The Purpose of a Performance Evaluation

Performance evaluations are a company's way of evaluating the talent, skills and abilities of the staff. It also provides an opportunity for the employee and manager to have a one-on-one discussion of where the employee stands and what it takes to get to the next step.

Frequency

Performance evaluations are conducted monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Newer employees may have performance appraisals more often than senior employees to check the newer employee's progress against the job's responsibilities.

Purpose

The purpose of the performance evaluation is to provide feedback on an employee's performance, to create a development plan for areas of improvement and to provide rationale for a merit increase. Taken together, an employee's performance appraisals can provide the basis for a promotion.

Employee Performance

Employee performance should include positive feedback with examples of the employee's behavior (for example, the CSR displayed active listening skills by repeating the customer's problem as he understood it).

Development Plan

The development plan should have SMART goals for the areas of improvement. The goals should be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Timebound.

Merit Increase

Each company has a rating scale (for example, Satisfactory, Not satisfactory, Meets expectations) and an associated percentage increase in pay for the ratings.

Input

Both the employee and the manager have input into the performance evaluation. This gives both parties the opportunity to be heard and to provide honest input and make the performance appraisal a joint process.

Resources

• Performance evaluation systems
• 5 steps to a performance evaluation system
• Performance evaluation phrases
• Considerations for the performance evaluation