PSYC 651 Week 8 Performance Appraisal Project Example

Performance Appraisal Project: Why Assessment Matters at a Community Pharmacy and a New Appraisal for Its Pharmacy Technicians

The Workplace and the Position

For four years I worked at Riverside Family Pharmacy, a composite independent pharmacy in a small Ohio city that fills about 400 prescriptions a day with two pharmacists and six pharmacy technicians. Technicians enter prescriptions, count and package medications, manage insurance claims, run the register and answer patient questions that do not require a pharmacist's judgment. Their work directly affects patient safety, customer loyalty and the pharmacy's revenue.

The pharmacy's current appraisal consists of a single overall rating from one to five, completed by the owner each December and attached to a small raise. There are no written standards, no self-appraisal and no discussion beyond a few minutes. Technicians often do not know why they received the rating they did.

The Value of Performance Assessment Here

Aguinis (2013) treats performance management as an ongoing cycle of defining, measuring and developing people's work so that it serves the organization's goals. For Riverside, a real system would serve several of the purposes Aguinis identifies. Strategically, it would connect technicians' work to the pharmacy's competitive advantage over chain stores, which is personal service and accuracy. Administratively, it would give the owner a defensible basis for raises and for decisions about promotion to lead technician. Informationally, it would tell technicians what is expected and how they are doing. Developmentally, it would identify training needs, such as insurance troubleshooting or compounding. It would also document decisions, which matters if a technician is ever disciplined for errors.

In their centennial review, DeNisi and Murphy (2017) conclude that the field learned much about rating formats but that improving performance requires attention to how ratings are used and discussed. That lesson fits Riverside: a better form alone would not help unless the pharmacy also changed how it talks about performance throughout the year.

Linking Appraisal to Rewards, Discipline and the Team

Three further questions shape the design. First, how should results connect to pay? Aguinis (2013) cautions that contingent pay magnifies any flaw in ratings, so Riverside would tie raises to the overall rating only after a year of using the new form, when the owner and pharmacists trust the measures. Second, how should poor performance be handled? A technician whose error rate stays above standard after coaching would receive a written improvement plan with specific targets and weekly check-ins before any disciplinary step, which gives the technician a fair chance and documents the pharmacy's efforts. Third, how does individual appraisal fit work that is done as a team? In a small pharmacy, a rush hour is managed by everyone at once. The final chapter of Aguinis (2013) addresses team performance, and its lesson for Riverside is to include a teamwork competency for each technician and to review pharmacy-wide measures, such as average wait times, at staff meetings, so that individual ratings do not discourage the cooperation the pharmacy depends on.

Gaps in the Current Practice

The present system has the weaknesses Aguinis (2013) associates with poorly implemented performance management. Its single rating measures nothing specific, so it cannot guide improvement. It relies on the owner's general impression, which is vulnerable to recency and halo errors; a technician who made one memorable mistake in November may be rated lower than one whose quiet errors went unnoticed all year. It offers no chance for technicians to participate, and it is used only to justify a raise. Technicians therefore see it as arbitrary. One technician I worked with, among the most accurate in the store, received a three after a single argument with a customer, while another with frequent entry errors received a four because the owner liked her. Both concluded that the rating had little to do with their work.

Designing a Better System

The new system begins with a job analysis. I would interview the pharmacists and two experienced technicians and review the pharmacy's procedures to identify the technician's key duties: accurate prescription entry and filling, insurance claim resolution, inventory management, customer service and compliance with safety and privacy rules.

As Aguinis (2013) recommends for most jobs, the appraisal combines results and behaviors. Results that technicians control, such as error rates caught at the pharmacist's verification step and the share of insurance rejections resolved the same day, can be measured from pharmacy records. Behaviors that are harder to count, such as how technicians treat anxious patients, are rated with behaviorally anchored scales. Smith and Kendall (1963) developed the retranslation method behind such scales, in which experienced workers draft incidents of good and poor work, and a second group independently assigns each incident to a dimension and a level; only examples that experts assign consistently are kept as anchors. For Riverside, the pharmacists and senior technicians would write and sort the examples, which also builds their support for the form.

Raters would include the two pharmacists, who observe technicians daily, along with a self-appraisal, so that every rating rests on direct observation and on the technician's own account of the year. Levy and Williams (2004) emphasize that appraisal takes place in a social context in which the relationship between rater and ratee, trust in the system and opportunities for participation shape how employees react. A self-appraisal, a review meeting that begins with the technician's view and an appeals process to the owner address those concerns. Pharmacists would receive brief frame-of-reference training using written examples, so that both apply the anchors the same way.

The cycle would include a planning meeting in January, a brief check-in each quarter and a review in December, with the development plan updated at each review. Quarterly check-ins matter most in a pharmacy, because an error pattern caught in April can be corrected long before it affects a patient or a year-end rating. Pharmacists would keep a short log of notable incidents, both effective and ineffective, to reduce the recency bias that shaped the old ratings.

The Performance Appraisal Form

The form has four parts.

Part A: Results. Each result has a standard and is rated as below, meeting or exceeding the standard.

Part B: Behaviors. Pharmacy staff wrote the anchors, and each competency receives a score between 1 and 5. Anchors for levels 1, 3 and 5 are shown.

Part C: Development plan. The technician and pharmacist agree on one or two development objectives, the activities to reach them, such as an insurance billing course or cross-training in compounding, the support needed and a target date.

Part D: Summary and signatures. The pharmacist writes a narrative summary, the technician adds comments and both sign, with the signature indicating discussion rather than agreement. The form notes the right to appeal to the owner within two weeks.

Implementation and Expected Benefits

Aguinis (2013) stresses that implementation decides whether a system succeeds. The owner would explain the system's purpose to all staff, train the pharmacists, pilot the form with two technicians for one quarter, revise anchors that prove unclear and then adopt it for everyone. Over time, the pharmacy should see fewer errors, faster claim resolution and better retention of technicians, who would finally understand what good work means and how to grow. The owner would also need to monitor the system itself, asking technicians each December whether the process felt fair and useful and checking whether ratings varied sensibly between pharmacists. If one pharmacist rated everyone a five, for example, a short calibration meeting comparing examples would bring the two raters back into line. The time cost is real but modest: perhaps thirty minutes per technician each quarter and an hour for the annual review, a small investment for a business whose reputation rests on accuracy.

Conclusion

Riverside's single annual rating offered none of the benefits performance management can provide. A system grounded in job analysis, combining measured results with behaviorally anchored ratings, supported by trained raters, self-appraisal, development planning and an appeals process, would give the pharmacy a tool for improving both patient care and technicians' careers. The appraisal presented here is modest in size, suited to a small business, but it reflects the principles that run through every module of the course: clear expectations tied to strategy, measures employees can influence, fair and trained raters, honest conversation and a steady focus on helping people improve rather than simply ranking them.

References

Aguinis, H. (2013). Performance management (3rd ed.). Pearson.

DeNisi, A. S., & Murphy, K. R. (2017). Performance appraisal and performance management: 100 years of progress? Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 421-433. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000085

Levy, P. E., & Williams, J. R. (2004). The social context of performance appraisal: A review and framework for the future. Journal of Management, 30(6), 881-905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jm.2004.06.005

Smith, P. C., & Kendall, L. M. (1963). Retranslation of expectations: An approach to the construction of unambiguous anchors for rating scales. Journal of Applied Psychology, 47(2), 149-155. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047060