HR MANAGEMENT - How to Measure the Effectiveness of an Employee Evaluation Process

How to Measure the Effectiveness of an Employee Evaluation Process

by Ruth Mayhew, Demand Media

Employee evaluations measure your employees' performance; however, an ineffective performance evaluation can do more harm than good. Measuring the effectiveness of your evaluation process ensures that you're using appropriate evaluation methods for employees' jobs, that supervisors and managers are comfortable with how to conduct employee evaluations and that employees are generally satisfied with the results of their annual evaluations.

Step 1

Discuss employee evaluations with supervisors and managers during leadership training to find out which components of the employee evaluation process are most helpful and which components are the most challenging. Ask them to rate the employee evaluation process from the preparation stage to the final stage, during which they meet with employees one-on-one. Look for areas where there's a potential for supervisor bias or too much subjectivity in the rating process. Explain supervisor bias, such as halo effect and recency error.

Step 2

Conduct an employee opinion survey to determine how receptive the workforce is to annual employee performance evaluations. Include questions about how employees feel they are rated, the timeliness of their evaluations and whether they believe rewards, incentives and raises are consistent with their performance evaluations. Determine how many employees are interested in self-assessments and what impact they believe a self-assessment would have on their supervisors' ratings.

Step 3

Examine completed evaluations for your entire workforce or a sample of the workforce if your company has a sizable employee base. Look for patterns concerning how certain supervisors and managers evaluate their employees. Some supervisors don't give employees high ratings in all areas because they believe everybody has room for improvement; however, other supervisors give employees high ratings that acknowledge performance, diligence and effort.

Step 4

Review your exit interview responses and employee feedback from other sources to determine if your employee evaluation process is the reason employees are dissatisfied or why they leave your company. Conduct an annual review of your company's overall performance management program to ensure it can effectively measure performance for employees in all positions. Revamp your performance standards whenever necessary to reflect attainable performance goals.