Vanessa is the purchasing manager at General Things, a maker of housewares. She has evaluated the first year's performance of Hunter, a purchasing agent. In the evaluation, she noted that he places orders accurately, but when employees in the company ask about the status of their orders, he has difficulty finding the information for them in a timely manner. What should be the next step in performance management in this situation?

Answer: The options are given below:

A. Vanessa should define new performance outcomes that do not include checking order status.

B. Hunter should develop more realistic goals that do not include checking order status.

C. Vanessa and Hunter should set new performance standards that are more realistic.

D. Vanessa should arrange for training so Hunter can learn how to look up the status of orders.

E. Vanessa should provide Hunter with ongoing performance feedback.

The correct option is D. Vanessa should arrange for training so Hunter can learn how to look up the status of orders.

Explanation: From the scenario given above, we can conclude that Hunter is a good purchasing agent, but a bad record keeper, since he finds it difficult to quickly come up with information about orders.

The next reasonable step to take in order to make Hunter perform better would be to arrange a training for Hunter in order to make him a better record keeper, and therefore be able to keep the records on his orders in a way that he will be able to quickly come up with the status of the orders of employees.