Key principles related to the design and implementation of an effective Employee Evaluation System part 1/3

In today's post to our blog, we will deal with the topic of effective employee assessments. This is an issue that requires careful insight in order to explore it well. Therefore, we will divide the article into two parts so as to maintain a transparent and pleasant form in reception. Let`s get to it!

Score here, score there ...

Assessment, understood as a way of assessing personal characteristics, attitudes, behaviors and actions taken by the individual, is an immanent feature of every human being, activating at every stage of his functioning, both in private and professional life.

In terms of functioning in the work environment, evaluation of the effectiveness of tasks performed by other employees takes place, regardless of whether we want it or not, because each employee (each of us) has specific thoughts and opinions about their colleagues (co-workers) , superiors, achievements and failures. These thoughts and opinions are the topics of conversations at work, they are the basis for discussions, both in formal and informal circles, while their objectivity depends on many factors, including personal likes and "personal inclinations" affecting reliable and reliable assessment. Subjectivity of assessments made through the prism of personnel may cause that they take the form of private judgments of unfair and often unfair nature, and their occurrence may significantly weaken the potential of the employee team in the effective implementation of tasks. In order to avoid such a situation, more and more companies are taking actions related to the introduction of system solutions in the field of employee valuation, deciding (depending on the level of development and size of the organization) to implement formalized assessment mechanisms (SOP - Employee Evaluation System) or by using ordinary feed - back, as a way of assessing and providing feedback on work factors, allowing aggregation of knowledge about expectations, opinions, strengths of employees and areas requiring improvement in the context of the development of their competences conditioning the effective implementation of performed tasks.

People friendly ratings

Regardless of the degree of formalization, when implementing any evaluation system, one should remember about the purposefulness of its application and measurable benefits that it is supposed to bring to the organization, the more so that the entire personnel policy of the company should be based on the conducted evaluation. Meanwhile, as Scheiner, Shaw and Beatty indicate in their "most companies, employee evaluation methods, along with their forms and procedures, are typical bureaucracy and nothing more than a burden on the manager and a source of demotivation for employees, all efforts to improve these methods relate to changing the form and content of forms, so they only improve symptoms, while the real causes of trouble remain unchanged. "1 Although the above thesis was made at the beginning of the nineties of the twentieth century, its message should still be valid for all those who are responsible for the implementation of system solutions in the area of ​​employee assessments, because an effective system is a transparent, legible and simple system to be used for both evaluators as well as those evaluated, creating the opportunity to link the company's strategic goals with the individual goals of employees. The effectiveness of the system should also be demonstrated by the correlation of the results of the assessment with the main elements of the human resources process (personnel strategy), in the context of identification of the organization's social potential in terms of personnel needs planning, recruitment and selection, remuneration and employee development. A well-functioning Employee Assessment System:

• also provides feedback on work results,
• teaches and disciplines the employee (and appraiser),
• allows to compare human capabilities with the requirements and working conditions,
• builds communication channels, procedures for communicating with subordinates and superiors,
• brings out hidden human capabilities (allowing determine its development potential),
• it is the basis for planning career paths, identifies the best and people to be dismissed

Someone from us or a stranger?

Developing the concept and then implementing an effective Employee Assessment System, regardless of whether this action will be outsourced or carried out internally by designated employees, is a complex undertaking. Therefore, when designing the system, it is worth remembering the following principles, which are the philosophy of an effective rating system.

Principle 1 - When designing the system, review the options and choose the appropriate assessment model

The commencement of work related to the development of the Employee Assessment System means taking a basic strategic decision regarding the precise determination whether the assessment will be carried out using the aggregation model or averaging model, whether the conjunction option or the alternative option will be used. The summation model means that evaluation is the sum of assessments of all incoming employee information, while in the averaging model it is the average sum of partial information. In turn, the employee's assessment when using the conjunction option is positive when all the features to be assessed are equal to at least the accepted threshold value. However, with the alternative option, the assessment is positive when at least one of the important features reaches the threshold1. The choice of options is a signpost setting the further direction of work on the system

Principle 2 - Specify the goals of the assessment, making sure they are based on criteria consistent with the company's overall strategy

Defining the purpose of the assessment is an extremely important strategic choice. This goal can be purely evaluative, boiling down only to assessing the level and quality of work in a given position, fulfilling obligations, and the result of the assessment will be verification of suitability for work in a given position (assessment related to remuneration). The purpose of the assessment may be of a developmental nature, verifying the employee's potential and potential in a given position1, stimulating the increase of his competences, e.g. through a training system or determining a career path. The purpose of the assessment may also fulfill an informative function, as it will provide information on the perception of the assessed by superiors and colleagues, as well as information on the perception of the organization by the assessed and perspectives in the workplace. The purpose of the assessment can fulfill the motivational function (by checking how the assessment affects the work of the assessed person), as well as the decision-making function constituting the basis for undertaking personnel changes. Precise determination of assessment objectives at the strategic level is an important premise for effective programming and implementation of the process, because (at the tactical level) it allows determining the degree of formalization of the assessment, choosing the appropriate assessment method, creating procedures and assessment tools, so that (at the operational level) monitoring traits, behavior and results that are subject to assessment. In an effectively functioning Employee Evaluation System, goals must be based on criteria consistent with the company's overall strategy. Employee appraisal must take place according to predefined criteria that reflect the specificity of work in a given position. However, if the assessment criteria are also not consistent with the company's strategy, the assessment system does not fulfill its basic function, i.e. it does not lead to the development of human potential in the desired direction, and thus does not lead to the development of the company.

In the next part we will describe the rest of the rules for the proper assessment of employees. You can find it here.