Performance Appraisal of Agilent Technology

Executive Summary

For this report, I had chosen Agilent Technologies Sales (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd as my research topic. It is one of the branches in the world that delivers innovative technologies, solutions and services to a wide range of customers in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis.

One of Agilent's goals is to maintain a good-quality relationship between employees and management regardless of the economic conditions in which the business is operating.

Introduction

This report focuses on the Performance Appraisal of Agilent Technologies. Performance appraisal is one of the factors related to an organization's long-term success. It has the ability to measure how well employees perform and then use the information to ensure that performance meets present standards and improves over time.

To help us have a view in the performance appraisal system of Agilent Technologies, an interview was conducted with two members of the company, Ms. Lim and Ms. Tracy Leong. Ms. Lim is the Assistant Manager in Customer Service, whereas Ms. Leong has been working in the Customer Service department for more 2 years. She is responsible for ensuring that their company's customers receive an adequate level of service or help with their questions and concerns. Also, she interacts with customers to provide information in response to inquiries about products or services and to handle and resolve complaints, through a variety of means, either in person, by telephone, e-mail or regular mail correspondence, or fax, or even over the Internet.

In Agilent, the Human Resources (HR) department has focused on improving responsiveness, clarifying the scope of its services and continuing to build its expertise. Despite difficult economic conditions in recent years, they have continued working toward making Agilent an employer of choice across the globe. The aim is to provide employees with a working environment they find challenging and enjoyable by hiring some of the best people and encouraging open communication and feedback with management.

In Agilent, it is the responsibility of the managers to maintain a work environment where employees can openly discuss their performance, progress and development. This requires open and frequent communication on an informal basis between managers and employees. These information exchanges should include expectations for results, actions desired to maintain or increase effectiveness, and an assessment of the ranking criteria. At a minimum, managers should meet quarterly with their employees to provide performance feedback, with special attention given to the written feedback provided after the annual ranking process is completed. Managers are expected to complete a RFF (Rank Feedback Form) annually at the completion of the ranking process.

From the interview with Ms. Lim, the managerial will rank their employees according to their relative level of performance. The employees will be call upon into the office by their own manager or even supervisor, and will be interviewed accordingly. Ranking is done on an annual basis during the annual planning cycle, which takes place worldwide during Quarter 1. There are three rank categories and a performance category for employees who are not ranked because they are not consistently demonstrating the performance expected of those in similar positions. The rank categories are:

Rank One - This is the group of employees that have consistently far outperformed their peers in all four rank criteria. They are the top performers, role models, and perceived leaders.

Rank Two - These employees consistently exceed expectations. This group of employees occasionally performs at a Rank One level and sometimes at a Rank Three level.

Rank Three - Employees ranked in this category are the employees who are making a solid contribution to the company. They are valuable members of the company's team, on-target and meeting expectations for performance.

This ranking method then enables the management to provide the employees with increment. However, if the result on an employee is found to be in the same level as previous year, his or her increment will remain the same, or even lesser. Worst still, whoever is being tagged as in the level of "bad performance", that particular employee will be ranked as PIR (Performance Improvement Required). From here, one will be terminated from job if there is not sign of improvement within half year.

The next stage is the feedback system. The essential part of the performance feedback process is the discussion between the manager and the employee. Prior to completing the RFF (Rank Preparation Form) and inputting the employee's rank in the system, the manager will gather performance feedback on the employee from a variety of sources.

The manager will choose to share this form with the employee in order to gather his/her input prior to completing the RFF. After the RFF has been completed and the rank approved by all levels of the management team, the manager will then discuss the RFF with the employee. During the discussion, the manager and employee will both discuss the employee's responsibilities, goals and objectives, results, strengths and areas for development. The manager will then sets performance objectives and measures that tie to business objectives for the coming year. The manager and employee will also discuss ways to address the employee's knowledge and skill gaps relative to the next year's performance objectives, as well as the skills that will be required to meet business objectives in the next two years.

Asked about the respond on the appraisal system, Ms. Lim mentioned that a survey in year 2001 indicated that 80% of the employees feel a sense of accomplishment, believe their work is worthwhile, and believe their co-workers do excellent work, perceive they have opportunities for development and believe that their supervisor develops their abilities. She stated that their management recognizes that this culture cannot be taken for granted and found out that communication is key. As a result, the management took focused actions to improve communication in specific groups whose communication scores were below the company average.

Performance appraisal is a key part of an organization's performance management system. Performance appraisal typically involves measuring how well an individual employee is doing their job against a set of criteria (for example, personal competencies, behavioral characteristics or achievements), providing feedback and creating a development plan (Stone 2002:266).