Human Resources and Employee Evaluations Issues

Human resources play a very large role in an organization. The department is tasked with evaluating potential employees, managing existing employees, and reprimanding problematic employees. One job function under managing existing employees is employee evaluations. Human resources do get some help performing this function in the form of evaluations filled out by the employee’s manager. It is customary in many companies for an employee to be evaluated by his or her manager on at least an annual basis. The annual evaluation gives the manager an opportunity to discuss the employee’s performance throughout the year and bring up any issues the manager may have with employee performance. The evaluation is also a good time to reward higher performing employees for their many successes. The reward could be anything ranging from a raise to a promotion depending on performance, but how is the performance evaluated? What criteria should be used to measure how an employee performs during an evaluation?

Task outcomes, behaviors, and traits are generally the most used criteria to judge employee evaluations. Task outcomes involve the amount of production output for a given shift, the timeliness and accuracy of drawings for a CAD operator, or the overall sales numbers for an account executive. In a production environment, even though quantity is judged, quality of the product would also be judged because output is meaningless if half the product is returned because of casting or milling flaws. Accuracy in a CAD drawing is extremely important. If changes made by the architect are not transferred accurately, it could lead to construction delays on the jobsite and ultimately tarnish the reputation of the construction company. For an account executi...

... middle of paper ...

...agreed upon evaluation system and build a standardized scale for organization wide evaluations. The behaviorally anchored rating scales could also be used by other departments for job and/or departmental specific evaluation criteria. The evaluations system could be updated to use the 360 degree approach so that employee evaluations could be performed by multiple people. This approach would give a better overall view of the employee performance while also increasing the likelihood that the employee will accept the evaluation. Employee evaluations are an important part of growth within an organization. Therefore the evaluation should be as beneficial and informative to everyone involved as possible. That creates an environment to foster employee growth while maintaining standards for everyone involved on the process, leading to happier, healthier working environment.