Quick-Go Couriers is a mid-sized parcel delivery firm that employs 600 people across India. Kaushik, the HR manager, uses a simple one-page annual performance assessment form to evaluate all non-managerial employees. The form rates employees on criteria like quantity of work, accuracy, flexibility, and dependability using a 5-point scale. Assessment outcomes determine bonuses for top performers and dismissals for bottom performers. This year, three employees challenged the validity of the assessments and threatened legal action, prompting Kaushik to seek an expert opinion on the assessment form.

1. 1
For Academic Purpose Only
Performance Management & Appraisal System – Gaurav Vatsa
Quick-Go Couriers
Quick-Go Couriers is a metro-city-based mid-sized firm that employs 600 people in its rapidly
growing commercial parcel collection and distribution business, which it has operated successfully
throughout India since the firm’s establishment seven years ago. The firm has separate departments
covering customer service, parcel collection and distribution, vehicle maintenance, accounts, legal,
marketing and human resources. Most of its line employees and supervisors work in customer call
centres, distribution centres and vehicle maintenance facilities located strategically across the
country. The firm could best be described as having a cost-defender competitive strategy, a
mechanistic organisational structure and a tradition management culture.
Kaushik, Quick-Go’s human resources manager, is proud of his and the firm’s achievements.
When it comes to people management, Kaushik ’s approach is down-to-earth and pragmatic.
Previously a despatch driver himself, Kaushik has little time for managers who spend their time
reading the latest management books, chasing university degrees or agonising about the options for
‘best practice’ people management. Kaushik also believes in ‘buying’ rather than ‘building’ skilled
staff. In-house training and development, he says, is just a waste of everyone’s time – and of the
firm’s money.
He is especially proud of the one-page form that he has designed for use in the firm’s once-
a-year performance assessment round. The form, which is reproduced below, is applied to all of
Quick-Go’s non-managerial employees, including call centre staff, parcel despatch people, drivers,
vehicle maintenance workers and administration staff. The form is straightforward and can be
completed in just a few minutes, so that supervisors are not tied down in unproductive paperwork.
The assessment outcomes are then used to determine which employees will receive the Rs.25,000
annual bonus that the firm pays to its best performers and which employees will be dismissed.
Under Kaushik’s system, the top 20 per cent of employees get the bonus and the bottom 10 per cent
are ‘let go’.
But this year’s performance assessment round did not go as smoothly as Kaushik might have
hoped. This year, for the first time, three employees, all known to each other and all recruited from
the same competitor firm less than eighteen months before, challenged the accuracy of their
assessments, wrote a letter of complaint to the managing director, and threatened legal action
unless changes were made to the way in which they and their fellow employees are assessed.
To Kaushik’s astonishment, the problem, they argued, lay in the form itself. Kaushik’s initial
inclination was to dismiss the complaints as nothing more than sour grapes, since none of the
complainants has made it into the bonus cut. Then, feeling that his integrity had been challenged, he
decided to commission a human resources consulting firm to confirm the worth of his assessment
form.
The firm he chooses is none other than the one for which you happen to work and for which you
are the resident expert on performance management systems. So the task of providing an expert

2. 2
For Academic Purpose Only
Performance Management & Appraisal System – Gaurav Vatsa
opinion on Kaushik’s form falls naturally to you. Specifically, you agree to provide brief (200–400
word) written responses to each of the following four questions:
1. What are the specific type or types of performance management technique(s) present in
the instrument?
2. What are the instrument’s main strengths?
3. Are there any features in the instrument that may compromise assessment validity,
reliability and felt-fairness?
4. Are there any ways in which the instrument, and the approach to performance
management that it reveals, might be improved?

3. 3
For Academic Purpose Only
Performance Management & Appraisal System – Gaurav Vatsa
Quick-Go COURIERS
ANNUAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT FORM
Name:
Position:
Branch & Division:
Instructions: Draw a circle around the applicable number for each question.
1. Quantity of work is the amount of work an individual does in a working day.
2. Accuracy is the correctness of work duties performed.
1 2 3 4 5
Makes frequent
errors
Careless;
makes
recurrent
errors
Usually
accurate;
makes only
average number
of mistakes
Requires little
supervision; is
exact & precise
most of the time
Requires
absolute
minimum of
supervision;
almost always
accurate
3. Alertness is the ability to grasp instructions, to meet changing conditions and to resolve
unexpected problems
1 2 3 4 5
Slow to catch
on
Requires more
than average
instruction and
explanation
Grasps
instructions
with average
ability
Usually quick
to learn and
understand
Exceptionally
keen and alert
4. Respect and courtesy, the key to making his/her job opportunities.
1 2 3 4 5
Does not meet
minimum
requirement
Does just enough
to get
By
Volume of work is
satisfactory
Very industrious;
does more
than required
Superior work
production
record
1 2 3 4 5
Blunt,
discourteous
antagonistic
Sometimes
tactless
Agreeable and
pleasant
Very polite
and willing to
help
Inspiring to
others in being
courteous and
pleasant

4. 4
For Academic Purpose Only
Performance Management & Appraisal System – Gaurav Vatsa
5. How mentally flexible is this person in his/her thoughts and approach to any presented task?
6. Dependability is the ability to do required jobs well with minimum of supervision.
7. How readily does this person offer to help out by doing that which is apart from his/her own
job?
8. What is your appraisal for this person’s overall performance in the past 12 months?
9. Attendance (state problems if any)
Rank order of this employee in this department: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Total number of employees: . . . . . . . . . . .
Rated by
Name: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Signature: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
Date: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 2 3 4 5
Rigid Average Flexible
1 2 3 4 5
Requires close
supervision; is
unreliable
Requires
prompting
Sometimes
Usually takes care
of necessary tasks
with reasonable
promptness
Requires little
supervision.
Is reliable
Requires absolute
minimum
supervision
1 2 3 4 5
Resists Normal Readily
1 2 3 4 5
Poor Below Average Average Above Average Excellent