Performance Appraisal, Performance Review – call them what you will but we all know what they are, most likely we have received them, chances are that you might even have given one before. What sort of role do they play? Are they helpful? Do you dread receiving yours – maybe it’s worse when you are responsible for giving them to others …Welcome to EP 130: Employee Evaluations.
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Evaluations – What Do You Mean? jump to 2:12
Today we are talking about employee evaluations. When I started preparing for this episode, employee evaluations was simply a working title … and I never came up with anything to replace it. I wanted something more clever but maybe just like the actual employee evaluation itself, direct and efficient is the more appropriate course of action.
Andrew and I discussed how many of these we’ve had to sit through over the years, and subsequently had to deliver these employee evaluation reviews ourselves. I have to admit that I don’t recall during my time working in small offices EVER sitting through a formal and proper employee review and evaluation – certainly not one with paperwork and forms. It’s possible that I just don’t remember it (which suggests it had little to no impact on me professionally). Due to the dynamic nature of a small office, things tended to be dealt with relatively quickly and there wasn’t a need for yearly reviews with employees. It really wasn’t until I came to my current place of employment at BOKA Powell that this process showed up on my radar and the value that these sorts of reviews can have on the company at large.
All of this leads me to believe that this process is specific to larger offices. Small firms give constant and immediate feedback and don’t seem to have the same sort of HR requirements that larger firms have. My opinion about the role of employee evaluations for the first 28 years of my now 31-year-long professional life, was that they existed as a piece of data that would be used if needed to protect firms from getting sued for wrongful termination.
I don’t think that anymore.
In an effort to keep things more process-oriented and technical, and to set the table for what happens next, here is the definition for my purposes of what an employee evaluation is and why it matters:
An employee evaluation (performance appraisal or performance review) is a process that an organization uses to assess and measure an individual employee’s job performance, contributions, and overall effectiveness.
This assessment process should include setting performance goals, evaluating the employee’s progress toward achieving those goals, identifying strengths and areas for improvement, providing feedback, and discussing opportunities for professional development. How does an employee’s potential for growth figure into this process? Andrew felt fairly strongly that my definition was missing this consideration, and while I wouldn’t disagree with him that there should be a consideration of growth potential when evaluating this for employment or promotions, I’m not sure of its place when evaluating an employee’s (past) performance. However, this assessment process should include an area for discussion of “what happens next”, which would certainly have a portion that would cover areas to improve which could be considered a type of growth potential as it would be a failure on my part to move somebody into a position they were ill-suited to execute.
I reference a video in the podcast that I send to a lot of the younger people I mentor – it is a commencement speech from Tim Minchin and part of this speech talks about being micro-ambitious and how it is important to set short-term goals so that you can “pay attention to the shiny things”. I’ve actually written a blog post (here) on this topic and if you have got a few extra minutes to spare, it is worth checking out regardless of your age or the stature of your position.
All of this is part of an overall strategy I have been working on that syncs the employee evaluation to a mentorship program that we put in place about 2 years ago. I started doing this with the people who are my direct reports and it seemed to be working so I was asked to turn it into a program at the office. I walk everyone through the mentorship process and program that I put in place in my office a few years ago – meeting monthly, formalized, we don’t talk about specific projects, focus on things that can ultimately help the person feel empowered to grow and contribute in a way that suits their interests and their skills.
The Process jump to 30:03
We have some paperwork in place that was developed a few years ago and it’s what we have been using since I’ve been involved in the evaluation process. The challenge with the current system that we have in place, is finding a consistent way of evaluating all employees when there is a small army of people involved in the process. Since this is part of an overall strategy, we needed to revise our process of employee evaluations, which I am kinda doing in a vacuum at the moment. Let me walk you through what I am doing and see what you think.
I have broken the review – currently, this is still a work in progress – into 8 sections, which include:
- Competence
- Teamwork
- Dependability
- Attitude
- Communication
- Quality of Work
- Innovation (or Creativity)
And as a bonus section …
- Leadership
I think that each one of these areas makes sense and can be articulated in a way that allows for a reasonably high level of consistency in its application, but let me tell you why I have leadership as a bonus rather than an expectation. Obviously, not everybody is cut out to be a leader, how to identify those people early on and help provide them opportunities to grow and develop those skills? You shouldn’t be punished during the evaluation of your job for lacking leadership skills, but this effort should absolutely be recognized and celebrated. If I am making a perfect score based on a 100-point scale, any leadership points would push the employee to be evaluated above and beyond whatever score they would receive based on expected prescriptive behavior.
