There are some classic hurdles that have caused
many employee assessments to fail. Read what you have to consider.
1. Don't focus exclusively on performance. This form of assessment was originally intended to promote a
performance-based culture, but employees see it as a systematic form of
exploitation and control.
2. Avoid the "ceiling effect". It's easier to assess employees the same or better than the previous
year than to downgrade them. But in this way the average of all
assessments drifts upwards in just a few years as if only top employees
work in the company with no more room for development.
3. Avoid insufficient information in advance. Employees do not like the assessment system. They are skeptical, reject
the assessments and draw no consequences from the procedure.
4. Do not only look at the figures. A purely numerical classification of the assessment also makes the
employee a pure number that either "functions" or not in terms of the
company. You cannot see from a number what precisely the employee could
improve or what already works well. Hence, always include additional
qualitative comments with the assessment.
5. Avoid unprepared assessment meetings. If you have no documents or pre-considerations to underpin the
assessment, the assessment meeting becomes arbitrary or dependent on
the employee's negotiating skills.
6. Avoid irregular assessment. Assessment meetings are irregular and not carried out with the necessary care.
7. Be aware of what "type" of assessor you are.Whether, for example, you tend to assess too mildly or too stringently,
etc. You can't simply switch off these assessment tendencies, but bear
this in mind especially before an assessment and question all your
assessments in this regard.
Many of the named assessment failures cannot be simply switched off.
But if you are aware of these failures, you can at least mitigate the
effects or reconsider your judgment.
Also ask yourself what information you based your assessment on:Is it really impressions that you have gathered over the years or only
impressions from the start or end of the year? What would contradict
your 1st impression? Look for many, specific and representative
examples that you can also use to justify your assessment to your
employee.
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