Workforce Report | Maximizing Employee Evaluations

Maximizing Employee Evaluations

As we wind down 2022 and plan for the coming new year, many conversations are happening around performance…company wide and from the individual contributors, as well. In order to grow your business, how are you engaging and developing your workforce to meet your goals?

Let’s take a look at the often maligned and misunderstood Employee Performance Evaluation. Too frequently, the annual review looks too much like a grade card and not enough like the potential planning and development tool it can be! The review is often positioned as a singular event, not part of an ongoing process of employee learning and growth.

Traditional Event Style Model	Continuous Feedback Process
Focus is on past performance	Focus is on developing employee’s performance for the future
Top-down goals/metrics	Shared/aligned goals
Manager ratings only	Multi-rater feedback (Peers/Customers/Direct Reports/Manager)
Tracked once a year	Frequent check-ins, monthly or quarterly feedback
Process mainly led by HR	Process is jointly led by managers/leaders/employees

Why Do You Need an Evaluation Process?

• The process helps employees align individual roles to overall corporate goals; serving to provide clarity and creating understanding of how their work impacts the company.
• Communication between leadership and individual contributors improves when the focus shifts to meeting shared and mutually agreed upon goals. Performance conversations help to identify an individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly, give employees a better understanding of the expectations.
• As a team, the leader and employee can create a career development plan by identifying training and mentorship opportunities that will help the employee meet the desired outcomes. Career development continues to be identified as the #1 ask by job seekers and incumbent workers.
• When growth and performance are both valued, leaders can reward their teammates as they continue to develop new skills and abilities.

A well designed and implemented review process can help you establish corporate culture and ensure that employees understand and act on the organization’s broad strategic goals. Frequent and consistent feedback can lead to a highly skilled workforce that sees their own value in the shared work.

Kelly Fuller 
Vice President of Talent & Workforce Development 
KellyFuller@columbus.org