Performance Evaluation: The Important Benefits

Introduction

Performance evaluation is a formal process that measures employees’ work. It is used to determine the amount of value an employee adds to an organization regarding increased business revenue. Moreover, by this procedure, employees would know about their strengthens and weaknesses in their work, having an opportunity to improve their performance and lead a company to success. All organizations need performance evaluation as it helps to detect the overall productivity and quality of their work. Yet, some managers do not like to do performance evaluation of their employees. This essay claims that some managers do not recognize the important benefits of performance evaluation, and that is why do hate doing it.

Traits of an Effective Manager

Managers are leaders who are responsible for the performance of employees and, later, the whole organization. They should know what works for their business entity and how to make the work more effective and productive for both company and employees. A successful manager is one who knows those aspects well and can maximize the performance of their business structure by applying a specific strategy. There are several traits that are found in effective managers. For example, leaders who have the ability to share their vision are successful as they clearly know the goals of a company, thus they can set the right objectives for employees and explain what they should do.

Another trait is to have excellent communications skills that will assist in interaction with workers and business partners. Leaders should be able to effectively deliver information regarding what they expect from employees and how the work should be done. Here, a manager’s ability to communicate with employees regarding their performance is critical since they should understand each other and work towards improving and developing their performance. One more trait is to be influential, meaning that to motivate and inspire workers in a way that they will follow the objectives of an organization. By having the ability to encourage people, an effective leader ensures productive work. In addition, a leader should be a team player who can manage the work within a team and lead them in the right direction. Leaders should identify the working style of each team member and assign tasks with regard to their strengths. To determine the personal and professional qualities of employees, a leader must learn how to assess their performance, hence conducting a performance evaluation of staff.

Why Managers Hate Performance Evaluation

Traits are not enough to be an effective manager as they work with people and many important aspects of a business entity are determined by employees. Therefore, managers should take performance evaluations that will assist managers. However, not all managers do such evaluation of employees and even hate doing this procedure. There are several explanations of why managers do not like doing performance evaluations. First, managers may not be capable of assessing employees with regard to their skills and working abilities (Sreejith & Mathirajan, 2020). Indeed, to evaluate working performance of an employee, a manager should have a tool or criteria that requires certain qualifications. Due to this, some managers hate conducting performance evaluations. Second, managers do not see the value of performance evaluation systems (Lidinska & Jablonsky, 2018). This is because managers rely on themselves more and think that they should work more to increase productivity of their workers. Third, they also consider that employees will be demotivated if managers condemn them. Performance evaluation can be considered a critique of people about their professional skills; thus, some managers are afraid to judge their employees.

Performance evaluation is a building block of companies as it provides crucial information regarding how well a business structure is progressing and what are the limitations of its workers. Neglecting approach on this procedure may result in free riding of some employees and in more work on others. By free riding, it implies that some workers know that their performance will not be assessed, hence not doing it properly. Moreover, if there is no evaluation, managers will not know how employees do their responsibilities, for example, do they meet deadlines and how they perceive overall teamwork. As such, performance evaluation is an essential part of any manager’s job that also provides useful information to employees.

When addressing the profile of an effective leader, there is typical profile of them. Many people have almost the same expectations about how a successful leader should look like. However, is there a common profile of a manager who may struggle to do his job? Specifically, are there common traits of a manager who may struggle with performance evaluation? To begin with, it should be clarified that a poor manager is the one who does not lead a business structure to a stable growth and does not contribute to employees’ development and improvement of their skills. In some cases, management by poor leaders is also called “toxic management” that results in a decline of motivation in employees to do their work and reverse effects on their personal and professional growth (Lita, 2018). The most common thing for managers that may not want to conduct performance evaluation can be weak communication skills. Managers may not be afraid of the evaluation form itself, but the conversation with employees afterwards. It is difficult for some people to say about performance of another person face-to-face. Lack of communication skills is seen when managers cannot address the problematic topics with workers and cannot explain what they expect from work. Therefore, leaders should strive to achieve improved communication between them and the employees.

