Grading Your Employees’ Performance

How to Grade Your Employees on Their Performance

Performance appraisal is the process of obtaining, analyzing and recording information about the relative worth of an employee.

Organizational Development:

Organizational Development denotes an overall and comprehensive development of an organization supported by the entire team of employees working for that organization. A useful technique in the management process that serves as a measure of performance and productivity is “performance evaluation” or performance appraisal.

Performance refers to the degree of accomplishment of the task that makes up an individual’s job.

 

Performance appraisal serves the following purpose:

• To assess the present levels of employee performance.
• To understand the future needs in training and development based on the strengths and weaknesses of the employees.
• To provide feedback on their performance.
• Serves as a basis for reward allocation, such as, increase in pay scale, promotions and many other decisions like, confirmations, transfer, demotion etc. ,
• Establishes performance standards and offers scope for improvement.
• Acts as a motivational tool for workers to perform better.
• Checks and facilitates employees who exhibit poor performance.
• Also assesses behavioral pattern of the employees.

People who work for big corporate companies identify themselves with the objectives of the company and expect feedback, either in the form of a compliment or criticism. Compliments act as morale boosters to perform better and criticism though initially might puncture the ego, induces the potential to perform, to prove oneself.

Managers should never be reluctant on their part to appraise subordinates on the job expectations and demands. In an activity as important as managing, there must be no pitfalls to measure performance as accurately as possible.

The Appraisal Process:

The next important aspect in the appraisal process would be deciding the content to be appraised.

Individual task outcomes where performance is evaluated on the outcomes delivered by the individuals, evaluation of personal characteristics and traits or behavior are done to rate the employees as to where they stand in terms of performance.

Appraisal Techniques:

The widely used managerial technique in the appraisal process is evaluating performance against verifiable objectives, which truly makes sense, because the employees would be blind folded if they don’t have the right direction to proceed.

Evaluation can be done in a comprehensive, periodic or continuous fashion. It all depends on the nature of work done, company practice and other situational factors. Say, for instance, performance review can be done after the completion of a major project, that makes sense, doesn’t it?

Periodical reviews:

Formal reviews can be supplemented and supported with frequent and short informal reviews, for the superior- subordinate relationship to prosper and to keep communication channels open.

All said and done, performance review based on verifiable objectives, although gives better vision and clarity, doesn’t allow the manager or subordinate to grow individually. It does not help in personality development, the emphasis ever being focused on accomplishing the operating objectives.

The 360 Degree Apparaisal:

The latest approach of performance evaluation is the 360 degree appraisal that well suits the managerial cadre. It provides for performance feedback from the full circle of daily contact, that a manager might have, ranging from customers, peers, subordinates, boss etc. ,

This also fits into organizations that have introduced teams, employee participation and total quality management programmes.