The Value of Proper Evaluations

A past client was having trouble with office morale and communication. They were what I would consider to be the typical small to medium sized office with all the normal problems. They had been growing over the last several years at a healthy but manageable pace but they had not addressed some of the growing pains that were occurring.

While the management had a stated goal of providing as much information to the staff as possible, the staff still seemed to feel left out. There was a significant disconnect between the view from the top down and the bottom up, which was leading to issues festering at the lower levels without management's knowledge.

When I started to work on this problem, the one thing that seemed the most lacking was structured feedback. Some of the IT staff had expressed a discontentment with the evaluations they were receiving, citing that they were created for other departments and never properly adapted to the IT roles. Other departments felt that the evaluations did not go in depth enough, or define specific metrics for them to feel that they were helpful.

This all lead me to the idea of implementing both a new evaluation system, as well as 360 degree evaluations.

Evaluation Overhaul:

I started with the revamping of the existing evaluation documents. I decided to make them modular, so that each department would have one section of common questions, so that everyone was rated on a common set of standards. This section is also used for the 90 probationary period evaluations, giving it dual purpose. After the initial section, the next several modules are interchangeable based on the department the employee is in, making the evaluation completely customizable to the individual workers' roles, with little effort on the part of the evaluator.

Most importantly, this evaluation results in a numeric score. Each question is given a score of 1-5 where 5 is basically unattainable perfection, and 1 is absolute abominable performance. The scores are then averaged at the end and a single numeric score then represents the employee's performance, allowing for the greatest degree of objectivity.

Ushering in the 360 Degree Evaluations:

The 360 degree evaluation, for those unfamiliar, is given to superiors, peers, and subordinates so that a wholistic (or 360 degree) picture can be painted of the person being evaluated. Again, I used the concept of numeric scores, but this time a scale of 1-10 was used in order to capitalize on the familiarity of a base-10 system of grading. I assigned each person an alpha-numeric code that was then used on the evaluations. This way they could be handed out to the evaluators, and anonymously returned to the person who was to tabulate the results.

The results were keyed into spreadsheets that automatically tabulated categorical scores, as well as an overall score. Once completed, the person could see how their work was perceived in areas such as leadership, business acumen, teamwork, communication, etc.

Results:

The results of this simple revamp was astounding. The most remarkable impacts were seen where people who expected very positive evaluations, received the opposite. This honest and anonymous feedback had profound effects on those individuals.

Communication has improved dramatically as management is now informed about the needs and expectations of their staff, and the staff now understands management's roles and obligations better. The past resentment is now completely gone, replaced instead with a collaborative environment from top to bottom.


It is truly wonderful to see such a transformation. Many of the people have expressed gratitude for the changes made as they are now receiving helpful and specific feedback. They say they are better informed about the individual failures and successes they had throughout the year and are now able to have the top-down and bottom-up expectations and opinions be properly aligned.