No matter how good the employees are, a manager must always strive to increase productivity and improve results. One of the main methods of helping employees grow is through performance evaluation, as it allows us to identify skills and behaviors that deserve improvement, as well as qualities with potential for strengthening.
Regardless of the methods or tools used for performance evaluation, the motivation and starting point should be the definition of clear objectives that can be measured simply and assertively. For example, issuing all invoices by the first business day of the month and closing the product cost report by the first business day of the following month—the more practical and straightforward the objectives, the better the evaluation will be.
Performance evaluations should be conducted based on an analysis of when, how, and how tasks are performed and goals met. Here are the most commonly used methods and how they work:
Evaluation by superior
The most common and simplest method. As the name suggests, the only person who conducts the evaluation is the boss, and no one else.
Advantage
The fact that there is only one evaluator allows for uniformity in the criteria used in the evaluation.
Disadvantage
The employee may be harmed if the relationship between the pair is not good or the evaluator has a mistaken perception of the employee's performance.
Self-assessment
This technique is divided into two stages. First, the employee reflects on their own performance. Then, they and their supervisor discuss the employee's perspectives.
Advantage
They propose self-reflection, an exercise that allows us to think about our performance and identify both skills that need improvement and tasks that are being performed well and that we had not noticed before the evaluation.
Disadvantage
The results may be influenced by the individual views and interests of the person being evaluated, which makes dialogue with the superior difficult.
360° Assessment
It's the most comprehensive method. All employees, regardless of their hierarchical position or role, are both evaluators and evaluated simultaneously. To ensure the method's validity, it's necessary to maintain the anonymity of those involved.
Advantage
Employees have the opportunity to freely evaluate the performance of their superiors, which makes the process very enriching because the entire team has the chance to improve their performance, including managers.
Disadvantage
This process requires a high level of professional maturity, especially from bosses and managers, who must be open to receiving criticism.
Conclusion
In performance evaluations, the method chosen matters little, but rather its consistency with the initially defined objectives. As a result, a list of actions that employees and the team should take to change a specific behavior should be developed. For this process to be more effective, the completion of the proposed tasks should be monitored by managers and considered in future evaluations.
If you don't already use a performance evaluation method for your team, choose one of the existing methods, research and learn more about it, or hire a specialized service. Be sure to implement performance evaluation in your company, as teams and professionals need to be constantly evaluated and challenged to achieve new results to stay motivated and productive.
