How To Conduct Employee Appraisals

At least once a year all employees must receive a review.  Doing so serves as an opportunity to reward those who perform well and gives an incentive for all to work more proficiently and to aim to meet company goals.  Employee appraisals are necessary for a supervisor to determine how suitable each worker is, their strengths or weaknesses, and how each can improve.

Not only do performance evaluations provide a chance to recognize the stages where employees are at, they help a supervisor focus on how an employee can progress to a higher level.

Important Terms

When conducting an employee appraisal the following factors must be considered:

1. Job performance
2. Attitude
3. Ability to pay attention and follow directions
4. How well an employee accepts responsibility and is liable for their own actions
5. How devoted the employee is to her position
6. Their ability to interact with coworkers and customers
7. Their level of interest in growing with the company

A.  Job Performance

1. To determine performance, a scoring system is implemented based on finding a level or percentage by comparing all other items involved in the evaluation process.
2. Supervisors typically evaluate an employee based on her first 30 days.  From then on, performance evaluations are conducted biannually or annually, depending on what’s necessary to address each worker’s goals, achievements, strengths, and weaknesses.
3. Biannual reviews give employees an incentive to work harder to earn a promotion or pay increase.

B.  Attitude

1. Most people tend to judge others based on their attitude.
2. One who is good natured and has a positive attitude is definitely valuable to any type of business.
3. Those with a positive attitude pride themselves for a job well done.  They work with the purpose of accomplishment in mind instead of protecting their ego.
4. Positive attitudes are preferred by supervisors.  This is because such people are forward-thinkers and have optimistic personalities.  Such roles in thinking can be learned through following the examples of others, reading books, or attending seminars.

C.  Listening Skills

1. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.  As one hears what her boss said, that doesn’t mean she listened.
2. How do you know if an employee has listened?  They will carry out the instructions of a task accurately in order to achieve the intended results.  Like parenthood, a mother can tell whether her child has listened or not by seeing if she has done exactly what she was told to do.
3. Although employees shouldn’t be treated as children, it is critical that they listen carefully and follow instructions accurately.

D.  Level of Responsibility and Accountability

1. How dependable is the employee?
2. Will the employee take the blame for an improperly done task or will she make excuses when confronted by her boss?
3. Analyzing a worker’s accountability must be done carefully.  Did the supervisor explain how the job was to be done clearly enough for the employee to comprehend?
4. If a problem should arise that is connected with a particular duty and the ability to complete it, is it the business owner’s fault?

E.  Devotion of an Employee

1. An employee who has a high rate of tardiness or absenteeism apparently is not totally dedicated to her position.
2. The overall level of each employee’s degree of commitment and dedication reflects on the business owner.  Analyzing devotion helps supervisors ‘weed out’ the poorly performing employees.
3. It is essential that a business offers job incentives as regular pay increases, paid vacation, rewards, bonuses, and health coverage.  Some companies offer growth opportunities and reward systems to praise their workers.  Hence, employees feel like a significant part of the business and are likely to work there longer.

F.  Social Skills

1. A worker with positive and professional social skills is definitely advantageous for a business.
2. Any worker who interacts well with coworkers and loves to work as a team player                    has the makings of a great customer service employee.  Those with superb social skills that can help keep established customer relationships as well as build new ones.
3. Letters of recommendation given by a customer should be connected with the employee who helped earn them.  They should be stored in the employee’s record file and be recognized during an evaluation.

G.  Longevity

1. Part of an employee’s longevity depends on how interested they are in the career field.
2. Employees are more likely to stay with companies that offer bonuses, incentives, rewards, and evaluation systems than those businesses that don’t.  Of course, the employee should love the line of work they’re in and have an opportunity to grow.
3. Workers who are excited by and passionate about their career are always willing to learn more and motivated to increase their skills.  They are likely to obtain managerial positions and can easily be trained in other departments.  Likewise, they can give others the incentive to work harder.

Employment Evaluations in Summary:

1. Create a written list of measures, strategies, and goals for success to compare with those administered by workers.
2. Employee relations and performance are boosted when evaluations are administered every six months (or more often) rather than once a year.  Remember to recognize each employee by her personal merits.
3. Realize that the business may need fine-tuning in order to improve the performance of workers.  This is very crucial when giving evaluations.
4. Never attempt to rush employee evaluations.  Some business owners take their employees to lunch when conducting an evaluation.  Doing so makes the setting of the evaluation a much more pleasant one.
5. All events associated with a particular employee, whether good or bad, must be documented in great detail in the employee’s file.  This includes the times and dates of the mishap or commendation occurred as well as other pertinent information.  Without supporting details, the employee may think you are either favoring them or intentionally condemning them.

Although some companies use software to do self-evaluations, such automation cannot take the place of a traditional employee appraisal.  After all, each employee needs personal feedback and human recognition of a job well done.  Software with glitches will more than likely submit false evaluations.