Introduction
Good business is about knowing what you want, how to get it, and what you need to do to reach your goals. Employees are no different. A great employee evaluation process can help employees identify their own strengths and weaknesses so that they can improve upon them over time. This leads to an increase in productivity and better performance for both the company and its workers!
What is important?
The key question to ask yourself is: “What is important?” For example, does it matter more if your accounting staff processes 20 tax returns in 2 days or if your running back rushes for 3 TDs in 1 game? Or does it matter more that your accounting staff gets a 100% pass rate on their audits and have time for lunch twice per week, or does it matter more that your team wins a bowl game this year?
If you look at those two scenarios objectively, the first one has way more value. Obviously, we all want our teams to win games but what are they really winning? A title? An award? A trophy? If they won every single game would that make them any better than anyone else who lost every single game? Of course not! But if all of their clients were happy with their work then yes — they might be considered better than everyone else because they provide an important service that helps people live better lives while having fun doing it (they get paid too).
Know Your job duties
When you’re evaluating employees, it’s important to know exactly what each person’s job description entails. This can be especially tricky for your accounting staff because they may not have a specific job description at all and they’ll likely be doing lots of non-accounting or non-football tasks and responsibilities as well. Even if they do, it’s likely that their manager doesn’t have a clear idea of what those duties are either—it’s up to you!
To start with, ask yourself: What do I expect my employees to accomplish? Which goals do they need to reach in order for the company or team to succeed? You should also look at higher levels of organization here: What is my department trying to accomplish? And finally, what goals does our entire organization hope will be realized as a whole through our work here?
Productivity vs. outcomes
Productivity is the amount of work you accomplish within a given timeframe. Outcomes are the results or consequences of your actions. You can be productive, but if your outcomes aren’t what they need to be, then it doesn’t matter how much work you did in that period of time.
For example, You’re a running back trying to pick up yards on a Friday night football game at a Division 2 Collegiate school and two of your teammates go down with an injury in the first half. The coach puts you in as the new running back and asks if you can play defense too because they need someone to fill in at safety. If this were an accounting staff situation where we had multiple people doing two roles instead of one person doing both roles (running back & defensive), then there would be more room for error thanks to having backups ready to go when needed!
With good measures and metrics, you can improve “productivity”.
In business, metrics are a way to measure performance. They help you understand how you are doing and what is important or not. For example, if your accounting staff is not producing at a certain level but that level of productivity is required for the business to thrive, then this metric should be considered when measuring their performance. On the other hand, if your running back has some of the best statistics in their league but does not win championships or even make playoff appearances consistently then maybe these metrics aren’t that important for evaluating performance and should be adjusted accordingly (or removed altogether).
Understand the impact
Understand the impact of the job duties.
Your tasks can be broken down into three categories:
- Jobs that have a direct impact on the company. These are things like closing sales and generating leads, which directly affect revenue growth. They’re also things like handling customer complaints, which help reduce churn and make customers happier.
- Jobs that have an indirect impact on the company’s success. These are things like being a team player, keeping up with industry news and trends, or finding new ways to streamline processes for your customers—but they don’t directly generate more money for your company in any way (yet).
- Jobs that have a negative or neutral effect on the business overall—they’re necessary evils but not necessarily worth doing every day if you could instead spend time on something else that might improve things even more by doing less accounting work (or whatever).
Quantifiable and measurable
So, how do you know if a measurement is quantifiable or measurable? A measurement can be measured by counting the number of times it occurs. For example, “the number of times I run through the tunnel on game day” counts as a measurable thing because you can count it. You can also measure something that has no physical form with numbers (like your age).
A quantifiable thing is also measurable but in terms of quantity rather than frequency. For example, “the distance between two points on the football field” counts as quantifiable because it could be measured in yards or inches depending on what units you use for measuring distance (distance = plays + yards).
Qualitative measures
Qualitative measures are not necessarily easy to measure, but they are important. There is a lot of subjectivity in qualitative measures, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them. In fact, sometimes qualitative measures can be more important than quantitative ones.
The following are some examples of qualitative measures:
- How often does Terry the Running Back make mistakes when he runs the ball?
- Is Cindy the Accountant’s attitude towards work good?
- Does Terry the Running Back have good relationships with his teammates?
You will know what to improve upon.
A performance evaluation is not just about knowing who will be fired. It’s also about recognizing what you need to improve upon and focusing on those aspects. For example, if you get an employee with a high score for “contribution” but low score for “communication,” it could mean that the person isn’t saying enough in meetings or making suggestions when they should. On the other hand, if someone has low scores for both of these categories, it could mean that they’re being too passive or not making enough effort to contribute their ideas in meetings. That would be one way to improve things at your company: by encouraging more employees to speak up during meetings.
A good performance evaluation can also help you recognize which qualities are important and which ones aren’t as significant when it comes time for pay raises or promotions (or even just deciding whether someone deserves another chance). For example, if two people have similar scores across all categories except responsibility /dependability vs commitment/loyalty—which one do you think would make more of an impact on your team?
Goals
Goals are not meant to be rigid. They should be flexible, and if your team’s objectives change, you can reevaluate them accordingly. Goals should also be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable (not easy but possible), realistic and timely. They should be written down so that everyone can see and refer to them when needed. Some examples of SMART goals for a football team might include QB completion percentage above 60% for the season or a Running Back rushing yardage goal over 35 yards per game average in each contest played during the season. The Accountant submits all tax and payroll forms to the State by the end of the month on time without error.
Employee Input
Before you start talking about employee input, you need to establish a baseline. Your employees will have different ideas of what they think makes them successful and how they want to improve. It’s important that your evaluation process focuses on the big picture while also considering what makes each individual employee unique.
You can find out what kind of feedback your employees value by asking them directly and listening closely as they answer your questions. Really try and understand where they’re coming from, rather than just assuming that their answers are wrong or misguided. If one person says “I had a hard time getting along with my teammates,” maybe she means it in the sense that she thinks some people aren’t pulling their weight; if another person says “I had trouble getting along with my teammates,” perhaps he means there was a conflict between him and his colleagues concerning strategy or work ethic. The point is: listen carefully when people answer your questions, especially during an evaluation meeting—they may seem like small details but they can actually provide valuable insight into how an employee approaches their job! This is discussed in the blog article called what the NFL taught me.
The evaluation should be mutually beneficial and goal-oriented.
- You should evaluate the effectiveness of your system.
- You should evaluate the effectiveness of your process.
- You should evaluate the effectiveness of your people.
- You should evaluate the impact on customers.
- You should evaluate the impact on team members.
- You should evaluate the impact on stakeholders, including investors, partners and vendors/suppliers (not just internal employees), because they are all part of a successful organization and its mission that contributes to a healthy bottom line for everyone involved with it (including you).
Conclusion
We hope that this article helped you understand what an employee evaluation is and how it can be beneficial to both you and your staff. Remember, the goal of any evaluation should be to improve productivity and outcomes, not just “productivity”. If you want to make sure things like morale stay high, then you need to make sure everyone has their voice heard when it comes time for these evaluations. We have number of other great article to read on the subject of Human Resources. Please visit our home page.
