HR Six Sigma

HR Six Sigma
Message: 23042Posted by: shashonaPosted on: Saturday, 1st February 2003
Hi everyone...
I am looking for some good info (internet or books) to implement six sigma in HR management..i am doing my MBA thesis on the attainment of people excellence in my company....currently our performance appraisal system is not working....can Six sigma help me to improve this system....
Thanks
shona

FIrst of all, a few questions:
What do you mean by, "not working"? How would you know if it was working?
Who are the customers of the performance appraisal process?
What are their KPOVs (key process output variables)?
Secondly, I would think you could treat prefomance appraisal as you would any other measurement system. You need to ensure it's valid (Does it measure what you want it to measure?), unbiased (close to the "true" measure of performance), stable (unchanging over time), linear (accurate across the entire range of measurement), repeatable (does the same appraiser rate the individual the same in repeated trials), and reproducible (do different raters produce the same results).
From my experience performance appraisal measurements are invalid (measure likeability and political skill, rather than true performance, measure the coaching and leadership skills of the person's manager, and not the person, measure the cultural barriers to performance), extremely biased, unstable, and lacks reproducibility. There has been much written in the literature about the problems with perfomance appraisal, (halo effect, etc.), and as Deming aptly pointed out, performance is subject to common and special causes of variation. Most raters mistake common cause variation with special cause variation, which leads to tampering.
Much better to have perfomance planning where measureable objectives are set, needed resources to achieve those objectives determined and made available, with periodic coaching to ensure the objecxtives are met.
If your heart is set on books, I'd recommend Donald Wheeeler's Evaluating the Measurement Process, AIAG's MSA Manual, Betsi Harris Ehrlich's Transactional Six Sigma and Lean Servicing, and of course, Quality Council of Indiana's CSSBB Primer, still the reigning champ of six sigma references.
Regards and good luck!
Your question "What do you mean not working?" is the key question. The purpose of performance appaisal is only in a small part to be able to reliably say person A is better then person B. I would argue that 90% of the purpose of performance appraisal is to have an affect on the person appraised. It is a development tool and the important issue is "does it provide the appraisee with feedback, guidance, coaching, encouragement that will improve their performance?"
Therefore many of the reliability measures are irrelevant. You could have a six sigma reliable appraisal measure that would be useless as a coaching/development tool.
I agree that measuring performance is a much better way to "judge" the person; while more subjective, qualitative and behavioral observations are more useful as a development tool. I would also argue that frequency and immediacy of feedback are also more critical factors than a reliable annual appraisal.
LMM