Conducting
Employee Performance
and Development Evaluations
INTRODUCTION
Sooner or later the question arises whether employees should
be rated on the basis of their job performance.
Actually, supervisors and administrative officials are continually
rating their subordinates. No
supervisor, for example, directs the work of subordinates without frequently
making judgments as to their cooperation, the quality and quantity of their
work, their dependability, and so forth. Such
judgments are information ratings. When
the question is viewed in this light, the problem is not whether to rate
employees, but how shall employees be rated, and how should
ratings/evaluations be used?
In recent years there has been a shift away from the
traditional employee rating system -- which places emphasis on the use of such
ratings for administrative actions -- to service ratings, which serve
as a basis for counseling employees regarding the improvement of their
performance on the job. For
example, many personnel authorities believe that disciplinary matters should
be treated in terms of the specific causes rather than in terms of a general
service rating program. The “new
look” in employee ratings emphasizes the use of performance evaluation as an
opportunity for the supervisor to give the employee a better understanding of
the job and what is expected of the employee.
The “new look” likewise provides an opportunity for the employee to
give input into the scope and sequence of the tasks performed.
While this new type of performance review is simple in
concept, it is still necessary to use a prescribed procedure not only to
formalize the periodic review but also to provide a record of the employee’s
performance review.
WHAT USES ARE MADE
OF EVALUATIONS?
Employee evaluation requires one person to make an official
judgment about another person. Few
supervisors like this role of judge and few employees like to be rated, yet
over the years more and more objectives have been sought by performance
ratings. If ratings had
accomplished all of these objectives most of the problems of personnel
administration would have been solved! Here
is a list of the varied uses made of performance ratings:
1. To keep employees informed of what is expected of them and
how well they are performing.
2. To
recognize and reward good work.
3.
To help supervisors recognize and remedy weaknesses in employee
performance.
4. To
identify employees who should be given specific types of training.
5. To
provide a continuing record of an employee’s performance history.
6. To serve
as a guide to promotions, layoffs, transfers, and other personnel actions.
7. To help
determine whether an employee will be given a pay increase, and in what amount
deserved.
8. To check
on the reasonableness of established performance standards.
9.
To check on the accuracy of job descriptions and classification.
10.
To check on the effectiveness of recruitment and examination
procedures.
11. To assist the
employee in assessing his/her job skills.
12. To provide an
opportunity for employers to direct or assist in directing an employee’s
career path.
All of these objectives are vitally important to both management and
employees. It might be expected
therefore that performance rating plans would be generally accepted and
approved. This is far from the
case. No aspect of personnel
administration has had a stormier history than that of performance ratings.
No rating plan has yet received complete acceptance, and most have
suffered criticism and frequent modification.
THE
HUMAN FACTOR IN RATING PERFORMANCE
As supervisors play
such a key role in rating, any organization that seeks to administer an
employee evaluation program with some success must remember that supervisors
are human. They will therefore
tend to react favorably toward some employees, unfavorably toward others.
The most common causes of rating errors are discussed below.
1.
Halo Effect
Many
times supervisors evaluate the employee in terms of a general mental attitude
rather than by systematic attention to particular traits to be rated.
For example, if an employee puts out a large volume of work, a
supervisor may also rate the accuracy of work, dependability, and cooperation
higher than these traits actually deserve.
Conversely, the employer may downgrade another employee on all counts
because the employee sometimes makes mistakes.
The basic question a supervisor must ask to minimize the halo effect
is: “Am I rating this trait on performance or on my general perception of
this employee as ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
2. Prejudice
and Partiality
It
is unfortunately true that some supervisors will be influenced by matters like
race, sex, religion, or nationality, and some may have a tendency to favor
friends, or people with interests and activities similar to their own.
The basic question a supervisor must ask to minimize the possibility of
prejudice or partiality is: “Am I making this judgment on the basis of real
individual or on the grounds that the employee is a Protestant -- a black -- a
man -- a fellow member of the Elks Club?
3.
Leniency
Leniency
occurs when the supervisor rates higher than the realities of employee
performance warrant. The effects
are (1) to force ratings so drastically toward the top of the rating scale
that they are valueless, and (2) to create unrealistic employee confidence
when improvement performance is really needed and quite possible.
Leniency is by far the most common rating error.
There are a number of pressures on supervisors that tempt them to be
lenient: the wish to avoid unpleasant scenes; the feeling that low ratings
reflect poor supervision; the desire to retain the friendship of their
employees; and often the belief that other supervisors do not rate fairly, and
they do not want to penalize their own employees.
4. Central
Tendency
In any normal distribution,
more people will of course be rated closer to the mean than to any other point
on the scale. A rating near the norm
becomes a central tendency error only when it does not reflect a true evaluation
of performance. It is most likely to
occur when the supervisor does not know a worker very well or when there is
difficulty in collecting sufficient data or observations of the employee’s
varied work activities. One of the
most frequent errors made by raters that blatantly reflects Central Tendency is
to give an employee the same rating level of performance in each rating category
-- a condition that is nearly impossible to achieve given basic human
difference.
5. Contrast
Error
This
type of rating error arises from the tendency of some supervisors to rate
employees in terms
of their own expectations and aspirations. In
other words, employees who satisfy the personal
needs of the supervisor will generally be rated higher and vice versa.
Questions like: “Do I make this rating because I expect others to be
like me?” can help to overcome contrast error.
6.
Association Error
This
kind of rating error is caused by several types of “associations.”
Some supervisors find it difficult to differentiate between traits
because they overlap semantically for them.
For example, they may tend to equate dependability and cooperation and
rate one trait higher or lower than is proper.
This error is similar to the halo type of error.
The positions of traits on a scale and the time at which the supervisor
encounters them also constitute associations that may produce errors.
For example, it has been found that the ratings on traits adjacent to
each other on a scale are apt to be more consistent than those some distance
away on the form. The association of
error with fatigue is also common, and so the error that can occur because of
the time at which the supervisor comes to the rating of a given individual.
For example, an employee may be rated higher if the supervisor has just
rated John than if the supervisor had just rated Paul.
Proponents of employee
evaluation cannot, and do not, deny that problems of error will plague any
formal rating system. They contend,
however, that a great many decisions and actions in
the course of human
relationships depend on opinion. Instead
of lamenting this fact, attention should be given to finding a means of putting
such opinion on a more systematic and factual basis.
One of the suggested
methodologies for evaluating employees is to include components of both
self-evaluation and supervisor evaluation as pieces of the process.
In addition to a written evaluation personal dialogue with the employee
is an essential part of a constructive, meaningful assessment.
Sample
Employee Evaluation Forms
School
Principal Professional Growth Plan and Evaluation Process
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