As a manager an important part of your job is to provide feedback to your employees on their performance. Some companies do this using a rating system. For instance an employee who is performing as expected may be considered a ‘meets expectation’. Someone who is going the extra mile may be considered ‘exceeding expectations’, and lastly you may have employees who are distracted and perform ‘below expectations’. These ratings may be annual, biannual, or quarterly. Rating employee performance is one of the most challenging parts of a managers job. It’s very easy for an employee to view the feedback as being a reflection of them and not their work. So if the feedback is “negative”, an employee may take that personally. In terms of making things easier for both the manager and the employee, I have found that the following techniques have helped me.

* Set goals at the beginning of the review period
* Half way through the review period go over the goals to see if any adjustments need to be made
* At the end of the review period have your employee write up a brief summary on how close they were able to track their goals
* Be flexible and take into consideration any un-anticipated items that may have come up during the review period which would impact goals
* Trust your employee, but also verify that the work has indeed been completed

Goals provide an important measure of how good a person is at setting a target, staying focused and achieving their goal. I find that low performers often get side tracked and lose sight of what they sought out to get. Some common statements that should ring a warning bell as a manager include “I don’t know what I am doing”, “I have not idea on what I am supposed to do”.

The goal of a good manager should be to help set direction, remove obstacles from employees path, and provide honest feedback for improvement. A good manager should measure his/her success with the success of their team. Success of a team should be measures in project delivery and individual growth. One of the questions I always ask my team members is “are you happy?”. I wish there was a happiness index that could be tracked directly.
One of the strongest indicators of employee happiness can be by asking the question “Do you see yourself in this company in another 12 months?”. Employees who are happy will generally say yes.

How do you rate your employees? Share your comments in this blog.