Essay on Performance Rating: Concept, System and Scales | Industries

After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Concept of Performance Rating 2. System of Performance Rating 3. Scales.

Essay on the Concept of Performance Rating:

In any industry, when a number of qualified workers are performing the same task, these output will not be same, depending upon their physiological and psychological conditions and level of technical knowledge and skills.

So the problem arises what should be the standard time? If we consider slowest worker as a standard then the efficient worker will be very fast, which ultimately makes a lot of difference in their earnings and thereby it will cause dissatisfaction amongst the workers.

So there should be a fixed standard of performance and should satisfy the group of workers. By all these discussion, we can say that “performance rating is the process during which the time study engineer compares the performance of the worker under observation with his own concept of normal or standard performance.”

There are generally two types of ratings:

(i) Standard Rating:

The rating corresponds to the average rate at which qualified worker will naturally work, which they know how to do by adhering to the specified method, and provided they are motivated to apply themselves to their work.

(ii) Normal Rating:

The rating corresponds to the average rate at which qualified worker will naturally work at a job, provided they know and adhere to the specified methods, and provided they work under capable supervision but without the stimulus of any financial incentive.

Essay on the System of Performance Rating:

In time study, rating factor are the important criteria for standard time calculation and for rating calculation, following are the various rating systems used:

(i) Speed-rating.

(ii) Skill and effort rating.

(iii) Synthetic rating.

(iv) Westinghouse system of rating.

(v) Objective rating.

(vi) Physiological evaluation of performance level.

(i) Speed-rating:

This rating procedure consists of judging the speed or pace of the worker’s movement in relation to a standard expected speed and is called as a rating factor. This rating factor is applied to each element and observed time for each element is multiplied by the rating factor to get the normal time for the element mathematically.

(ii) Skill and Effort Rating:

This rating system was developed by Mr. Bedaux in 1916. The units of works are represented as B’s. If a worker get 60B’s in one hour, he would be a standard worker. While timing the element worker is rated for the speed of his movements and his skill. B-point for an operator can be calculated by adding the B-points for each element involved in the operation.

B- Points for an operation are:

(iii) Westinghouse System of Rating:

This developed at Westinghouse and consider four factors as:

(a) Skill,

(b) Efforts,

(c) Conditions, and

(d) Consistency.

These main factors are further subdivided into sub-factors and have numerical value attached to them. The worker is rated while working and given a value. The time obtained from time study is then leveled by applying the sum of the rating of all the four factors. These sub-factors are graded by ‘poor’ to “excellent” grade and denoted by ‘A’ to ‘F’.

(iv) Synthetic Rating:

This system uses PMTS (pre-determined motion Time study) technique and from this, the values obtained are used for evaluation of worker’s performance. Various elements are timed in usual way and their values are compared with the time values as existing in PMTS.

PMTS are compiled as a result of large number of observations on each movement through micro-motion analysis. The ratio of standard time of a particular element to that of the observed time to the same element is used as a rating factor for the study. The rating factor for the study is the average of rating factors obtained for different elements of the study. Mathematically,

(v) Objective-Rating:

In first stage, operators speed is rated against a standard speed and no attention is paid for the job difficulties. In second stage, allowances are added depending upon the job-difficulties.

The job difficulties is considered on following basis:

(a) The amount of body used.

(b) Food movements involved.

(c) Eye-hand co-ordination.

(d) Handling requirements.

(e) Weight moved or lifted.

(vi) Physiological Evaluation of Performance Level:

Worker’s performance level can be estimated physiologically. Some recent studies show that heart beat increases with the muscular activity and amount of oxygen consumed by a worker increase with the severity of physical labour.

Essay on Performance Rating Scales:

Considering all above mentioned rating system now, we are discussing in brief about rating scales. There are various rating-scales but most commonly used are represented by- 100, 75 and 60.

(a) The 100-Scale:

This is most commonly used and also known as percentage scale. On this scale 133 is taken as the average incentive percentage.

(b) The 60-Scale:

It is also known as the point scale and the average incentive on this scale is 80 points.

(c) The 75-Scale:

In this system, 75 is the normal pace while 100 is the average incentive pace.