Developing An Employee Performance Review Program

By Gregory Covey


Survey after survey has shown clearly that employees are more concerned about being valued for what they do than how much money they make. In fact, their pay comes in far down the list on almost all employee surveys. The clear message to be learned in these surveys is that employees want to hear feedback on their performance. The very best way to accomplish this is with a well structured employee performance review program.

A very important aspect of a well thought out performance review program is separating out what is absolutely necessary about their position versus what isn't. The absolutely necessary elements of an employee's performance are those tasks that can hurt the business if they are not performed well. For example, a sales clerk's ability to relate to a customer is far more important than their ability to communicate via email with other employees.

Another important element of your performance review program should be the employee performance rating system. An easy but less effective performance rating system would consider an employee either meeting or not meeting the company's standard of performance. Rarely will any employee ever find this type of review program acceptable. Remember, we began this article by stating that employees want to be valued. Simply informing them that their performance is meeting the company's standard will not accomplish that.

The best employee performance rating system will be much like what we had during our days in school. That system was a tiered system that ranged from very good to of course failing. A typical tiered rating system will consist of five performance rating elements. As an example these elements may begin with outstanding, and then go to above average, average, below average, and then unacceptable. Most employees will truly love a performance review rating system like this and will work hard during the year to rise above just being average and this is exactly what we are hoping for.

For your next decision you will have to decide whether or not you would like to include any pay increase based on the rating an employee receives on their performance review. This is an excellent way to incentivize an employee's performance throughout the year. The one risk in tying the amount of pay increase an employee receives to the rating a supervisor gives them is making sure the ratings are fair and objective. In other words make sure that you are rating an employee on established performance measures, such as cash handling skills and not subjectively.

At the end of the day if you are trying to insure your employees are feeling appreciated it is crucial that you have a well planned out employee performance review program. As we have stated above it is possible to demonstrate our appreciation for our employees while providing a value added program to our business. A well planned out system will have a tremendous barring on productivity while lowering the company's employee turnover rate. Supervisors know how much high turnover hurts their business. With this said, it is a positive for everyone!




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