Human Resource Management is an art. This was one of my favorite subjects at Hanoi University

1. Human Resource Management
report
Discussion case 7.1
How well do you play your roles?
Teacher: Ms. Le Minh Hanh
Students: Mai Duc Ha - 0506090022
Nguyen Thi Minh Hue - 0506090033
Tutorial: 7
March 2008
HANOI UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Management and Tourism

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Introduction
Appraising and managing the performance of employees in the organization is an important task
for every manager. Principles of performance appraisal, the way to measure and manage
employees’ performance are discussed in chapter 7. Furthermore, discussion case 7.1 “How well
do you play your roles?” will provide readers with an employee evaluation method named role-
based performance appraisal.
Summary of the discussion case
In the dynamic work environment, people nowadays do not have a static “job”. In different
projects, a worker with the same job title may take different roles. The roles may also vary
according to projects and overtime. Therefore, the traditional appraisal based on job description
may be inadequate. One solution for this problem is role-based performance appraisal.
Answers to discussion case questions
Question 1. What other roles and additional measures do you think would be useful for
role-based appraisal?
A job is a collection of tasks and responsibilities that an employee is responsible to conduct.
Jobs have titles. A role is the set of responsibilities or expected results associated with a job. A
job usually includes several roles.
Other roles and additional measures would be useful for role-based appraisals are:
1. Communicator helps all members in groups keep in touch with each other.
2. Explorers uncover new potential in situations and people and explore new areas and the
possibilities that they present
3. Sculptors bring things to fruition, producing action to address the most urgent matters,
and using tools or techniques that they know (from experience) will work
4. Conductors produce structure and introduce a logical organisation into the way things
are done
5. Scientists produce explanation of what is happening and the cause of problems, and
generate models to demonstrate how things work
6. Team recorder records what has been discussed, what decisions have been made, what
action have been decided on, who is responsible for identified actions, etc.
7. Team reporter accurately summarises what has been discussed, clearly explain what
decisions have been made.

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Question 2. Rafael wants to put more emphasis on being a team player while Sarah wants
to delve into making creative contributions for the coming appraisal period. However,
both need to continue to perform their job functions.
a) Design a system that would allow people choice in what they do and, thus, have
flexibility in what they are held accountable for.
The requirements of the most effective systems of appraising performance are:
Pragmatic helps to ensure that the system will be easily understood by employees and
effectively put into action by managers.
Relevant: systems that are not specifically relevant to the job may result in wasted time and
resources.
Uniform: uniformity of the appraisal structure is vital because it ensures that all employees
will be evaluated on a standardized scale.
Systems that miss those behaviors are often invalid, inaccurate, and result in discrimination
based on non-related factors.
Therefore, role-based appraisal system that depends on which types of roles employees take is
selected as a system
→ Evaluators: 360 degree
→ Appraisal methods: (1) Graphic Rating Scale, (2) Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale, (3)
Narrative Technique, (4) Critical-Incident Method, (5) Multiperson Comparison Method
b) Do you think people should be given the chance to place greater or lesser weight on
various roles they might play? Why or why not?
People should be given the chance to place greater weight on various roles they might play,
because of these following reasons:
1. Develop all their traits: use all of employee's skills they help, not only their majors or their
strengths.
2. Highly dynamic employee’s jobs: Nowadays, organizations pay attention to teamwork rather
than individual work, people will keep different roles across different projects.
3. Low turnover rate: people feel their knowledge and learning are respected; consequently, they
will have higher job satisfaction that is the thing keeps employees do the job longer.

