Do your employees know how you rate their performance? Do you have a policy of conducting regular reviews? Personnel need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and know if theyre meeting your expectations. If you havent conducted a formal employee evaluation in the last six months, now is the time to assess your teams responsibilities, adherence to policies and procedures, and overall achievement.

Assessing the quality of a persons work is not easy. You have to know which areas to evaluate as well as which method to use. You might use specific forms with a concrete rating technique, or the process might be more informal.

You also need to be clear on what the review is meant to accomplish. An employees first evaluation usually occurs at the end of his 90-day probationary period. He should have received a Letter of Employment when he was hired, which outlined his job duties and goals. The 90-day review determines how well he is meeting company standards. Other assessments might be annual, to rate and improve general performance, or merit-based, to determine a pay increase or promotion.

What to Assess

Whichever type of review you are conducting, it should address the employees performance in these key areas:

After youve examined and discussed these general categories, the review can address specific job functions. These might include the employees competence in:

The Evaluation Method

Most supervisors use forms to evaluate an employees job performance. You can design your own, purchase them from a local officesupply store, or download them from the Internet. Some forms will outline a specific grading method. If you need to devise your own, consider the following simple scale:

You may also want to include an area in which you can write comments. Some topics to address include:

Finally, leave space for the employee to write comments about the review process. He may wish to disagree with your assessments or declare a willingness to achieve certain goals.

Once the form is complete, you should both sign it and retain a copy for your records. A word on salaries: Annual reviews do not mean an automatic increase in pay; however, if the employee is doing a good job, a raise is customary in most industries.

Ongoing Communication

Regular reviews will let employees know how well they are performing and give them benchmarks for improvement. In between formal evaluations, open communication will do wonders for morale. Dont wait for a review to praise a job well done. A compliment here and there doesnt cost you a dime and goes a long way to increase staffs job satisfaction and motivation.

If youre unhappy with performance in any area, let staff know immediately. Its customary to write up an employee for a violation of company policy or substandard work; however, most companies will issue a set number of warnings before putting a write-up in an employees file. Its important to follow a strict policy, so personnel know what to expect. Furthermore, it would be highly irresponsible to deny an employee a promotion or raiseor worse yet, terminate himbecause of an issue that was never even addressed.

Regular reviews are a good way to let team members know where they stand and keep the company on track. The process can be challenging. Some supervisors are uncomfortable with the task of critiquing performance. Regardless, see it through. If you evaluate employees fairly and maintain open communication, you and your staff will enjoy greater job satisfaction, and the facility will reap the rewards of greater productivity.

Pamela Alton-Truitt is the owner of Mini-Management, a nationwide manager-placement service. Mini-Management also offers full-service and operations only facility management, training manuals, inspections and audits, feasibility studies, consulting and training seminars. For more information, call 800.646.4648.