How important is for a business owner to assess the performance of each employee on a regular basis?
Of course it is very critical as many businesses understand that this is one of the decent and acceptable ways to evaluate their employee performance, to reach out to their employees, and inform them of their shortcomings and the good things they have done for the company.
The issue here is that not all companies have standard processes for employee measurement. In some cases the problem is so bad that some employees are laid off for reasons that are not substantiated or understood.
They are often victims of bias and poor management. In many circumstances, unclear company policies, undocumented occurrences of infringement and poor management judgements are just a few of the many causes of poor employee assessment.
Result-Based employee performance measurement
There are many ways to measure an employee’s performance.
First of all, employees are expected to work. One way of measuring,in terms of employee performance management, is productivity. The term productivity can be measured very differently in each industry or job function.
For a manufacturing industry, output of the individual employee is a common type of measurement since the employee is expected to complete a certain number of products in any given work day.
In a sales industry, the sales person is expected to bring in a certain amount of sales, commonly known as quota, in a certain fixed measurable time frame. This commonly used employee performance management system is known as result-based employee performance measurement.
By all means, result-based employee performance measurement is a very good way to measure the performance of your employees, but this is not the only measurement.
In many situations your best performing sales person or your most productive employee may be the worst person for your management or peers to work with, be the worst performer in attendance, or in worst case scenarios, be the one that causes the most negative public image to your business.
In such cases, what is the kind of performance indicators you have in-placed to evaluate or assess the behavioural of your employee?
In such cases should there be a clear set of guidelines of what is tolerable attendance behaviour is? Should there be a policy on how many absences are acceptable?
How can you measure the relationship between peers or with the supervisor in some cases? How can you evaluate, assess, quantify or, in some cases, qualify what is a good relationship?
Behavioural-based employee performance measurement
Most annual employee performance reviews use result-based employee performance measurement.
A collection of employee performance data which allow managers to compare employees to each other based strictly on raw performance data. Example would be using productivity numbers or sales numbers.
Behavioural-based performance measures in a performance review using a number rating system. The measurements help to add the functional information such as how well employees perform in given situations.
It gives a more comprehensive view of overall employee performance.
How well employees work as a team can be an important part of an employee’s job duties. Behavioural-based employee performance measures that involve employee interaction include the employee’s ability to work productively with other employees, the employee’s level of cooperation with co-workers in a variety of situations, and how effective the employee communicates with other staff members.
A manager may want to add the number of occurrences for tardiness an employee is allowed to incur for a certain period of time before he is issued a warning, as one of the behavioural-based employee performance measurement.
In relation to this, memos and the frequency of serving them, plus the criteria for serving them, should also be included in the attendance policy.
A direct input from the customers, along with managerial observations, make up the behavioural-based appraisal for customer service. How an employee conducts his/herself with clients, the efficiency at which he/she attends to customer issues, and the success rate an employee develops at resolving customer problems are all examples of sales related behavioural-based employee performance measurement.
Employee performance measurements must be legal and effective
Business owners must keep in mind that any policies you make ensure that the policies are aligned with existing labour laws. Employee performance measurement is something that should never be taken lightly since this is an indicator of the employee’s future in the company.
Regardless of whether result-based or behavioural-based, the objective is in motivating employees to achieve more—knowing that their efforts are being recognized and that management is watching closely as to how they will perform. Of course, performers should be rewarded and non-performers should receive appropriate attention.
Bottom-line, whatever measurements your company implemented must be unique, contextualized, and effective to your business.
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