Question

Manager 1 believes that that it's quite clear whether any particular employee is doing his or her job. In a web developing company, it's obvious if the salespeople are selling, if the Web designer is designing, if the Web surfer is surfing and if the content management people are managing to get customer content up on the Web site in a timely fashion. The manager's position, like that of many small-business managers, is that "we have 1,000 higher-priority things to attend to" such as boosting sales and creating the calendar.In addition, he says, employees already get plenty of day-to-day feedback regrading what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong from their supervisor.

Manager 2 believes, that informal feedback notwithstanding, a more formal appraisal approach is always required. For one, there are always new employees approaching the end of the 90-day introductory period for whom owners need to make decisions about whether they should stay or go and from a practical perspective, this manager believes that sitting down and providing formal, written feedback is more likely to reinforce what employees are doing right, and to get them to modify what they may be doing wrong. She wonders "maybe this is one reason the firm is not getting enough sales".

Wearing your management consultant hat, is manager 2 right about the need to evaluate workers formally? Why or why not? If you think she's right, how would you counter manager 1's arguments?

Answer 1

Manager 2 is right in her assessment. Formal evaluation is one of the most powerful management tool you have in your hands as a manager. I will list out a few of the reasons below for having formal evaluation:

- To make your expectations clear to the employee. By doing this employees know what is expected from them.
- You have each evaluation in writing and acknowledged by the employee, so the goals are clear and there is no room for ambiguity.
- You can review their performance and let them know what is going well and what can be improved.
- You will have something to talk about in your next evaluation session when you have a formal evaluation in place. You would be able to quantitatively review their performance.
- Employees will have the feeling of trust, that they are being looked after. This would improve there trust towards the organization.
- This also provides you with information to use when making employment decisions like, promotions, raise, and sometimes layoffs.

While manager 1 has a point when s/he says that employees are getting feedback regularly, the fact that nothing is getting documented more or less nullifies the effort. Moreover most of the time, feedback is not the same as evaluation. Personal evaluation makes them feel important. Having a good employer-employee relationship also has an impact on performance. A good performer when appreciated through formal evaluation get the morale boost required and performs consistently or even better. A bad or average performer gets a documented evaluation and knows where to improve and has a goal, like a timeline in mind to improve (Because its documented). Evaluations are more personal, while feedback is more job-specific.