Employee Performance Evaluations are Good for Your Company, and Your Employees

Everybody likes to hear good things about themselves. Hearing bad things about yourself is another matter. Yet, as a businessperson, you should become comfortable providing positive and negative feedback to your employees.

One of the most important aspects of managing employees is establishing a clear and fair employee performance plan. There are several reasons why employee performance evaluations can benefit your company:

Establishes Expectations

Without a well-defined set of guidelines, your employees are left to their own devices about how best to do their jobs. You should create the parameters by which your employees are measured. To begin, you will need to establish performance standards and goals for your employees. Each measurement is important, yet distinctly different. Here’s a look at what makes them unique:

Performance Standards – Performance standards are set up to allow you to measure employees by the same metrics. Sick day usage is an example of an evaluation criteria. You define the appropriate amount of annual sick days and the consequences for excessive call-ins.

Goals – Goals, on the other hand, can be unique to particular employees, such as sales goals for your sales team. They can also be used to quantify the performance of non-sales employees. Customer service surveys are commonly used to evaluate employees in call centers and other frontline positions.

Invaluable Feedback

Most companies perform annual reviews for employees to recognize exemplary performance and identify areas for employee improvement. The reviews also allow employees to discuss the pros and cons of working for your company. This gives you important advice you can use to make changes to your company that can improve performance and possibly reduce employee turnover.

Written Documentation

Employee performance evaluations can be used effectively to protect your company with employee decisions. Detailed, written evaluations provide a concise record of employee performance that can be used to justify promotions or defend a termination case.

Evaluating employee performance should be an ongoing process that sets realistic expectations to guide your employees in becoming more proficient at their jobs. Setting up your guidelines can take time, but it is well worth the effort to create a better work environment.