Methods for Evaluating Employee & Team Performance

There are several methods for the evaluation of employee and team performance. Some are more traditional, while some seek to involve feedback from others who work with the employee or team. The type of evaluation method you choose will relate to how your organization will react to the evaluation as well as what you want to accomplish through the evaluation process.

A manager evaluation may also be known as a traditional performance evaluation. With this type of evaluation, you, as a manager, simply rate the employee or group performance based on a series of criteria. A manager evaluation is simple to use but may be very subjective in results. These traditional evaluations can also be used across a wide variety of employee types and groups with little or no changes.

360-degree feedback, sometimes called multi-source feedback, relies on a group of people to perform an evaluation, such as co-workers, supervisors, and colleagues. Sometimes the 360-evaluation may only measure attributes or attitudes, instead of actual performance. But the list of attitudes and attributes can be fairly long and therefore give employees and supervisors a good picture of how they are perceived by the work group. One of the potential drawbacks with a multi-source feedback evaluation is that it can be quite complicated and many organizations do not teach employees and supervisors how to translate and use the results.

An objective performance evaluation relies on measurable goals and standards that are presented to the employee, typically at the beginning of the evaluation period. Standards are generally bound by like-groups of employees. For example, call center employees may have to meet a certain amount of phone time. On the other hand, sales employees may have specific standards to meet for each sales period. Goals can be written for individual employees, such as a goal to complete a certain number of training courses. The evaluation itself measures if the employee did not meet the goal, met the goal or exceeded the goal. This type of evaluation can be very effective in measuring performance, provided that the standards and goals are set accurately.

When a group works together, an overall team evaluation can provide you with a picture of how the team functioned. Typically, group members will be asked to evaluate each team member as well as the group as a whole. The evaluation is based on both general criteria, such as teamwork, and specific criteria that is related directly to the project. If you are a manager, it may be a good idea to combine this evaluation with your own evaluation of the group and its project outcome.