Add that each of the individual areas of evaluation will end up with a weighted score and this final tally will be the thing that allows us to consistently identify people who are ready for advancement, promotions, and even the assignment of performance improvement plans. For example, if your aggregate score is below, say, 60 points out of 100, you will need to go on a “performance improvement plan.” If you tally a high score, you would appear to be excelling at the items you are being evaluated on and could possibly be doing the work at a level that warrants promotion.
Why Employee Evaluations Matter
If you’ve made it this far, I doubt I have to convince you that structured and organized employee evaluations have a valuable role to play in the process of evaluating the role that employees fill in the office. This process isn’t just some critical, or negative, process of telling people all the things they are doing badly. This process is about creating a level of mutual understanding of what is expected, determining if people are being underutilized, or if those folks are being asked to do something that does not suit their skill set as well as making people happy because they are experiencing success. Here are five areas for why these reviews are important and I go over these 5 things in some capacity during every review.
Performance improvement: Regular evaluations help employees understand their performance levels, identify gaps, and receive improvement guidance. This leads to increased productivity and effectiveness in everyone’s assigned role.
Goal alignment: A shared understanding of priorities and expectations is achieved when employee goals are aligned with the organization’s overall objectives. There are times when the person being evaluated might not know conceptually what is going on in the office which could influence how their work is being evaluated.
Employee engagement: Research shows that employees who receive regular feedback and recognition are more engaged and motivated, contributing to higher job satisfaction and retention.
Professional development: Evaluations provide opportunities for employees to discuss their career aspirations, identify skills they need to develop and create a plan for growth and advancement.
Informed decision-making: As a person responsible for this evaluation, you are able to collect and collate valuable performance data through evaluations, which in turn can be used to inform decisions related to promotions, compensation adjustments, and resource allocation.
Would you rather? jump to 59:09
We are taking on a Would you Rather on today’s episode that we have been dancing around for almost 100 episodes now. Today is the day that we finally answer the question:
Would you rather have a job that you find completely unfulfilling but you are well compensated, or a job that you love but can barely make ends meet?
I think your answer to this question is mostly driven by how close you are to the end of your day-in-day-out job. It has to be a consideration to how close you are to calling it quits. Things like your daily stress level is surely a contributor or at the very least, has an impact on how you experience your day. I know that I would answer this question differently if I was 25 years old as compared to my current age.
Ep 130: Employee Evaluations
For someone who made it over a quarter of a century without having a memorable or career-influencing employee review, I have really grown to appreciate the role they play in providing guidance and direction when evaluating employee performance. I haven’t yet been able to resolve the negative connotations that come to mind INSTANTLY when the word evaluation is used (let’s assume that I have some sort of unresolved baggage I am still carrying around) but now that I am responsible for providing them, in addition to monthly mentor/mentee check-ins, I recognize them as an extremely powerful tool. At some level, and especially if I am doing my job correctly, there shouldn’t be any information delivered in this process that would come as a shock or surprise to the recipient. This moment is about evaluating progress, focusing effort, creating plans for development, and making sure that everyone is on the same page.
Cheers,
Bob
Special thanks to our sponsor Petersen, which manufactures PAC-CLAD architectural metal cladding systems. Visit pac-clad.com to learn more.
BONUS Fun Facts: jump to 54:07
Just because I thought this was a resource that people might enjoy reading for themselves, I spoke about the fun facts I got from a Harvard Business Review study. Here is the link and the short-form version of that information:
Harvard Business Review study 57% of employees prefer corrective feedback, significantly higher than the 43% who say they prefer only praise and recognition. It’s worth highlighting that no one in the study said they didn’t want any feedback.
When asked what was most helpful in their career, fully 72% said they thought their performance would improve if their managers would provide corrective feedback.
92% of the respondents agreed with the assertion, “Negative (redirecting) feedback if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.” In this regard we find it telling that the people who find it difficult and stressful to deliver negative feedback also were significantly less willing to receive it themselves. On the other hand, those who rated their managers as highly effective at providing them with honest, straightforward feedback tended to score significantly higher on their preference for receiving corrective feedback.