Answer to Question 1
The following is a discussion of the factors that most often come into play in litigation with regard to performance management systems:
A . Employment at will is a situation wherein the employer or an employee can end an employment relationship at any time. This may appear to indicate that an employee can be terminated for any reason and that documentation of performance is not required; however, there are two notable exceptions to this:
i. An implied contract can be derived from conversations with others in the organization or from information found in the company's documentation indicating that employees will only be terminated for just cause.
ii. Termination decisions must also consider potential violations of public policy.
B. Negligence occurs when a performance management system is not implemented as described in an organization's documentation.
C. Defamation is the disclosure of untrue unfavorable performance information that damages an employee's reputation.
D. Misrepresentation occurs when an employer, fearing a defamation accusation, gives an employee a glowing recommendation when, in fact, the employee was terminated for poor performance that, if repeated in the future, could be damaging to the new employer.
E. Adverse impact, also known as unintentional discrimination, occurs when a performance management system has an unintentional impact on a protected class.
F. Illegal discrimination, also called disparate treatment, means that:
i. Raters assign scores differently to various employees based on factors that are not related to performance, such as race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and so on.
ii. Some employees receive more training, feedback, or rewards than others.
Answer to Question 2
When the performance management system uses different sources for ratings, disagreement should be expected. It is important to ensure that employees take an active role in selecting which sources will rate which dimensions and that the employees receive feedback by source (i.e., customers said this about your performance). In addition, different weights should be assigned to scores by source, depending on their importance