Many books and treatises have been published in the past hundred years on the value (or not) of effective evaluations, evaluation tools and techniques, and the like. For our purposes today, we’ll offer a few quick thoughts to spur your own thinking on the topic.
- Setting Goals—The most important part of any evaluation starts well before the actual evaluation – that is, the setting of performance goals. Employees must be clear on the tasks and responsibilities expected of them. From a fairness perspective, no employee should be evaluated on their accomplishments if they weren’t informed what they were expected to accomplish, and when.
- Substantive Examples—While a written evaluation might only happen once a year, a manager needs to be actively engaged with their employees throughout the year in order to deliver an effective, well-informed (and fair) evaluation. Keeping track of employee activities and interactions throughout the year can be as simple as dropping short notes into a desk file (or desktop file, for those more electronically inclined) about accomplishments and observations of the employee throughout the year. By doing so, the manager will have rich fodder for substantive comments illustrating the employee’s performance over the course of the entire year.
- Springboard to Career Development—In its ideal form, a performance evaluation serves as a springboard for the manager and employee to look at next year’s needs—as well as the employee’s own career and professional development interests. As such, the “evaluation” becomes a “plan for future growth and success” as much as it is a statement of past results.
