How to Write Effective, Meaningful Performance Evaluations

In this blog, Laurie Maddalena offers guidance on how to provide consistent and ongoing feedback to your employees to help them perform at their peak potential.

Performance evaluations are one of the most dreaded practices in organizations. Employees fear them because they don't know what to expect, and managers often avoid them because they often feel ill-prepared.

Evaluations take time, effort, and planning, and many managers feel they don't have the time. When the performance evaluation process is done correctly, it can be meaningful and effective.

Employees need consistent and ongoing feedback to work at their peak potential.

An important part of a leader's job is to manage the performance of employees. This means providing clarity around expectations, coaching, providing timely and meaningful feedback, developing employees to higher levels of performance, and facilitating difficult conversations, when necessary.

Most employees want to do a good job. For them to be effective, they need consistent information to adjust their performance. An evaluation is essentially feedback and information. The purpose of feedback is to give the employee information to better their performance, or to encourage the employee to continue excellent performance.

Performance Evaluations for employees is a process, not an event.

Managers should provide constructive feedback to each employee on a regular basis. The formal evaluation is a written record of what has already been discussed throughout the year. This means you need to be holding regular coaching and feedback sessions with your employees, as well as giving them on the spot recognition and feedback. There should be no surprises for the employee when they receive their annual evaluation.

The best way to set yourself up for success when writing performance evaluations is to document performance throughout the year. If you use the performance log, it will be much easier to create an effective, meaningful evaluation.

Click Hereto read the rest of Laurie's blog and her guidelines for writing the performance evaluation.

Register Herefor Laurie's two-part masterclass for credit union leaders: "Transforming Performance Evaluations for Peak Performance."