Ideas to improve performance Evaluations
sheneman
8 Posts
My company currently uses a written appraisal form that tends to lump everyone toward the middle of the scale. Many of my managers get frustrated trying to show who is a top performer vs. an average or below average worker. Do you have any ideas on how to improve this situation?
Comments
Kidding aside, written evaluations are very hard to quantify. You could start by setting goals at each review and give a "score" based on that. However, some goals are harder that others so it may still be difficult to quantify. Ideally, everyone's goals in a department are similar in difficulty and whoever gets the highest percentage wins. I'm not promising it will work, just throwing out ideas.
However, my boss wants me to find out about SMART Goals for Supervisors. She says, this will improve the appraisal process and get a better rating.
Does anyone have SMART GOALS? or is the Supervisor supposed to come up with the goals for their department?
Desired Results (what)
Responsible Person (who)
Date Due (when)
Method (how)
There seemed to be a miss on how to track the results. Also I don't think that an outside party is necessary to align them with your corporate goals.
One thing to consider, though, is whether the lumping in the middle is actually an accurate reflection of your employees. The nature of averages is that most people do, in fact, belong there. (Unless you're in Lake Wobegon and everyone is above average.) The highest point in a bell curve reflecting performance is right in the middle. Of course, I say that without knowing how bad your lumps are, or how unevenly spread out.
A common misperception is that an employee who meets expectations is 'Average'. Nobody wants to be classified as average. We have created that problem for ourselves.