Citybank Case Study

Citibank: Performance Evaluation Case Analysis

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

James McGaran’s Performance Evaluation.

Doing the year-end performance evaluation for James McGaran, the branch manager of the flagship office in the Los Angeles area, was probably one of the most difficult experiences in all my years with Citibank in the capacity of area manager.

James has been not just an exemplary employee in our area, but really someone who other branch managers could always look up to. His career with Citibank has been a quick progression through the ranks from the assistant branch manager to the manager position at the most important of all the bank branches in the Los Angeles area – the Financial District office. Until this year his performance exceeded expectations in every single year. His financial results have been truly impressive.

However with the introduction of the new performance scorecard which reflected the company’s broadening of the evaluation scope to customer satisfaction score, it became obvious that this was essentially the only area where James’ performance was lacking. At the same time Frits Seegers, President of Citibank California, was convinced that customer satisfaction indicator was important not only for meeting ever-increasing expectations of highly-sophisticated clients, but also for achieving strategic goals of the division, and staying competitive.

Since five of the six performance measures in James’ year-end evaluation were “above par”, the customer satisfaction rating was the only one that caused a significant challenge and had substantial financial repercussions for James’ year-end bonus, which was a significant part of his base salary.  Based on his customer satisfaction scores, which was “below par” according to the banks written guidelines, his total evaluation could be only “on par” in spite of the fact that he excelled in five other performance areas. Not only would it be a substantial financial shortfall in total annual compensation...