The second trait that can be found in managers who struggle with taking performance evaluation forms can be their confidence. It is evident that being a confidant is an advantage of a leader rather than a disadvantage. However, managers should always be in search of how to boost their confidence in a business entity and stuff (Florea & Mihai, 2017). This is because being too confident without a solid ground for this may result in a decline in real work.

Moreover, if a manager is confident about their business structure and employees, they may not see the value of taking performance evaluation. Leaders may think that such procedure is useless as they know their company well and understand how to help them. Such reasoning can be explained by lack of experience and qualifications of a leader. At the beginning of leading the business, some managers may feel elevated, hence neglecting some flaws in the work of employees (Lita, 2018). Such elevated period affects how managers perceive employees. During this period, managers seek to rely more on workers as they think that employees are motivated as the same as they are, thus not taking performance evaluation.

How to Succeed in Performance Evaluation

After knowing the common traits of a manager who may struggle with performance evaluation, this section discusses some key elements of successful performance evaluation. Firstly, managers should know positions and previous key performance indicator (KPI) of their employees. This information will help leaders to understand workers better and identify some patterns in their working style before the actual evaluation. Following that a leader should determine the system of evaluation that will assess employees. Some managers may prefer being involved in the procedure, thus having an oral performance evaluation that is face-to-face conversations with workers, while others may take written forms.

The important thing in performance evaluation is to create standard metrics that are right for a business entity. Evaluation of employees should be done with regards to objectives of a company that is by setting normative performance index for each position in the workplace. By putting objectives, managers will have a clear vision of a company’s goals to determine strengthens, limitations and motivations of the employees.

Evaluation Form

To build a successful performance evaluation form, it is crucial to address a company’s goals and write what managers expect from their workers and how they are doing right now. Additionally, self-evaluation can be included to allow employees to assess their work. An example of evaluation procedure can be the following: first, the form will consist of self-evaluation, where general questions, such as, how do you think are doing? and what are the organization’s strengthens and weaknesses, will be asked. After the self-evaluation form, face-to-face interviews with employees and intensive work with Human Resources department would be conducted. In addition, previous performance evaluations and commentaries of team leaders should be taken into account when making performance evaluation reports. An example of performance evaluation form for direct reports can be the list of the critical traits of employees for a company and commentary under each of them. For example, a manager can build a table with traits and values, such as time management, communication, quality focus, innovation and teamwork. Each of these aspect would be commented by a manager and then given to employees. Additionally, there will be review of meeting the goals of a company, where manager will place the following:

• Exceptional
• Exceeds Expectations
• Meets Expectations
• Needs Improvement
• Unsatisfactory

By this, managers may evaluate overall performance of the staff and set future plans of how to mitigate the issues and how to help employees with their performance. Furthermore, employees will receive feedbacks, thus knowing what they should improve in their work and interaction with others at a workplace.

Conclusion

To conclude, performance evaluation is a vital part of the work of a manager that helps to identify how the business and its employees are going on with the work. Moreover, evaluations allow leaders to recognize some employees and reward them accordingly. A successful leader knows that performance evaluation is fundamental to the operation of a business structure. However, performance evaluations are often neglected by some managers as they do not see the value of such procedures. This is due to high confidence in managers’ selves and their teams, weak communication skills and lack of traits and qualifications. Additionally, scholars found that some managers do not like conducting performance evaluation as they may hurt feelings of other people.

References

Florea, N. V., & Mihai, D. C. (2017). Predicting employees evaluation performance using simulation and mathematical modeling. Journal of Science and Arts, 17(1), 81.

Lița, S. (2018). Insights into the criterion validity of the toxic leadership scale: a Bayesian comparative analysis between good and poor managers. Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 16(1), 40-50.

Lidinska, L., & Jablonsky, J. (2018). AHP model for performance evaluation of employees in a Czech management consulting company. Central European Journal of Operations Research, 26(1), 239-258.

Sreejith, S. S., & Mathirajan, M. (2020). Development of a conceptual framework for continuous performance evaluation of employees to offer reward and recognition. Journal of Management Research. 20(4): 225-256.