An employee assessment systematically evaluates an individual’s performance over a defined period. It’s a way to assess someone’s achievements by comparing them against established goals and expectations.
While many organizations now conduct these assessments quarterly or biannually, some still primarily rely on annual employee reviews.
Join us as we take a look in more detail at how employee assessments help organizations grow and thrive. We’ll also provide guidance on the most important steps and elements to incorporate in your employee assessment process so that it is truly a success. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
1. Purpose of an Employee Assessment
2. How to Build an Employee Assessment Process: 5 Steps
3. Employee Assessment Questions
4. Employee Assessment Template
5. How to Measure Employee Assessments
6. Best Practices for an Employee Assessment
8. Professional Employee Review Software for Effective Employee Assessments
Purpose of an Employee Assessment
Assessments inform decision-making for individual, teams and companies in multiple ways:
- Growing self-awareness
- Shaping personal improvement plans
- Helping employees set appropriate goals
- Guiding staffing and promotional decisions
- Influencing succession planning
- Affecting raises and bonuses
Assessments can be used to make decisions about advancement. They can guide goal-setting for the next review period as well. And managers can use the results to help employees set their own plans for improvement.
An assessment will highlight areas of strength that can be used to the team’s best advantage, as well as weaknesses to address. It can also be used to review supervisors and other leaders.
Pros of an Employee Assessment
Employee assessments offer major benefits for employees, managers, and employers alike. Here are just a few key points:
- Identifying each employee’s needs for development. As a result, companies can provide appropriate training and resources. To make sure you are getting the information you need to make this type of decision, you may want to consider upgrading your performance review process.
- Strengthening the manager/employee relationship. These regular one-on-one meetings build trust and understanding.
- Helping employees take ownership of their growth. Employee assessments lead directly into an important next step: identifying areas for improvement and setting a performance development plan. Involvement in the review, training and development process is widely linked with higher employee engagement.
- Building stronger teams, and ultimately, a stronger organization. When each individual excels, teams perform at their best. And in these assessments, employees can learn how to improve their human skills, which are critical to good teamwork.
So far, so good. But an employee assessment also has its fair share of cons.
Cons of an Employee Assessment
People sometimes perceive employee assessments as having two main drawbacks:
- They can be time-consuming. However, we’d argue that it’s more time-consuming to deal with the repercussions of not holding assessments!
- They may cause anxiety among employees and managers. However, holding more frequent assessments can make them feel like part of the normal routine. And when sharing continuous feedback, there should be no surprises—and no need for high anxiety levels. There are several ways to get your staff to stop worrying and love performance appraisals.
They can reflect bias, which then influences promotions, raises, and other decisions. But this bias would exist without a formal assessment process as well. And it would likely influence these decisions to a greater extent without a formal process. When following an assessment process, you can work to identify and address any bias.
As you can see, these “cons” reflect fears about assessments that a good process can dispel.
How to Build an Employee Assessment Process: 5 Steps
Let’s walk through how to design a great employee assessment process and system. By following these steps, you will be well on your way to creating the perfect employee evaluation.
1. Create an Employee Assessment Policy
This policy should outline how often performance must be reviewed. It should also specify how managers should review employees. By mandating the use of the same process for everyone, it will promote equity.
2. Choose Good Employee Assessment Tools
Professional employee performance management software can assist with both light check-ins and formal employee assessments. Primalogik’s tools offer a range of features that solicit the right manager feedback and promote fairness.
3. Adopt a Clear Scale and Rubric
If using software, these tools are typically built-in. You may have several rating scales to choose from. Opting for 5–7 items rather than just 2 or 3 will provide more nuanced insights.
The rubric will explain what each number or rating item means, minimizing ambiguity. Here is a sample rubric:
1 = Employee never displays the behaviour stated.
2 = Employee occasionally displays the behaviour stated.
3 = Employee sometimes displays the behaviour stated.
4 = Employee often displays the behaviour stated.
5 = Employee always, or nearly always, displays the behaviour stated.
4. Design Good Prompts
Including several open-ended questions will garner more detailed responses. Each open-ended question should prompt managers to be as specific as possible. Asking for a certain number of examples can encourage that specificity. For instance, “Describe the top three challenges the employee experiences at work.” (See the template below for more examples.) By referring to a professional guide outlining how to create effective one-on-one-meetings questions, you can save both time and trouble.
5. Train Managers on How to Assess Employees
Every manager should receive guidance on how to conduct assessments. They should also receive coaching on how to hold performance review meetings with employees, including how to document one-on-one meetings properly.
In particular, managers must learn to avoid bias in the review process and minimize rater error. Several common errors can affect employees’ assessment ratings. They can also affect open-ended responses. Managers can also inadvertently make errors in their own responses to employees, using biased or inappropriate phrases.
For example, gender can play a role in feedback bias. According to research by the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Lab, results published in the Harvard Business Review, women are more likely to receive vague feedback (e.g., “you had a great year!”), while men are more likely to receive specific, actionable, and developmental feedback tied to business outcomes.
