Reference no: EM132979806

In December 2019. Patricia and all her colleagues at TELUS completed a semi-annual survey which included many aspects: it asked questions about their satisfaction with their jobs, and their evaluation of the performance of themselves their colleagues, and their supervisors (to whom they report directly). TELUS outsources the delivery of this survey, and the data analysis, to a third-party company called "PulseCheck." PulseCheck's performance appraisal reports result in a composite score based upon a scale with a maximum of 20, which score is assigned by the employee's manager direct supervisor ). Patricia holds a position in the tier referred to as " Management Professionals," or "MPs" who are highly qualified typically including advanced training in their fields, and almost all have university degrees related to their work. Patricia holds three degrees: a BBA in Operations with a certificate in Business Analysis and a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from SFU; and an MBA from UBC. There are thousands of MPs working in many business units across the country for TELUS Most have no direct reports; that is, they have no people who report directly to them thus they do not personally oversee the work of others - but since they tend to work on projects that include team members from across the company during the activation of PulseCheck she is required to evaluate the colleagues with whom she worked on various projects. Completing the PulseCheck survey is time-consuming, and TELUS feels it is worth the effort to adequately manage team member performance.

As part of the overall performance process, all managers (people who have direct reports, such as Patricia's supervisor, Kevin, who holds the position as Director) are required to meet annually with each of their direct reports in order to cooperatively set performance objectives for the coming year (cooperatively means that the goals and objectives are not mandated by the Director, but discussed and agreed to by both parties) . Kevin has not always been diligent in holding these performance planning meetings, as he has always felt uncomfortable discussing performance management with his direct reports. Patricia had not met with Kevin to discuss performance objectives for either of the preceding two years.

After completing the survey, managers must set appointments to discuss the results of the performance appraisal report with each direct report. TELUS believes that the company should manage the overall performance process by mandating a set average of 12 (of the maximum 20) for each manager's group of direct reports : the company intends this mandated average to discourage managers from purposely giving higher scores to their employees in order to make themselves look like better managers.

Patricia had received several accolades over the past year from other Directors, Vice Presidents, and colleagues, for whom she had worked on multiple projects that were completed successfully. She was quite proud of her work, as she knew that her advanced analytical skills were highly sought by higher-level management for their preferred projects. She was surprised, therefore, when she saw that her overall PulseCheck score was an 11she knew the average per manager was to be 12, and she did not consider her work to be "below average ." She never received a meeting request for a one-to-one conversation about her performance with Kevin, as required; rather, she accepted a meeting request that included Kevin and all thirty of his direct reports, each of whom held an MP position with varying specialties. The team meeting was held as a conference call ( Zoom was not in use at the time, and other video conferencing solutions were considered costly ). The team meeting quickly turned into a contentious affair it turned out that all thirty MP members of the team had received PulseCheck scores below 12some as low as 7. Many team members were very upset and voiced their displeasure freely on the call, to the point that Patricia was somewhat surprised with their candor. One team member, Terry asked Kevin directly how he could ignore the company's mandated average and give everyone a below-average score, especially when all team member's work on projects across the company was in high demand due to the expertise developed and the experience grown.

Kevin replied that "if I had given you scores above 12, you would not be motivated to improve next year and would be complacent with your jobs. Now you have goals to work toward to increase your scores next year ." He did not provide any objective justification for low scores, no details as to where performance was not as high as desired, nor any specific recommendations on what improvement he wished to see in the coming year.

1. Evaluate the way that the TELUS Performance Management process was implemented by Kevin using the Five Steps of the Performance Management Process as the framework.