Is Employee Performance Judged More on Quality or Quantity? Let's Discuss!

Hello everyone, I'd like to know whether an employee's performance appraisal is judged on a quality or quantity basis. Is quality necessary, or is quantity more important?

Thanks,
Green

Quality vs. Quantity in Appraisals

Quality is required rather than quantity. The appraisal process should be measurable and quantifiable; only then will the process yield the desired outputs.

Regards

Quality has been the most accepted tool for any work process. Like you mentioned about restaurants, people would come to have food only if the quality of food and services provided is the best. Quantity would not matter as much if quality is compromised.

[QUOTE]
Dear Cool, suppose you go to a restaurant and order a cup of coffee. They give you excellent-tasting coffee, with excellent service, and charge you 100 rupees; but only serve you a quarter cup, instead of the full cup that you ordered. Will you go there again?

My sincere suggestion is that we, as bloggers, should search CiteHR using the "Research" facility at the top of the page or the web before posing a question. For example, answers can be found for the question posed by searching the web using "Predictors of Performance."

You have not answered my question. You are not comparing like with like. The question raised is about employee performance appraisal. I gave only one company example where quality was excellent but quantity was deficient and asked if we would assess the place based only on quality or quantity given for the price paid (equivalent to the salary paid for an employee). Hence, let me pose another question based on a work scenario.

Let us assume that two workers are working for you. One produces only two faultless items per day, and the other produces 10 items in the same time, with a reject rate of 10%. The company has to retrench one employee; whom would you recommend be retained?

Case Scenario Analysis

Employee One produces only two faultless items per day, while Employee Two produces 10 items in the same time, with a reject rate of 10%.

Both of the above cases of employees you have mentioned have different parameters.

Employee One

He produces just 2 faultless items a day, but what is the total number of units he produces in a day?

Employee Two

In this case, you have mentioned 10 items at a time, which I assume is per day based on the above case. Mathematically, for Employee Two, out of 10 items, the reject rate is 10%, meaning 1 item out of 10 is faulty.

Therefore, when comparing Employee One, who produces 2 faulty items, with Employee Two, who produces 1 faulty item, ideally Employee One needs to be retrenched according to the above mathematical formula.

Now, my question is, instead of removing the employee, why isn't the supervisor being questioned in terms of their performance output?

Countries like Japan believe in a 0% error rate in their work. This approach values the process and quality, thus ensuring optimum productivity of their resources.

In the above case you mentioned, I have handled a situation where the fault was not of the employee, but rather the process followed was incorrect, resulting in units with 10-20% error, thereby adding costs to the company's resources as wastage.

The entire post and comments revolve around quality versus quantity. While quantity is necessary at the production level, quality should never be compromised. This is why companies strive for quality assurance certificates like USFDA.

I would also like to mention the significant reward, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, healthcare, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige Award is the only formal recognition of performance excellence for both public and private U.S. organizations given by the President of the United States.

This award itself justifies how much importance is placed on quality in comparison to quantity.

As you have rightly mentioned, it's PRODUCTIVITY (quality and quantity) that is important. Hence, the appraisal should be based on both aspects. Giving importance exclusively to either is not right. That's what I tried to bring out in the example quoted. I did not specify what they were producing. The output of each person per day is respectively 2 and 10.

I am well aware of Quality Awards from the Deming Award to the Rajiv Gandhi Quality Award in India. Please see what I did before my retirement in the "About Us" section in my signature.

Regards

It depends on the role of the employee. If it is a service delivery role, then it has a weightage of 70% quality related to deliverables and 30% quantity related to time and cost. If it is a sales role, then 70% would go to the revenue targets and 30% to the quality of the customer and the brand image that the prospect would bring in.

Regards,
Srinivasa Babu
Lead Consultant
Best of Breed Software Solutions Pvt Ltd

Balancing Quality and Quantity in Performance Appraisals

Producing a quantity of items without paying attention to quality over time will result in zero quantity, meaning no orders. Conversely, focusing solely on quality without considering the necessary output (quantity/result) will prevent us from meeting market demands.

In general, quality and quantity are equally important and interlinked. In the performance appraisal process, we should consider a few KPIs on quantity and a few KPIs on quality. Each KPI must be treated separately, and ultimately, both will contribute to overall performance.

Regards,
S. Prabhu.

This question was answered in the 1950s by Akio Morita of Sony. He understood the value of quality then.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Task Evaluation

A bare minimum of three KPIs should be used to capture any task as per the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). Cost is one of them.