Source : A Touch of business.com
Why An Employee Evaluation is Important
Even if you own a small business, performing regular employee evaluations helps to keep employees on track with your goals for the company; reward good work performance, and help to give the employee direction.
Employee evaluations are also important to you, as the business owner, in order to determine if you employ the right people for the roles they play in the company and to use the evaluations in order to call attention to areas that need improvement.
Evaluations offer an excellent opportunity to review stages that employees are at and where and how they can grow to another level.
What Items should be Present in an Employee Evaluation?
While many companies are moving toward self-evaluations and software, the same elements are present as when using the old-fashioned form method:
- Job performance.
- Attitude.
- Ability to listen.
- Readily accepts responsibility(s) and is accountable for actions.
- Commitment/dedication/ownership of his/her job.
- How well the employee interacts with other employees and customers.
- Desire to learn and grow with the business.
1. Employee Evaluation – Track Performance
- Overall employee performance is the culmination of all evaluation criteria. Many supervisors use a scoring system and determine a level or percentage based upon the scoring of the other items in the evaluation.
- For this reason, many business owners have opted to perform a 30-day evaluation and, from then on, perform scheduled evaluations every six months instead of yearly. Many businesses learned that a year was too long to “touch base” with the goals, achievements, and areas that needed improvement with their employees.
- Additionally, performing 6-month evaluations add incentive for promotions and pay increases.
2. Employee Evaluations Determine Employee Attitude
- To many people, attitude is everything.
- An employee who has a positive nature and attitude is an asset to any business, large or small.
- Employees who have a positive outlook will always see a glass half-full; not half empty. These people strive for a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work, not for a sense of preserving ego, but having their own sense of a job well done.
- While having a positive attitude can be taught through examples of others, books, and seminars, those employees who are forward-thinkers and positive thinkers as a part of their personality are great assets to businesses.
3. Employee Evaluations Show an Employee’s Listening Skills
- Hearing is much different from listening. While employees hear what you or supervisors say, have they listened?
- Let’s use the analogy of parenthood. Parents know instinctively if their child has listened to directions—and not only heard the directions, but show he or she has listened by following through with the desired action.
- The same theory applies to employees. While they are not children and should not be treated as such, listening skills are as important as any other aspect of their jobs and tasks.
4. Employee Evaluations Ascertain an Employee’s Level of Responsibility and Accountability
- A responsible employee is an accountable employee.
- This means that there should be no excuses and no finger-pointing if and when confronted as to why certain tasks were poorly performed—or not performed at all.
- Caution should be exercised when determining an employee’s level of responsibility and accountability because, often, the business owner did not explain a process thoroughly or in a way that the employee understood well.
- Additionally, bear in mind that if there is a problem involving tasks and their completion, the finger is most often pointed at the business ownership itself.
5. Employee Evaluations Show How Much an Employee is Committed to His or Her Job
- Tardiness and many sick days is often an indicator that the employee is not committed or dedicated to his or her job. In other words, the employee is “there for a paycheck.”
- Commitment and dedication to one’s job also leads right back to the business ownership and “employee cultivation.”
- Does your business provide job incentives such as regular pay increases, bonuses, paid vacation, health insurance, and a reward system? Often, if a business has benefits that offer growth and tokens of appreciation or “rewards,” employees feel more attached to the business’ personality and benefits package and system.
6. Employee Evaluations Include an Employee’s Level of Social Skills
- An employee who possesses a positive and professional set of social skills creates several advantages for a business.
- If an employee not only works well with other employees, has a team-player spirit, these qualities spill over into having great customer service skills. This not only helps to maintain a smooth-flowing and cooperative work environment, established and new customer relationships can be developed and maintained using even ONE employee’s good social skills.
- Letters of commendation from customers should be filed along with employee records, for instance, and included in an evaluation.
7. An Employee Evaluation can Help Determine the Longevity of an Employee
- The longevity of an employee includes how much the employee is excited about the field of the business.
- If your business does its job by incorporating bonuses, incentives, rewards, and evaluations, employees who love the field itself are most likely to stay and grow with the company.
- In addition, employees who are excited to be working in a field they have a passion for are also seekers of additional knowledge and know-how, can be cultivated for managerial positions and motivate others, and are most easily cross-trained.
Important Points to Remember with Employee Evaluations:
- Develop and write down goals, strategies, and measures for success to compare with those of employees.
- Give consistent ‘credit where credit is due’ and do regular evaluations at smaller intervals of time such as every 6 months as opposed to yearly. This will add to employee performance and employee relations.
- Be fair when assessing evaluations; sometimes the business itself needs fine-tuning in order to gain better employee performance.
- Leave enough time to go over evaluations with employees. Many business owners take their employees to lunch when conducting an employee evaluation in order to “lighten up” the atmosphere.
- Makes sure all assessments have data to support them such as letters of commendation as well as documented dates and times with mishaps of the employee so that an employee can never interpret their evaluations as part of favoritism or used as a personal attack.
