Employee performance evaluations can help you recognize when employees need additional training or tools to be successful. They can also become a source of contention and frustration in the workplace. Employers can change the dynamic of evaluations. Utilizing them as a resource to gauge not only how employees are doing but also how the company is doing through the perception of their employees.

Did you read our Part 1 of our article series about the importance of employee evaluations? Check it out now!

Better Understanding of Employees Needs

Many times, companies place too much personal responsibility on employees without giving them the tools they need to succeed. Managers blame employees for poor performance. If an employee is underperforming, there’s a good chance that they’re a great employee who’s not been given the tools they need to do their job. It isn’t always physical tools that allow an employee to be successful; a tool might be levels of clearance, training, or a clear channel of communication. Performance Evaluations are the perfect time to discuss these probable issues and understand the needs of your employees better to perform at their best.

Reasonable Discipline Through Performance Appraisals

When you have regular employee evaluations, it becomes much easier to separate those who are trying to succeed in a challenging situation and those who simply don’t care enough about their jobs to put in the effort. Don’t discipline your employees for the mistakes your company is making. Have open conversations with them and make sure they have everything they need to be successful.

Discipline should not be implemented until a clear path to success is created and ultimately ignored by the employee. You don’t want to punish an employee for something they have no control over. When you do that, you’re creating disgruntled employees. When you create disgruntled employees, your entire workplace suffers.

Accelerated Performance Through Regular Recognition

On the flip side employees who do good work deserve recognition. There are employees who consistently go above and beyond expectations. They are the ones that managers depend on and generally take on more work than other employees. Many managers think these employees are OK and let these employees continue their workloads without complaint. However, this isn’t the correct approach. Without opening a conversation, it can be hard to tell if these employees are close to burnout or not.

If an employee is regularly exceeding expectations, that person deserves to know about it and be rewarded for it. Employee performance evaluations allow you to talk about these contributions and to discuss what that person sees as fair compensation for a job well done. When you acknowledge someone’s contributions, they feel better about continuing to exceed expectations. Performance evaluations help your employees’ set goals and allow managers to re-evaluate workloads.

Improved Employee Retention by Creating a Pathway to Success

Evaluations can improve employee retention if done correctly. When your employees are given clear goals, open lines of communication, and reward systems that they agree to and participate in, they will be happier, more engaged, and more productive. These steps can lead to higher employee retention.

Employee reviews that are mishandled can also be very disruptive to your workplace . Of the more than 1,000 U.S. employees polled in Reflektive’s survey, 85% said an unfair job review would push them to consider quitting altogether. Of that group, more than half said they were either “very likely” or “extremely likely” to think about leaving the company. Therefore, creating a pathway to success is a better alternative to discipline – you need your employees to feel like their relationship with the company is cooperative and not based on fear.

Employee performance evaluations are about establishing communication between employees and their management teams. Evaluations should emphasize rewarding people who perform well over disciplining those who perform poorly, and options for improvement should always be considered cooperatively without instilling fear of repercussion.

Engaged employees will stay with your company longer, and evaluations create clear expectations and opportunities to discuss whatever issues might arise in the workplace. When you handle performance evaluations with care, everyone wins.

In need of a hrms solution that supports you in conducting equal, comparable and fair performance appraisals? Check out our NovaSmart NG Evaluations Software supporting you in streamlining this process.

The Importance of Transparency at Work

Transparency at work is at the core of a successful, positive, and performance-driven workplace. It describes an organization that makes an effort to share information freely, not leaving out the good and the bad. With integrity and honesty, employers can avoid a toxic workplace where information is shared behind closed doors. Employees can only speculate about what is actually going on. Transparency at work build trust and make employees feel like they are part of something bigger. The employer encourages ideas and feedback to be freely expressed in order to continually develop and value each employee’s strengths. This eliminates the risk of overlooking great minds and ideas that could fuel the company’s performance.

Overall, Transparency encourages collaboration, trust engagement and performance between employees and employers. It strengthens the wellbeing and motivation of your employees.

This is how you can reach a transparent work environment:

5 Ways to Reach the Goal of a Transparent Workplace

Define the Company Intent of Transparency

Define your goal of establishing transparency to be more strategic and understand the why. Clearly communicate to your employees what is expected and how it is being implemented. Build trust by leading as an example.

  Implement Regular Stand-Up Meetings

Most of the time, employees don’t know what their colleagues are working on. This can mean that the full potential cannot be realized because there is no collaboration or conversation between employees that can help solve problems. This form of lack of communication leads to loneliness and promotes the feeling that one’s own work is not noticed.

Daily or weekly stand-up meetings can counteract this process.  Stand-Up meetings focus on giving each employee a chance to share their work and communicate possible updates. This form of transparency promotes team communication and employee appreciation.

 Share the Good & the Bad

We tend – no matter whether in private or professionally – always share only the positive, so as not to create the impression that their own performance is inadequate. No one likes to admit to mistakes, but they are all the more crucial for further development and improvement in the future. Therefore, encourage openness about mistakes made and focus on what you have learned from them. Share how you are going to respond and move forward with the project or task for others to learn from it. Do not sugar coat the results, as this can only lead to an unnecessary repetition of mistakes by other employees that do not know about your learning curve.

 Break down the walls between departments

Departments are automatically separated by a certain barrier of different tasks, projects, team leadership and spatial separation.  However, this can lead to false biases, miscommunication and lack of or poor collaboration as there is no sense of togetherness.

There is no need to tear down the walls between departments, but cross-departmental team exercises can be done. Simple ways to integrate this are joint lunch or coffee breaks, if necessary, initiated by the respective team leaders.

 No Taboo topics

The best-known taboo topic is probably the discussion of employee salaries. This taboo has existed for a long time in many countries and companies. Reason? Unknown. Guess? To save costs. The open communication of taboo topics like salary, however, can lead tremendously to a better working atmosphere and prevention of discrimination. This strengthens the feeling of togetherness and promotes the recognition of similar achievements.

These 5 methods lead to a very good foundation on the way to complete transparency within your company and ultimately to more creativity, togetherness, honesty and overall happiness.

Do you want to improve your employee’s wellbeing? Check out our dedicated wellbeing website with many articles about this topic as well as how software can support your process.