When done correctly and using the right tools, an employee performance review process can offer many big benefits to the employee and employer.
While employee performance evaluation systems take many forms from organization to organization, these are the components likely to be included. Some are more effective than others. But the goals for the employee performance evaluation system, or the appraisal process, or the performance management process are similar. The differences appear in the approach and the details. And, that can make all the difference in how the system is perceived by and carried out by employees.
To achieve the best results HR departments and Managers should embrace and work towards these core goals:
Clarity and Purpose
The employee and the supervisor are clear about the employee’s goals, required outcomes or outputs, and how the success of the contributions will be assessed.
Employee Development and Organizational Improvement
The goals of the best employee performance evaluations are also employee development and organizational improvement. The employee performance evaluation helps employees accomplish both personal development and organizational goals. The act of writing down the goals takes the employee one step closer to accomplishing them.Since goals, deliverables and measurements are negotiated in an effective employee performance evaluation, the employee and the supervisor are committed to achieving them. The written personal development goals are a commitment from the organization to assist the employee to grow in his or her career.
Documentation
Employee performance evaluation provides legal, ethical, and visible evidence that employees were actively involved in understanding the requirements of their jobs and their performance. The accompanying goal setting, performance feedback, and documentation ensure that employees understand their required outputs. In the event that an employee is not succeeding or improving in his job performance, the performance evaluation documentation can be used to develop a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). This plan provides more detailed goals with more frequent feedback to an employee who is struggling to perform. The goal is improvement but non-performance can lead to disciplinary action up to and including employment termination.
Ratings
In many organizations numeric rankings are used to compare an employee’s performance with the performance of other employees. Numeric ratings are frequent components of these systems, too. In the old days these ratings were subject to questions of subjectivity. New transparent and metric-driven tools like Sprigg’s Cedar platform means that these concerns are a thing of the past!
Consistent, Regular and Non-Discriminatory
The employee performance evaluation provides evidence of non-discriminatory promotion, pay, and recognition processes. This is an important consideration in training supervisors to perform consistent, regular, non-discriminatory employee performance evaluations. The documentation of success and failure to achieve goals is a critical component of the employee performance evaluation process.