In my 25-year career, I’ve often found companies/firms to be less than thrilled with their performance evaluation forms and/or processes. In a nutshell, what makes up a good evaluation form and process is:

1. Performance Criteria – try to be position specific; think long term so you’re incorporating criteria that will stretch the employee (within their grasp) to help them develop to the next level.

2. Process – it’s always a good idea to have employees fill out a self-evaluation so you can compare the results with the overall evaluation. Look for gaps between the assessments. If they are wide, then the employee may be in denial of a problem area. Be sure to address the area(s) specifically with a game plan for the employee to improve and narrow the gap.

3. Delivery – since the majority of my early experience was in HR, I always make it a practice to have a partner or manager participate with me in the evaluation meetings with employees for many reasons.

At MSW, we recently completed the most exciting performance evaluation year ever! This year we went to a paperless, web-based performance evaluation system. As the administrator, I assigned specific rights to various levels of appraisers, incorporated our evaluation criteria, and launched the program (via e-mail to the employees with step-by-step instructions).

Since we do 360-degree evaluations, all appraiser rankings and comments that contributed to an individual’s evaluation were “merged” together automatically into a clear, comprehensive report, ready for the employee’s review meeting. If some appraisers weren’t sure how to phrase a comment, a “comment coach” provided pre-written, pertinent comments that could be dropped into the comment box ready for the evaluation.

Best yet, we incorporated employees’ individual goals and sent automatic e-mail messages to remind them to update their progress. There are numerous other features as well. The program has allowed us to develop better content for our performance evaluations and – more importantly – a better process. It offers paperless, anytime-anywhere access for all those part-time employees we have today that can work from home or access information when the children go to bed.

Mary Bartlett is COO of MSW Group, PLC, and a MACPA Firm Administration member. For more information on MSW's performance evaluations, contact Mary Bartlett at mbartlett@mswplc.com.

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