Performance evaluation and management

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Performance evaluation and management can be expensive, time consuming, unreliable, invalid, and often uncomfortable both the manager and the employee. Some question why evaluate.

So why take the time and energy to evaluate?

1. That which is not evaluated, i.e., measured cannot be improved.
   Without evaluation, any process, procedure or employee will soon fall into entropy. Even so called self-managed teams have an objective against which their success or failure is measured.
   
2. Enlighten evaluation takes place within a 360 degree environment.
   Evaluation must both measure the performance of the employee as well as their manager. Success or failure is not a unitary function of the employee; rather it is achieved through the interaction of the two principal parties.
   
3. A 360 degree evaluation environment includes co-team members.
   Rarely in today’s work place is the employee a solitary figure struggling to perform. Whether upstream or downstream form the employee, co-team members can effectively influence the outcome of a task. Some accounting must be made for co-team members if we are to achieve a valid evaluation.
   
4. The difficult is done immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.
   Evaluation must have a benchmark against which to measure success or failure. Without some form of a yardstick there is no way to relatively measure either success or failure or progress towards either.
   
5. Evaluation is a management task.
   Failure to evaluate the performance of any process, procedure or employee is equivalent to abdication of one of the mangers primary roles, control. You can be assured that “someone” is evaluating that manager and his ability to deliver the desired results.
   
6. Not all employees are created equal.
   Without periodic and systematic evaluation how is the manager to know which employees need mentoring or coaching. Managers often rely on the highly unreliability of recent events to shape their opinion, all the more reason for periodic and systematic evaluations.
   
7. Evaluation is not just about the here and now.
   Effective evaluation gives both the manger and the employee an opportunity to see potential future skill development paths. As a means of employee motivation, nothing works better than being able to demonstrate the next rung on the ladder and how the employee will achieve it..
   
8. Talent management, putting on the finishing touches.
   Evaluation is an opportunity for the manager to reinforce the goals and objectives of the organization and to share with the employee the vision and direction of the future organization.
   
9. Talent retention, some stay others go.
   Organizations spend significant amounts of time, energy, capital, and other resources acquiring highly trained talent. No fewer resources have to be employed to determine if that talent is worthy of the organization’s initial and continuing expenditures. Without evaluation, the wrong employees may be staying and the wrong employees may be leaving.
   
10. Capital is capital, human or otherwise.
    Every other form of capital is measured within the organization, often down to several decimal points. Specific technologies are developed to identify and determine every opportunity to minimize, optimize or maximize virtually all organizational business processes. So, why not the same for human capital?