Employee Evaluations: How Honest Feedback Protects the Company

Worker evaluations are often time-consuming and sometimes uncomfortable. Done properly, however, employee evaluations can improve productivity and possibly protect employers from legal action.

A quality employee leasing service should offer a range of materials and advice regarding employee evaluations and should be able to give you valuable recommendations about conducting employee evaluations. It is recommended that you call your PEO before employee evaluation time, or any time you need assistance with payroll, benefits, and other employee related matters.

Unfortunately, the sole purpose of employee evaluations is not to give compliments and spread happiness in the workplace. Employee evaluations are the employer’s chance to be honest with each employee, spelling out where the employee has met expectations and fallen short. Otherwise, if you’re not completely honest during an employee evaluation, you could be headed toward legal trouble.

For example, let’s say you give an employee a stellar review during evaluation time, and then need to terminate that employee the next week because of ongoing insubordination. With a glowing review in hand, that employee could claim he or she was fired for discriminatory purposes. You would have to explain why you gave a positive evaluation and never brought up the insubordination. Therefore, during the worker evaluation, you must discuss recurring problems with the employee and document those problems in writing for both of you.

Besides, employees can’t improve their performance unless you tell them what’s expected. If an employee doesn’t realize something is wrong, he or she is unable to fix it.

The work of an employee evaluation is constant because each employee evaluation should review the entire evaluation period, for example, the entire year. Worker evaluations should bring up issues like recurrent tardiness, absenteeism, failure to meet production standards, shoddy work, etc. Likewise, the evaluation also should detail times when workers went the extra mile to do a good job or made improvements in performance.

All issues raised during the evaluation should be verified in writing, with both the employee and supervisor signing the evaluation. The writing doesn’t have to be eloquent or complicated, it simply should outline what was discussed in your meeting and specific shortfalls the employee should improve upon, if any. The writing also should be understandable to an outsider, just in case the evaluation becomes evidence.

Be specific in your expectations and give a deadline for improvement. For example, your written comments might say, “John should make no more than three mistakes a day in data entry,” or “Mary should increase her sales by 20 percent in the next quarter.” Make sure the standards you set out are achievable and allow the employee to comment on the expectations, too.

Employee evaluations are likely the most important discussions you will ever have with your workers, so give them plenty of time and effort. Use evaluations as a time to clarify your goals, redirect your workers, give compliments, and listen to your staff.