a plan for correcting any deficiencies. It is possible only through effective communication.

Feed back

When researcher asked to the managers whether anything they learned in appraisal cause them to modify their assessment of the interviewee, fifty percent (50%) said yes in one or more cases. But the rest of the fifty percent believed performance appraisal never affected their assessment decision. Garry Dessler (2000) explains in his book that feedback exhibits strength and weakness of employees. When employees were asked whether managers mentioned any parts of job they had done particularly well, all the employees replied positively. This shows that the managers of JD sports have valued their staff and appreciated it in a proper manner. When researcher asked further to the employees if the managers mentioned any weak part of their job performance, Seventy percent (70%) employees agreed that there was a mention of weak part. Latham et al (1981 & 1982) define performance appraisal as formal structure system of measuring, evaluating and inflecting employee’s job-related attributes. This definition clearly mentions that performance appraisal shows strengths and weaknesses of employees. When researcher had unstructured chat with some managers, they mention that they want to build strength of employee and work on their weakness. When question was asked about assessment decision ninety percent (90%) employee satisfied with their managers’ decision and further said managers were fair to their assessment.

Training and Development

Only sixty percent of JD sport employees had undergone in any training and further when researcher whether training improve their performance. Out of sixty percent employees, eighty three percent employees’ performance has improved. The research result shows training program is not effective at JD sports.

Performance appraisal offers excellent opportunities perhaps the best that will ever occur for a supervisor and subordinates to recognize and agree upon individual training and development needs.

Performance gaps

There are two main purposes of performance appraisal: - an evaluation system and a feedback system. The main focus of evaluation system is to identify performance gap, if any. This gap is the short fall that occurs when performance does not meet the standards by the organization as acceptable. When employees were asked whether they believed that the action is taken when performance gap identified, seventy percent said yes and thirty percent said no. Researcher also asked managers what steps managers take if they find any performance gaps. Most of the mangers said they would, give training, personal talk, motivate them to perform better but twenty percent managers believed that they would rather prefer disciplinary action.

Motivation and promotion

Martin Fisher (1996) explains some benefits of performance appraisal on employee’s perspective that it increases motivation, job satisfaction and sense of personal valued.

When manager of JD sports asked how they motivate the employee the managers answered offering them performance related pay, recognitions, building their strengths and work on their weakness and promoting them.

When employee of JD sports asked about promotion sixty percent believed there was mention of promotion during their appraisal interview, where forty percent believed there was not any discussion of promotion in interview. The sixty percent of employee got promotion like: pay raise, more responsibility, change to full time and made leaders in their work section. As it mention on web site

Performance appraisal creates two king of effect on employees, positive and negative. When performance appraisal gives reorganization to employees for work and effort it will create positive impact. Here, results show that JD sports have lack of motivation and promotion system. As researcher also worked at JD sports there is always discrimination during promotion and some time managers do not consider hard work of employees.

Benefits

When managers were asked who benefits most form from appraisal, managers or employees. All managers agreed that both benefits to some extent. This confirmed the theory of Garry Dessler, and Martin Fisher that an effective performance appraisal scheme offers number of opportunities and identifies existing problems in organization and encourages employees to performance better towards organization goals which lead to a number of benefits to organization as well as employees.

When employee were asked about benefits fifty percent received some benefits, while forty percent did not received any benefits and ten percent employee did not give any answers.

When researcher asked whether employee got any incentives to perform well, they answered encouragement, more money, gifts, and reorganizations, but some employee also mentioned that it is not the case every time

In order to know experience of employee and mangers researcher asked question to employee of JD sports how many times they have given an appraisal interview. Eighty percent employees have given only one time, ten percent have given twice and ten percent said they have not followed manual performance appraisal system.

Time is also important during appraisal interview. When employees were asked how long an appraisal interview takes fifty percent said around thirty minutes, forty percent said around fifteen minutes when only ten percent said it took between thirty minutes and an hour.

When researcher further asked whether it is enough time to discuss all there queries with managers seventy percent replied positive while thirty percent replied negative.

