Visit us at WWW.FFCA.ORG 29 DIRTY BUNKER GEAR IS NOT A BADGE OF HONOR It’s a disaster waiting to happen FREE PICKUP AND DELIVERY I\URLYNLHYJSLHULYZJVT ࠮  3795 NW 38th St, Miami, FL 33142 Eco-Friendly and NFPA Compliant firesoaps.com evaluating employees above satisfactory and below outstanding. In many cases, this approach doesn’t require supporting documentation. Certainly, this method is lacking in providing useful evaluation data. However, when viewed through a lens of pragmatic realism, it is understandable why managers take this route. Although it is very difficult to develop a meaningful employee evaluation instrument, it is possible to increase the validity and reliability of current evaluation methods through a systematic and ongoing commitment to improving employee performance. Steps to improve employee evaluations should include: • Developing an evaluation instrument that is specific to each employee or each class of employee: It’s not possible to get useful evaluation data from a generic evaluation instrument. The evaluation instrument should include specific job-related performance categories. Depending on what the organization is attempting to accomplish, there is nothing wrong with evaluating one employee’s performance against another employee. Nor is there any problem evaluating an employee’s performance against an organizational standard. There is, however, a major problem in trying to do both in the same evaluation. • Setting a list of goals and expectations: This step includes meeting with employees to ensure that both the manager and the employee understand the specific role and expectations of the employer. This process is not one sided; the goals and expectations of the employee should also be discussed. • Keeping track of employee performance throughout the year: If you don’t have documentation of both good and poor performance, it is unrealistic to think that you can sit down with the employee once a year and come up with any meaningful feedback. This goes for the employee, as well. If the employee wants to ensure a positive evaluation, the employee must provide the evaluator with the documentation to support the employee’s accomplishment claims. • Adjusting and recalibrating throughout the year: It’s not unreasonable to think that things may occur during the course of the year that may require adjustment to be made to the goals and expectations of both the employer and the employee. A dynamic feedback loop between managers and employees helps with any unexpected organizational or employee changes. • Understanding that a yearly evaluation, is just that, yearly!: Nearly everyone who as ever been given a performance evaluation has heard: “Your performance last year was outstanding, but I am grading you below outstanding to give you room to grow.” Yearly performance evaluations have nothing to do with evaluating future performance; the evaluation measures employee performance in a set time before the actual evaluation is conducted. If an employee’s performance is outstanding during that time period, then that performance should be graded accordingly. Although it is nearly impossible to design the perfect evaluation instrument, it is incumbent upon organizations to create and administer employee evaluation instruments that accurately gauge and document employee performance against a set of clear-cut, realistic, and relevant employer expectations and standards. This should include provisions and strategies for improving employee performance throughout the evaluation period. Remember, employee performance evaluations conducted with little thought toward meaningful documentation are likely to bring future negative consequences to those organizations taking the easy way out. July 2017 FFS.QXD 6/27/17 8:07 PM Page 29