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4. Increase business competitiveness and success: An organisation with a greater mix of
employees of different cultural backgrounds, mental models, and experience and functional
levels will, when appropriately managed, generate more innovative products and services.
Question 3. What advantage might a role-based appraisal system offer to the
organization? To the worker?
Because a job consists of different roles, the role-based appraisal system helps the organization
to identify adequate aspects of performance. It means human resource managers can clearly
understand what dimensions should be used to evaluate employees effectively. Thus,
performance is accurately analyzed, and after that exact results will be given to the managers.
Based on the result, they can find it easy to make decisions about promotion, increment or
motivation.
Besides, the role-based appraisal system brings worker the feeling of being fairly evaluated. If a
good and relevant dimension is included, the worker will perceive the appraisal process as
meaningful. Anyone performing well on a certain aspect will be recognized and rewarded as
they expect. In contrast, if an important aspect of appraisal method is neglected, the employee
may think that the entire evaluation process is unfair and meaningless. It is very likely that
conflict among workers will occur.
Question 4. One company that pilot tested role-based appraisals found that although the
organization’s mission was to promote teamwork, the team player ratings were
poor. Assume you are a manager in the company. You realize that the stated values of the
business don’t match the business activities, so the current emphasis on teamwork is
unfair. What would you do to rectify this problem?
It can be said that teamwork is not effective in this company.
In order to solve this problem, another appraisal method is required. Individual-based evaluation
method should be used in addition to team-based one. Thus, the impact of the team player
ratings can be minimized.
In addition, it is necessary to improve teamwork appraisal. For example, company management
board and other people from outside are invited to evaluate teamwork. It will be very fair for
every member of the team. Another way is changing team evaluation criteria. Perhaps the
current criteria are not really practical and effective with business activities.
Re-training employees to develop stronger team spirit is also a good method. This process can be
done by hiring a professional HR firm to coach the employees. If so, conflicts among team
players can be avoided as well.

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Conclusion
A good method to evaluate and manage employee performance accurately and fairly is critically
important to most organizations. Role-based appraisal system is considered a good solution as it
provides both the organization and employees with specific benefits. Nevertheless, this system
should be appropriately designed before being applied into specific company.
Applications of performance appraisal in Vietnam
Many approaches to performance appraisal are currently applied in Vietnam. Typical facts are
presented below.
Previously, Vietnamese companies did not get familiar with the concept of using an outside firm
to evaluate their employees. Today, companies from all sectors are gaining a better
understanding of the benefit of human resource firms (vnexpress.net). For instance, NetViet – a
company in Ho Chi Minh city - is known as one of the pioneers in offering performance
appraisal service. Established in 2001, it has been assisting Vietnam-based companies to
evaluate their employees by a wide variety of methods such as multiple choice questions
(VND200,000/time/person), face-to-face interview (VND 950,000/time/person) and a package
of multiple choice question and interview (VND1.1 million/time/person), as vietbao.vn stated.
However, NetViet’s frequent customer is only joint venture or foreign-owned companies.
Worker assessment softwares are also being used in a lot of organizations operating in Vietnam.
The software labelled ProfileXT, which is a tool assessing ability of employees through 320
questions, can be taken as an example. In August 2007, a corporation named TRG Profiles
International Vietnam introduced this software in a press conference in Ho Chi Minh city. It has
been developed for 20 years in the U.S. and assisted a great number of managers in recruitment
process, retention, promotion, etc. Until now, the corporation has some potential customers, who
are mainly big companies in Ho Chi Minh City (vietime.com).
The method of 360o
feedback is also seen as a good approach to performance appraisal to many
companies. For example, Green Sun Company uses this method under the title “1800 model",
according to vneconomy.vn. The employees are evaluated by direct managers, colleagues,
business partners and themselves. Besides, employee behavior and outcome after implementing
a large or small-scale project are aspects that can be assessed as well.
Concerning the moment of implementing performance appraisal, most companies like to make
year-end report on employees’ performance; meanwhile others prefer doing this task regularly

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like monthly, quarterly or semi-annually. Mr. Bui Ngoc Anh, the founder of AVC Group – a
mass media corporation, said that regular appraisals are very dynamic and have the advantage of
providing up-to-date information about performance, but they are not helpful for long-time
projects (vneconomy.vn).
In conclusion, Vietnam is currently in the process of globally economic integration. Hence,
competition between organizations to attract, develop, retain talents is tougher than ever. Also,
the issue of performance appraisal is completely necessary to all of them.
References
1. “Phát triển dịch vụ "Đánh giá khả năng nhân viên", online. Available at URL:
http://vnexpress.net/Vietnam/Kinh-doanh/Viec-lam/2001/05/3B9B0099/
2. “Công ty tôi là phòng nhân sự của công ty bạn…”, online. Available at URL:
http://vietbao.vn/Viec-lam/Cong-ty-toi-la-phong-nhan-su-cua-cong-ty-
ban/20059956/271/
3. “Phần mềm đánh giá năng lực con người”, online. Available at URL:
http://www.vietime.com/news/index.aspx?n/567/7206
4. “Thưởng sao cho khéo”, online. Available at URL:
http://www.vneconomy.vn/?home=detail&page=category&cat_name=0503&id=c6a6a59
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