Within a company, it is crucial for the boss to set the objectives to be achieved together with his or her employees. These objectives should then be evaluated at regular intervals.
The regular evaluation of the work performed by an employee represents one of the key tools in personnel management within a company. This tool enables employees to assess their own performance. They will then be able to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie and what their approach should be to improve.
For the company, evaluation helps to develop employees or to make it possible to consider in-house training. Ultimately, the climate within the company can be improved along with employees’ personal development.
Objectives to be set
It is important for employee and boss to reach an agreement in terms of future objectives. These objectives should be realistic and serve as the benchmark for future evaluations. This is what is known as management by objectives (MBO).
Initially, employees set out the objectives to be achieved in their job, and possibly the points they would like to improve during the evaluation period (for example, their skills within the group or their language skills).
For its part, the employer will be able to evaluate each case to check that it corresponds to the company’s objectives. It will then reach an agreement with employees on the specific goals to be achieved.
Written evaluation
There are two types of objectives: training-based objectives and behavior-based objectives. The former can be expressed using the SMART formula: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
In other words, the objective should be clearly established. It should be measurable. It should be achievable, according to the employee’s motivation and flexibility. It should also be directly linked to the employee’s activity. And lastly, it should be time-bound, with a deadline and possible intermediate stages.
Regarding behavior-based objectives, these can be divided into key categories such as the employee’s team spirit, reliability, efforts made to improve or customer focus. For team spirit for example, the employer may be able to indicate the employee’s capacity for cooperation, his or her ability to help colleagues or put the group's ambitions ahead of his or her personal ambitions.
Use of results
The results should be discussed between the boss and the employee. Allowing enough time for this is recommended, particularly if the employee would like to challenge certain points of the evaluation or contribute his or her point of view. These discussions should of course take place calmly and any objections should be taken into account.
The results of these evaluations play an important role in future decisions about staff, which is why they should be archived and centralized, even in medium-sized companies.
It should be possible to find this information quickly, in the case where the company needs to recruit staff or if internal staff rotations are planned.
Precautions to be taken
The evaluator should be as objective as possible toward each employee. Many incorrect assessments may result from his or her personality or perception, but also from his or her relationship with the employee.
The employer should start from the premise that errors are inevitable. However, it is its duty to keep these at an acceptable level, by supervising the process.
Source: Personalmanagement, Theorie und zahlreiche Beispiele aus der Praxis, Marc A. Hermann and Clarisse Pifko
