Using Employee Evaluations to Create High Performance Organizations

The employee evaluation tool is an invaluable score card for correcting mistakes and a tool to create high performance employees. Most employees, and supervisors, dread evaluations and believe they are a waist of time. Well, done improperly they are a waist of time. Now, let’s begin to change the perspective by making positive use of the tool.

You can begin to use the evaluation to create a high performance organization, one person at a time, using three simple techniques.  From the outset, look at the evaluation as a score card for what you have done correctly and then areas for improvement.

First, each week write a little note about a person’s performance. Write a date and if the action was positive or negative. In this way, as you begin to work on your evaluations they simply write themselves. You have already done the work documenting past performance, and now you simply transfer the information onto the evaluation form. You also have facts, with a date, to back up your rating. Instead of guessing and trying to remember behaviors and actions you have them in front of you.  If you can not spend a few minutes each week to write a note about your employees then you should look at how you are accomplishing your tasks as a manager or supervisor.

Second, use the tool to develop the employee so they can reach their goals. Ask the employee to create a one year and five year plan for their career. If you want to go the extra mile and show leadership, ask them about their five year life plan. Now they have a long term strategic target to shoot for. Now it is time to make actionable goals to reach the target. You will find people have dreams for their careers; however, they fail to meet those objectives because they were did not know where to begin, or they are actually afraid of success. You job is to help them be successful, if not; never say you are a leader.

Talk to the employee about their goals and help them to reach them by embedding the action steps directly into the evaluation. Tell the employee how you will obtain resources and training, if possible, for them to reach their actionable goals. Then, indicate what they are required to do to meet those actionable goals. At the end of the rating period, you have started to bring the employee along to meet their long term strategic target. Now that they see they are on the path to success, they will be more engaged to accomplish their regular tasks and energized to go the extra steps to reach their goals.

Third, during the evaluation conversations ask how you can improve. What areas do you seem to need improvement? First, this creates a connection between you and the employee. Together, you now have skin in the game.  This will also help to clarify any misunderstanding that may have developed during the rating period. If they believe they can talk to you about your own performance then trust develops. As trust develops, when you ask them to complete a project they are more willing to put more effort into the assignment. Lastly, we all think we perform at a certain level; unfortunately, most of us are not at that level. When we seek feedback from our subordinates we find out what we are doing right and wrong. Then, after taking the ego out, we can begin to reinforce our strengths and improve on our weakness. As we improve our team improves. When we use the evaluations as a tool to improve the employees, as well as ourselves, we begin to transform our mediocre companies into high performing cultures, all done one person at a time.