In order to know the experience of managers, researcher asked how many staff you have given an appraisal interview, fifty percent managers gave four employees, twenty percent mangers gave three employees, twenty percent gave approximately ten employees and ten percent manger gave five employees. Then managers were asked how much time did they spend in each of the interview, forty percent mangers spent half an hour but less than one hour, fifty percent managers spent one hour but less than two hours and ten percent mangers spent less than half an hour.

Here, researcher found managers and employees not spending sufficient time for appraisal interview because time is crucial for discussion of all queries of employees.

Overall, researcher want to know how employees feel about working condition at JD sports most of the employees mention it is reasonable and further said it could be improving and became interesting but a few employees are not happy.

CHAPTER SIX

Conclusion and recommendations

The aim of this project is find out the effectiveness of present performance appraisal system at JD sports. In order to achieve main aim researcher need to look into performance appraisal system from employees’ and management’s point of view. The researcher also looked at various aspects like career planning, reward system, communication between management and employee, and training and development in previous chapters.

The history of JD sports has already been looked into in the introduction chapter. The first JD sports shop opened in bury Lancashire in December 1981; named after the owners John Wardle and David Mrkin. In couple of year company has opened another shop and gradually company building monument in its field of sports fashion wear. As company has valued of their staff and believed that performance of organization is depend on performance of their employees.

Literature review provided solid support to our research at JD sports. It identified different and links between practical and theory. Grifts et al explain a very practical and comprehensive definition that performance appraisal is a process that identifies, evaluates and develops employee’s performance to meet employees’ and organization’s goal. It is not a process that happen once a year or six months but one that happens every day.

From our finding on research JD sports need to work on their present performance appraisal system.

Research shows that JD sports following traditional method of appraising performance, but this method was not that effective.

As it is mentioned, training and development only sixty percent employee has undergone training program and moreover, it is not a very successful tool. Communication between employees and management is reasonable, which provides standard method of assessment of employee’s knowledge and skill.

Performance appraisal is used as motivation tool at JD sports all managers and most of the employees believed that performance appraisal is motivating them.

Another issues found is motivation and promotion most of employees are not happy with current motivation and promotion scheme, because it wok on bias and contact basis rather than considering hard work of employee.

The finding shows that feedback work effective because ninety percent employees believed that their employer were fair to them.

Performance gaps is a major issue at JD sports, seventy percent employees believed that most of mangers took appropriate action when performance gaps are identified.

Form the research finding most of the employees believed that JD sports is a reasonable place to work and performance appraisal can be improved and became effective.

In conclusion the researcher has identified that the performance appraisal in fact has many deferent uses at JD sports but while these uses are beneficial to the company its employees there are also some area of concern must be reviewed in order for performance appraisal to really work hundred percent for the employees and company.

Recommendations

The findings have revealed that JD sports plc has reasonable performance appraisal system. For the benefits of both employees and organization JD sports need to enhance existing performance appraisal system.

There for following recommendations are made:-

• To ensure that all members of staff undergone training and development program

• To make sure benefits and promotion scheme should free form bias

• To ensure management develop career planning and welfare scheme for employees

• Management still need to take necessary action on performance gaps

• To make sure management give enough time to employee performance appraisal.

• Management using still traditional methods of appraising which need to be develop

Management needs to review training and development system, as it is beneficial for both employee and company. Managers need to make sure all employees receive adequate training and training program should be on going basis.

Managers need to explain future objective to employee and on the base that performance managers need to make decision of promotion and benefits. Another manager’s decision about promotion and benefits should be free form bias and fair for all employees.

From the research it found that there is not such career planning and development system at JD sports. To encourage employees, managers need to develop career planning for employee which bring motivation and will work hard to develop their career. Company also needs to take some step for welfare of employees.

Managers need to ensure that performance gap is important issues so they need to concentrate more on it and take immediate positive steps toward it.

Time is crucial factor for performance appraisal so employees should get enough time to discuss all of their queries to managers.