Judy Sodhi is in her fi rst teaching year at the National College, a private college offer
ing short courses in accounting, auditing and management. In her fi rst year Judy has primarily taught the Certifi cate in Managerial Finance. This is a three-day short course which ends in an externally set examination, marked and invigilated by staff employed by the Institute of Managerial Finance (IMF). The IMF also defi nes the syllabus, the length of the course and accredits colleges to run the course. There are no pre-conditions for candidates who wish to attend the course. Last year Judy ran the course 20 times with an average of nine students on each running of the course. At the end of each course every student has to complete a post-course evaluation questionnaire. Judy does not see these questionnaires and has received no feedback about her performance.
As the college is a virtual organisation using serviced training rooms, Judy rarely sees her manager Blake Jones. However, he contacted her recently to suggest that they should conduct her fi rst appraisal and a date and time was agreed. Blake explained that ‘it would be just a general chat looking at how the year had gone. We need to do one to satisfy the college and the IMF’. The time of the appraisal was set for 3.00 pm, fi nishing at 5.00 pm.
The appraisal did start with a general discussion. Blake outlined the plans of the organisation and his own promotion hopes. Judy was surprised to see that Blake was not following any standard list of questions or noting down any of the answers she made. She told him that one of her main problems was the numeracy level of some of the candidates. She recognised that the course had no pre-conditions, ‘but it does require some basic mathematical skills that some of our candidates just do not have’.
After listening to Judy for a while Blake produced a statistical summary of the feedback questionnaires from the courses she had run in the last year. He said that the organisation expected its lecturers to attain an acceptable result in all 10 questions given in the post-course questionnaire. An acceptable result ‘is that 90% of all candidates said that they were ‘satisfi ed or very satisfi ed’ with key aspects of the course’. Judy had achieved this on seven of the questions but specifi cally failed on the following performance measures;
– Percentage of candidates who felt that the course was relevant to their current job – only 65% of your candidates felt that the course was relevant to their current job.
– Percentage of candidates who passed the examination – only 88？88% of your candidates passed the examination.
– Percentage of candidates who felt that the course pace was satisfactory – only 75% of your candidates felt that the pace of the course was satisfactory.
After expressing her surprise that she had not been given this information before, she immediately returned to the problem of numeracy skills. ‘As I told you’ she said ‘some of these students lack the mathematical skills to pass. That’s not my fault, it is yours – you should not have let them on the course in the fi rst place. You are just fi lling the places to make money’.
After a heated discussion, Blake then turned to the ‘last thing on my agenda’. He explained that it was only college policy to give pay increases to lecturers who had achieved 90% in all 10 questions, so there would be no increase for Judy next year. However, he also needed to discuss her workload for next year. He produced a spreadsheet and had just begun to discuss course planning and locations in great detail when his mobile phone rang. ‘I am sorry, Judy, I have to collect the children from school – I must go. I will write down your planned course assignments and e-mail them to you. I think that was a very useful discussion. Overall we are very happy with you. See you at the end-of-year party, and of course at next year’s appraisal.’ He left at 4.30 pm.
Required:
(a) Based on Judy’s appraisal, evaluate the appropriateness of the appraisal process and performance measures at the National College, from both an employee and an organisational perspective. (15 marks)
(b) Explain the concept and purpose of competency frameworks for organisations, assessing their potential use at the National College and the Institute of Managerial Finance. (10 marks)
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