This article details the steps needed to evaluate an employee as well as providing an explanation of evaluation tools. The importance of knowing why an evaluation is being made, who should do the evaluating, and what types of evaluation tools should be used are also explained. After reading this article the reader should have a better understanding of the evaluation process, and they should have a better understanding of the tools used in employee evaluations.
Evaluating your employees is an important and vital activity to your company’s effectiveness and efficiency. Not only does it give you, the owner or manager, a better idea of how well your employees are performing, but it also gives you the justifications needed to terminate an employee, impose disciplinary measures, to give an employee a raise, or to give an employee a promotion. In order to gain the most benefit from an evaluation several steps need to be taken to ensure that the right people examine the right issues, and in the right manner.
Step One: Determine the Reason for the Evaluation
Compensation
Promotion
Termination
Training Evaluation
Personnel Research
The first step in creating an effective employee evaluation is to first determine why you want to evaluate your employees. These reasons may be to determine grounds for changes in compensation or position within the company, as a way to determine if the employee in training is progressing properly, to determine if an employee needs to be terminated, or as a function of personnel research. Knowing the reason for the evaluation is important because each purpose has a different set of objectives and tools. For example if the evaluation is intended to be used to determine if an employee deserves a raise in pay, then elements like job proficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction may all be used to determine whether or not a raise is warranted. In this case objective and measurable qualities and behaviors need to be measured, and subjective qualities like the personability the employee should be omitted as they may not accurately describe a quality that impacts the employee’s work.
During the training and probationary periods, evaluations are also needed to determine if the employee is learning the job fast enough and with enough proficiency that their continued employment will be either an asset or liability for the company. If the evaluation is improperly formatted, or if it uses tools that do not objectively measure factors that will predict future performance, then an improper employment decision may be made. As a result of this mistake, a potentially great employee could be terminated, or a below average or combatant employee may be retained.