Key principles involved in designing and implementing an effective Employee Appraisal System part 3/3

In today's article we conclude our series on employee evaluations. With this post, we will cover the issue in its entirety, creating a very helpful map of how to navigate when creating employee evaluation questionnaires so as to extract from your employees what is "in the grass" while leaving a taste of team motivation.

Principle 7 - Remember that a professional Employee Evaluation System is characterized by diversity, creating the possibility of a comprehensive and all-encompassing evaluation.

When designing an appraisal system, decide who is responsible for conducting the appraisal, with the choice being between limiting oneself to a single appraiser or the so-called 360-degree appraisal. In a professional appraisal system, an employee is not subject only to a single evaluation done by a superior, who in such a situation transforms into an oracle, judge and prosecutor in one person. The professional appraisal system proposes a variety and multiplicity of appraisals and this can take the form of:

• an evaluation by the immediate superior,
• evaluation by another superior (e.g., from special assignments),
• evaluation of colleagues and team members,
• evaluation by subordinates, in case the employee is a manager,
• evaluation of specialists from the Human Resources Department,
• evaluation of external customers,
• self-assessment.

Principle 8 - Ensure that evaluators are competent to conduct a proper evaluation.

Since the evaluator has a great responsibility, those who decide on the selection of evaluators should take into account whether the candidates for evaluators have the skills to conduct evaluations, know the criteria and principles of conducting evaluations, especially since incompetence in this area can cause damage given that the evaluator often decides the subsequent fate of the evaluated. Evaluators should also know how to use the evaluation system to design development programs, as well as have "moral qualifications" for evaluation (objectivity, fairness, etc.), and when conducting evaluation, they should know and beware of typical evaluation errors. Key in the efficient process of conducting employee appraisal is the avoidance by evaluators of the tendency to simplified perception (unconscious use of techniques that allow rapid, but not always accurate assessment, use of stereotypes that affect the selectivity of perception, memory, bias in the interpretation of phenomena and behavior, tendency to maintain once formed assessment), the tendency to evaluate positively (resulting from the fact that most people evaluate positively people who are similar to them or who come from a social group with which they themselves identify, thus providing the basis for a better or more lenient evaluation) andthe tendency to magnify similarities or differences (attributing people's own characteristics or motivations, which leads to a false mutual similarity; magnifying the differences between the evaluated and the evaluator, in order to preserve one's own distinctiveness as an evaluator).

Let's sum it all up...

An effectively planned and implemented Employee Appraisal System is a good starting point for rational planning of training, delineation of career paths and promotions, (efficient implementation of personnel development sub-strategies), development of a bonus system, as well as recruitment and selection. This allows the company to develop in a controlled manner, in the direction desired by the management. You can also look at the data collected in the evaluation process as valuable information about the condition of the company: its ability to expand, create new products and provide new services, or its ability to survive in a competitive market. Of course, it should not be forgotten that the state of the company is also delineated by other factors not related to human resources. Periodic, systematic performance evaluation is also useful for the employees themselves. Feedback on their own work motivates them to develop, learn new skills and acquire new qualifications. The lack of such information makes it difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to adapt behavior to the expectations and requirements of the supervisor, since the employee himself rarely perceives the need for such a change.