A comprehensive employee appraisal is often made up of several different methods of performance evaluation. You can choose to use just one evaluation process when judging an employee's performance, but when you use multiple evaluation methods you are able to get a broader picture of the areas where the employee needs improvement and what recommendations you should make to support employee development.
Self-Evaluation
The self-evaluation is often effective when teamed up with a performance review. The employee is asked to judge his own performance by using a form that requires multiple choice answers, essay-type answers or a combination of the two. One of the benefits of a self-evaluation is that a manager can compare the self-evaluation to the manager's own appraisal and see the areas where there is a discrepancy in an understanding of employee performance. This opens up conversation between the manager and the employee that can be beneficial to employee development.
360 Evaluation
An employee's development consists of progress made within his own department, and the effectiveness of his interaction with the rest of the company. A 360 degree performance evaluation is one that involves input from managers in other departments that the employee works with on a regular basis, according to the Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Centers. Employees are evaluated on their effectiveness within their own department based on their job descriptions, and they are also evaluated based on how effectively they work with the rest of the company.
Graphic Scale
According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the graphic scale of performance evaluation is one of the more common ones used by managers. The employee's performance in various areas of her job duties is graded on a scale. The value in a graphic evaluation system is that it allows managers to compare the performance of several employees simultaneously. The system can be done with numbers or letters, and it usually consists of a range, running from poor to excellent.
Checklists
A checklist evaluation method is simplistic but effective. It consists of a series of performance questions that are traditionally given the option of yes or no, according to online educational resource Open Learning World. An excessive number of negative responses indicates developmental training is needed for that employee. The checklist can be used as a quick way to identify employees that have deficiencies in too many performance areas.
Critical Incident
A proactive manager keeps an ongoing log throughout the year of an employee's performance, and then uses that information to fuel discussion during the employee performance review. This method of keeping a list of good and bad incidents of employee performance is known as critical incident evaluation.
For your individual development, consider the following three questions:
Differentiate the performance evaluation methods discussed in the article.
Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the methods discussed.
Which method do you think is the best? Why?