Performance evaluation: what it is and how it is used in the company

In every company it is necessary to know the performance of each of its workers to be able to see if the proposed goals are being met or not.

There are many factors that can influence the achievement of such goals, such as motivation, skills and abilities of the workers, in addition to how fluid communication is within the organization.

Performance evaluation It is a technique that, as its name indicates, has the objective of evaluating performance within an organization. This tool is widely used in the world of human resources, although not without certain reservations. Let's look at it further.

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What is performance evaluation?

Performance evaluation could be considered as a tool or, rather, a set of strategies focused on evaluating the performance of a company's employees. This evaluation can be done based on very diverse criteria, taking into consideration characteristics personal skills, competencies and results that are evaluated with a stipulated periodicity, as a general rule once year. It is considered a key player in the world of human resources.

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What aspects do you evaluate?

Although each company may need to evaluate some resources or others, as a general rule the aspects analyzed in a performance evaluation, all of them influential in the success and fulfillment of the goals that the organization desires achieve, are:

Strengths
Capabilities
Deficiencies
Odds
Aptitudes
Issues
Degree of integration

All these aspects focus on the characteristics of the workers. By evaluating them, the company obtains basic but necessary information to be able to make decisions. If everything indicates that the set objectives are being achieved or even exceeded, the organization must encourage its workers to continue on the right path.

On the other hand, if everything indicates that the objectives are far from being achieved, culprits should not be sought for this “failure”, but detect any problems that may exist, satisfy the needs and eradicate the elements that act as a burden.

In turn, we can indicate that there are three large blocks that are evaluated using this technique:

Personality, qualities and individual behavior.
Degree of contribution of the worker to the proposed objectives.
Potential that must be developed.

To evaluate these blocks It is necessary to take into consideration the following individual aspects of each of the parts of the organization:

Knowledge of the work performed.
Degree of quality of the work performed.
Relationship with the rest of the company's workers.
Psychological stability (emotional and cognitive).
Analytical and synthesis capabilities.

How is this type of evaluation carried out?

There are actually many different ways when it comes to evaluating the performance of an organization, but some general guidelines can be indicated that can serve as a guide.

1. Establishment of evaluation plan

First of all, an evaluation plan must be established. Performance evaluation is a process of a systematic nature, in which there should be no ambiguity or improvisation.. For this reason, several aspects must be established on which the evaluators will base their evaluation. Among these the most important are:

What is going to be evaluated?
Way to apply the evaluation.
Time period to evaluate.
Period of time that the evaluation will last.
Frequency (weekly, semi-annual, annual,...).
Who is going to carry out the evaluation.
What meters will be used for the evaluation.

It is recommended that the evaluator be an external company, since in that case the evaluation will not be influenced by personal perceptions nor will prejudices that the workers of the company itself have with respect to their colleagues and effectiveness of the same.

As for the meters, there are many that can be taken into account, such as the quality of work, opportunities, productivity, employee motivation...

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2. Principles on which it is based

Performance evaluation must be based on a series of basic principles to be useful:

It must be in tune with the business strategy.
It should focus on better employee training.
The standards must be based on useful information about the job.
The objectives must be clearly defined.
Employees must actively participate in the evaluation.
The evaluator must offer knowledge and skills to obtain improvements.

3. Indicators to use in the evaluation

As in any type of evaluation, different indicators must be taken into account that allow us to know the degree of performance of the workers. These They will be fundamental to be able to measure and analyze the skills, capabilities, productivity and motivation of the organization., in other aspects.

3.1. Strategic indicators

Degree of compliance with the established objectives.
Strategy correction.
Resource orientation.
Organization strategies and forms of application.

3.2. Management indicators

Degree of progress achieved through activities and processes.
Data on activities carried out.

4. Evaluation methods

Finally we come to the section on evaluation methods. There are several tools within this technique that can be used to evaluate the degree of performance of the organization.

Choosing one or another instrument will depend on each company, although it should be noted that this tool will tend to have a personalized design., adapting to the characteristics and needs of the organization.

There are many methods with which performance evaluation can be carried out and here we will mention only a few such as self-evaluation, evaluation by equal, the one carried out by subordinates, the one carried out by superiors, the one carried out by clients or the 360º evaluation in which all the evaluations are integrated mentioned.

Criticisms of this technique

Up to this point we have described what performance evaluation is, indicating that it has several uses. focused on improving performance throughout the company. In addition to everything we have already discussed up to this point, there are those who consider that this tool has many more advantages, among which we could highlight:

Make decisions regarding remuneration and promotions.
Supervise evaluations of all jobs.
Offer feedback to employees.
Identification and development of training.
Helps decide who to fire.

However, within the world of human resources it seems that there is a rather different reality than what this tool is supposed to offer. Performance management and evaluation as it seems to be practiced in most companies has become a bureaucratic process and therefore tedious. Furthermore, this type of evaluation, far from fulfilling its purpose, which is neither more nor less than seeing the performance of the organization, have become a bad pill that workers want to get rid of at once.

This has meant that far from being seen as a tool for learning and improving the organization, employees, managers and even the Human Resources department come to hate it. In fact, performance evaluations have been used for more than half a century and the vast majority of them are unsatisfactory. This has not improved in recent decades, although changes have been added to the methodology to make it more attractive and easier to apply, with techniques such as 360º evaluation, Stack Ranking or Performance Review.

But apart from all this, it seems that The main problem with performance evaluation is its limited frequency. Most companies that apply it only do it once a year, partly because they don't see it as a tasteful task and simply do it when it's their turn. The problem with this is that it makes this technique completely lose its usefulness, since it implies that the evaluation, analysis of the organization and the feedback given to its workers is given in periods of time that are too long, making the information received have very little impact.

Organizations are not fixed entities, but are constantly evolving and, therefore, it is necessary to carry out performance evaluations with certain periodicity. A year is a very long period of time, long enough for everything evaluated in the previous session and which was indicated to be on the right track may now have gone awry and be a problem. By applying it regularly, performance evaluation manages to improve results, increase productivity and quality, in addition to solving possible communication problems between bosses and employees.

This is why performance evaluations should be carried out more frequently, at least once every month. If only one is done each year, there are many aspects that have to be evaluated and a longer period of time taken into account, while when doing it only monthly What was done during the last month will have to be evaluated, something much more affordable and easier to modify in the short term when the month's evaluation comes. following. The greater the frequency, the less bureaucratic and burdensome this technique turns out to be.