Employee Evaluation System

Employee Evaluation System- Employee Evaluation systems help managers in evaluating employee job performance and developing a fair system of promotions and pay increases. Further, this helps staff members in improving their performance and assisting companies in reorganizing or devising job functions to fit the position or the employee better. Moreover, outdated or inefficient business practices may be revealed through employee evaluations. Effective employee evaluation systems improve the employer as well as the employee by incorporating goals, through the application of timely and appropriate training and feedback.

Methods of Employee Evaluation

The various methods used for employee evaluation are discussed below:

• Trait-Focused Evaluation System: This system centers on attributes like punctuality, helpfulness and dependability. Employees are rated by supervisors on the specific traits each employee exhibits. Trait-focused systems generally use a basic checklist with ratings of options like “excellent”, “satisfactory” or “needs improvement”. Such systems are usually popular with customer service departments. However, the supervisor’s personal bias and the fact that most of the employees end up with marks of “satisfactory” limits the accuracy and reliability of this system.
• Behavior-Focused Evaluation System: The behaviorally anchored rating system (BARS) judges your employees’ actions using a rating scale to measure specific behaviors. Four rating scales are used in behavior-focused evaluations: graphic rating scales, behaviorally anchored rating scales, forced-choice scales and mixed standards scales. Graphic rating judges behaviors on a sliding scale from excellent to poor. Average employee’s results should cluster in the middle, with poor employees near the bottom and exceptional employees near the top. Behaviorally anchored scales rely on very specific evaluators to score the employee’s actions as pass or fail. For example, does the employee answer the telephone with the correct greeting? Does he/she verify all customer information in the correct order? The forced-choice scale lists rankings of performance such as poor, needs improvement, average, above average or excellent with no other options. A mixed standards scale is a forced-choice scale with room for administrator comments.
• Unstructured Method: Older performance evaluations often relied on the reports of the supervisor to evaluate the employee’s personal qualities. This method relies directly on the subjective opinion of the superior rather than an objective rating scale. An unstructured evaluation might be just a comment or description by a manager to answer questions such as, “what is that employee like?” this is an unreliable method as it is contingent on personal rapport.
• Straight Ranking: In this method employees are compared to each other, and ranked from best to worst. While pointing out the best and worst performers is often easy, those in the middle can prove difficult to rank in order. A good example of straight ranking is a customer service center that gives points for completing service tickets. Employers often post ranks anonymously by employee number. Despite making the ranking criteria specific, the process remains subjective due to customer input, where ticket completion is not always in the employee’s control. This subjectivity renders straight ranking unreliable as a tool for specific employee evaluation.
• Paired Comparison: In this method, each employee is compared to every other employee in a group. As it is based on systematic comparison and evaluation, paired comparison method is considered reliable. These comparisons are best suited for situations where only one employee will get promoted. Each employee is compared and ranked on various factors against the others until one individual stands out.
• Grading and Checklist: In the grading method, standard letter grades ranging from A to F are used in different categories to rate employees; while the checklist method functions by a list of objective yes or no questions such as “is the employee helpful to his peers?” etc. In both these methods, the specific standards are predetermined and defined as categories of evaluation.
• Management By Objective (MBO): Modern methods of evaluation attempt to remove the subjective bias inherent in traditional evaluative methods to some extent. MBO or management by objective evaluation requires the supervisor and employee to agree upon a set of objectives before the process of evaluation. This method depends upon setting of goal and constructive feedback for success.
• Psychological Evaluation: These appraisals evaluate the employee on the grounds of analytical skills, intellectual ability, emotional stability and other psychological traits through an objective psychological evaluation process. These assessments are useful in developing and preparing training methods, and for placing employees on appropriate teams.
• 360-Degree Feedback: In 360-degree feedback, the employer surveys colleagues, supervisors, subordinates and even customers about the actions of each employee. The multiple channels of feedback offer objective perspectives of behavioral traits and actions. From this kind of feedback, the employee is able to set goals for personal development that allow them to make progress in their career and benefit the organization.

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