Michele Harmon
If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. Thank you, Peter Drucker.
October is the month to get ready for annual performance reviews. I wholeheartedly recommend evaluating the staff throughout the year with informal walkthroughs, supportive emails, and verbal or written corrective coaching to improve performance.
The annual review should never be a surprise to the employee. Keep the yearly evaluation simple. Base it on the job description and each employee’s individual goals.
The simplest way to evaluate an employee—while being inclusive—is very straightforward.
Give the employee an uncompleted evaluation form based on the job description. Ask the employee to complete and bring the evaluation to the evaluation conference. The better employees will rate themselves lower than their boss without fail. The weaker employee often will rate themselves higher than the boss will rate them. Generally, the boss and the employee will meet in the middle.
If the employer wants to be more progressive, I suggest what is known as a 360-Degree Feedback evaluation. Employee ratings are collected from the employee’s supervisors, subordinates, peers, and internal or external customers. This method can be uncomfortable and upsetting for everyone. If the company decides to do 360-Feeback, carefully train those giving feedback, or rely only partly on the 360 and use the evaluation based on the job description and employee goals, completed by the supervisor and employee.
If the employer wants to be even more progressive, the newest approach to evaluating employee performance will hopefully pass with time. It is identified as a Crowd Appraisal or Social Performance Management (SPM), an approach that allows everyone in the company to provide feedback to each other via social media. The platform is a way for employees to stay connected and is not a place for negative feedback, only recognition. The weaker employees are dealt with separately. If the work environment continues to be hybrid and moves at warp speed, then SPM may grow. It reminds me of everyone getting a trophy; when everyone gets a trophy, no one wins.
For this article, I will focus on the best traditional evaluation method. Start with the job description and add goals for each employee based on the company’s strategic objectives.
Raises are based on a cost-of-living increase for similar groups of employees and then money is added based on mastery of objectives. “Similar groups” mean departments, supervisors, pay grades, pay levels, or job groups.
Train everyone doing the appraisals. Evaluations are not punishment; they are the time when the boss spends quality time with their direct reports to evaluate the past year and develop the employee’s goals for the following year.
Evaluations at any time are about supporting performance, aiming for continuous improvement, reminding the employee of the organization’s goals, and linking the employee’s performance to those goals.
The goals of a performance appraisal for the employees are to set work standards, assess the employee’s performance, establish next year’s priorities, and provide feedback that will motivate the employee to eliminate performance deficiencies and increase superior performance.
The employer completes performance appraisals to determine who stays and who goes, who is promoted, what professional development is needed for an employee, etc.
Formal evaluations may be done on the employee’s anniversary date, or the company can choose to do it once per year for every employee before their anticipated annual raise. My preference is to conduct the evaluations on the employee’s anniversary date. No one wants one more task at the end of the calendar year.
Performance assessments benefit the organization. Just do it.
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“Your employees are the heart of your organization.” Dr. Michele Harmon is a Human Resource professional, supporting clients in Texas and New Mexico that range in size from five to more than 3,000 employees. Email: micheleharmon1@gmail.com