As a general rule, the human resources department develops performance evaluations for employees in all departments. This centralization is due to the need to give uniformity to the procedure. Although the personnel department can develop different approaches for C-level executives, professionals, managers, supervisors, employees, and blue-collar workers, they need consistency within each category to get usable results. Although it is the personnel department that designs the evaluation system, it rarely carries out the evaluation itself, which in most cases is the task of the employee's supervisor.
Advantages of performance evaluation
- Improve performance, through feedback.
- Compensation policies: can help determine who deserves raises.
- Placement decisions: promotions, transfers and separations are based on past or expected performance.
Preparation of performance evaluationsThe purpose of the evaluation is to provide an accurate and reliable description of how the employee performs on the job. Evaluation systems must be directly related to the position and be practical and reliable.
There are elements common to all approaches to performance evaluation:
- Performance standards: the evaluation requires performance standards, which constitute the parameters that allow more objective measurements. Directly derived from job analysis, which highlights specific performance standards through job analysis
- Performance measurements: these are the rating systems for each task. They must be easy to use, reliable and qualify the essential elements that determine performance. Performance observations can be carried out directly or indirectly.
- Subjective elements of the rater: subjective measures of performance can lead to distortions of the rating.
Methods to Reduce Distortions: When subjective methods are necessary for performance measurement, personnel specialists can reduce the potential for distortion through training, feedback, and appropriate selection of evaluation techniques.
- Intercultural elements: The member of a certain group tends to think that the practices, beliefs, traditions, etc., of his own group are the best, and that the practices and beliefs of other groups are "backward", "excessively noisy" or "dangerous". This phenomenon is called ETHNOCENTRISM, and can be defined as the tendency to consider that one's own values are always the best.
Evaluation methods based on past performanceEvaluation methods based on past performance have the advantage of being about something that has already happened and can, to some extent, be measured. Its disadvantage lies in the impossibility of changing what happened.The most common evaluation techniques are:
- Scoring scales: the evaluator must grant a subjective evaluation of the employee's performance on a scale that goes from low to high. The evaluation is based solely on the opinions of the person conferring the rating. It is customary to grant numerical values to each point, in order to allow obtaining several computations.
- Checklist: requires the person giving the rating to select sentences that describe the employee's performance and characteristics.
- Forced selection method: forces the evaluator to select the most descriptive phrase of the employee's performance in each pair of statements found. Both expressions are often positive or negative in character.
- Method of recording critical events: requires the evaluator to keep a daily log (or a computer file), the evaluator records the most outstanding actions (positive or negative) carried out by the evaluated person.
- Behavioral rating scales: they use the system of comparing the employee's performance with certain specific behavioral parameters. The goal is to reduce the elements of distortion and subjectivity.
- Field verification method
- Group evaluation methods
- Categorization method
- Forced distribution method
- Pairwise comparison method
- Evaluation methods based on future performance.
- Self-assessments: leading employees to carry out a self-assessment can be a very useful technique, when the objective is to encourage individual development. Defensiveness is much less likely to occur.
- Management by objectives: it consists of both the supervisor and the employee jointly establishing the desirable performance objectives. Ideally, these goals should be set by mutual agreement and be objectively measurable.
- Psychological evaluations: when psychologists are used for evaluations, their essential function is the evaluation of the individual's potential and not their previous performance.
- Appraisal center methods: they are a standardized form for employee appraisal, which is based on multiple types of appraisal and multiple evaluators.