Overall, it’s important to take the time to address common challenges to the review process, and implement appropriate solutions.
Now, let’s turn to what questions to ask on your employee assessments.
Employee Assessment Questions
Great questions will help produce an assessment that delivers all the benefits described above. Here are some examples of rating questions to include. A rating scale of 1 to 5 accompanies them. On the scale, 1 indicates the lowest level of agreement with a statement and 5 represents the highest.
Goal Achievement
Does this employee … 1 2 3 4 5
Prioritize daily tasks effectively?
Maintain a high level of self-discipline?
Work well independently?
Complete tasks on deadline?
Balance all work responsibilities successfully?
Creative and Critical Thinking
Does this employee …
Exercise creative thinking?
Strive to support team members’ work?
Problem-solve effectively?
Work to build new skills regularly?
Share ideas that benefit the organization?
Communication
Does this employee …
Listen to feedback carefully?
Strive to improve using feedback?
Treat everyone with respect?
Collaborate with others effectively?
Voice ideas clearly?
Handle customer interactions professionally?
Participate actively in brainstorming sessions?
Resolve conflict effectively?
Leadership Readiness
Does this employee …
Demonstrate leadership potential?
Mediate conflicts between others effectively?
Guide group discussion when appropriate?
Mentor newer employees successfully?
Take accountability for any mistakes?
Speak confidently in group settings?
Empathy
Does this employee …
Contribute to a positive company culture?
Notice how others are feeling?
Demonstrate compassion toward others?
Share criticisms tactfully?
Work to understand people’s perspective thoroughly?
Build a high level of trust with coworkers?
Any high-quality employee review software will provide a template with questions to include. You’ll also be able to customize them to suit your specific goals and circumstances, for example, if conducting performance reviews remotely.
The following template provides an example of what an assessment can look like. Rating questions provide input on a broad range of performance topics and subtopics. Meanwhile, open-ended questions provide detail on key areas like overall strengths and weaknesses. For a more in-depth look at crafting employee performance review questions, check out our dedicated article.
Employee Assessment Template
Employee Name: _________________
Manager Name: _________________
Date: _________________
Describe the employee’s top three areas for growth, providing examples.
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
Describe the employee’s top three strengths.
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
Has the employee made significant progress over the review period? Please describe, explaining specific areas of growth.
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
Has the employee’s performance declined in any ways? Please explain in detail if so.
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
How to Measure Employee Assessments
Measuring the fairness and accuracy of your assessments will help you get the most from them. Plus, it will help you make better decisions based on their results.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) suggests scheduling employee assessment calibrations. This means bringing managers together to discuss how they evaluated employees. By holding these sessions, HR can help ensure they’re using the same standards as managers to assess performance.
HR should also objectively measure assessment results to evaluate fairness. Using good software will allow them to compare managers’ rating styles. Plus, they can look at how employees of different demographics are rated, identifying potential bias so they can correct it.
Best Practices for an Employee Assessment
These guidelines will help managers give employee assessments that deliver clear results.
- Block out plenty of time for these reviews, including for the written review. Rushing through the process could lead to biased responses.
- Review goals and KPIs. Look at objective performance management data as well as your own notes. Then, compare this data against individual and team goals, such as OKRs and KPIs. Have employees met specific benchmarks and achieved concrete objectives? This element of the assessment will differ depending on whether you are conducting a 90-day performance review, a mid-year review, a quarterly review, or a probationary review.
- Share observations that illustrate specific behaviours. As you consider any undesired behaviours, ask yourself if they’re actually harmful. If they just reflect an approach that differs from your own, they don’t necessarily need to change. Reflecting on this can help avoid cloning bias—rewarding behaviours that are more like your own. This type of bias guides employees to become more like you, even if other behaviours are equally effective.
- State the effects that these behaviours have had on others and the organization. This applies to both positive and negative behaviours. Never presume that employees understand the effects of their actions. Stating their impacts can increase motivation to change when needed, too.
Sample Questions
Ask employees to complete a written self-assessment before the review. It can include open-ended questions like the following:
What are your greatest accomplishments for the past review period?
In what areas did you fall short of expectations, and why?
How can you work to remediate these issues during the next review period?
What are your three greatest strengths, and how do they benefit your performance?
What are your three greatest weaknesses, and how do they impact your work?
Describe any new strengths you’ve cultivated over the last review period.
Describe any new challenges that have arisen.
Complement the formal assessment with everyday feedback. In-the-moment feedback will keep employees up to speed on needs for growth (and successes). Daily check-ins also provide a space for questions.
When you implement a great assessment process, everyone wins. Continue to evaluate it over time so you’ll spot any weak points and gain more accurate results!
Professional Employee Review Software for Effective Employee Assessments
Using a high-quality employee performance review software can make the employee assessment process simple. It will also help eliminate bias by standardizing questions. And when used systematically to perform a range of assessments, including 360 degree feedback and employee surveys, there will be no surprises! Primalogik is a leading provider of top-quality performance management software for companies of all sizes. Book a demo today!