Hello everyone,
For my practicum, I am working at the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA). They have hired me on to help them with an initiative to re-structure the current performance appraisal system. A recent survey of employees showed dissatisfaction with the current appraisal system; feeling it to be too subjective, with little discrimination and meaning between ratings. Overall it is thought to be a time consuming HR task, rather than a benefit to the unit and/or organization. My task is to work with the external consultant, and the internal team to create a system that is performance based, aligns employee performance with organizational objectives and the business plan, and is an overall useful tool for further development of the performance management system.
I have been working on this project since this past December, 2006. When I came into the project, I continued with the benchmarking that had been started by others. Much information on best practices from various Federal Government Agencies was collected and used to create a proposed performance appraisal system. Thus far, my team has presented our skeleton structure to the Leadership Team, and to the Senior Management Team, for which I created the PowerPoint presentation, and other materials used.
I am currently working with our external consultant to create a manual, and the appraisal form for the new system. As we move forward with the project, our plan is to create training modules to present to each work unit throughout SHA. The project is to be piloted using Senior Management this July, 2007.
If anyone has any experience with such a project and/or input on this project, I will appreciate all comments. Please also feel free to contact me with any questions. I will keep you updated on my progress!
Thanks,
Liz Amati
Office of Administration