A 7-Point Employee Evaluation Checklist

From guest blogger Wes Houston | Grapevine Evaluations

Employee assessments benefit both employee and supervisor. The employee realizes information about themselves, not previously realized and they give managers insight into the employee’s mindset. This provides a foundation for further employee development and, by extension, development of the organization.

Organizations that want to contribute to their communities need a collaborative spirit and effective teamwork.

True collaboration requires members with a common goal and have the relationship skills to help the team run smoothly.

To develop relationship-building skills an individual needs their own self awareness. People who understand their reasoning and motivations they can better help others develop.

Assessments increasing that individual’s own self-awareness.

Consider All 3 Mind Aspects

Evaluations need to complete a picture. Therefore, they must address all three parts of the mind in evaluations:

Affective: the feeling part of the mind

Conative: the striving part of the mind

Cognitive: the thinking part of the mind

All three parts formulate how and what a person feels, acts, or thinks. Assessing only one or two leaves the organization with gaps causing misinterpretation. The information gleaned in an employee assessment allows the Human Resources division of the company to:

Better assimilate teams. Too similar talents and skills in any team will stunt creativity and decision-making.

Recruit the best employee fit for a particular job. You know what you need for a specific position. Knowing a potential member’s assessment allows you to match the right person with the job a hand. Age, sex and religion are permitted evaluation stats.

Develop skills and optimize talents. When you understand how employees operate you can develop their abilities and help them better talents.

Bring awareness and not overlook.. Assessments can help employees objectively see how the three parts of the mind interact and influence the work. Assessments also highlight areas for improvement and can open a door for dialogue and strategies that help better communication:

Listen

Collaborate

Be Less defensive, and

Be empathetic toward others who need improvement

Strategic Approach with Awareness

Results should never be used as an excuse for a person to do things a certain way. Assessments are supposed to increase awareness of self so as to learn to modify effect and skills, working better with others. The best use of employee assessments is to build cooperation among employees, resulting in a better organization.

5 Point vs 7 Point Likert Evaluation System

Most organizations prefer the five point evaluation system, wherein the supervisor checks:

Employee Arrives on Time

Employee is always ready and prepared to work

Employee is willing to assist others when directed

Employee completes projects on time and well.

Employee works well with others and takes instruction well.

The five points are each given rating grades for each:

Poor,

Needs Improvement,

Good and

Excellent

In the 7 Point Likert Evaluation System, more questions deal with the individual’s mindset:

Employee is timely and hard worker

Employee is knowledgeable about his duties and Works to Learn More

Employee has good work ethics and applies them to duties

Employee works well as a team member

Employee works well as a team leader or supervisor

Employee has a positive effect on co-workers and their performance

Employee has potential for supervisory position in future

As in the five point system, the ratings in each of the 7 point categories are:

Poor,

Needs Improvement,

Good and

Excellent is awarded

Most assessment charts as listed above are for employers and have space for the evaluator to make comments elaborating on some necessary portion of the assessment, along with a space for the employee to sign that he has had his evaluation explained and he agrees with the content.

Likert System Usually Requests Degree of Agreement

The Likert 5 point system states a fact and requests the person being examined or assessed to:

Agree Strongly

Agree Somewhat

Have neutral not Agree nor Disagree Opinion

Strongly Disagree

This assessment is more of a survey than an evaluation, since the subject or topic is being rated with a grade that the evaluators must agree or disagree upon by degree. It is the assessment most commonly used by commercial enterprises to take the pulse of their current promotional endeavors.

Purpose and Benefits

In Likert’s 5 point system above, the commercial enterprise received feedback from customers that either dismiss or reinforce their promotional options. In the first two examples of evaluations for employee performance, the employee is shown a rating representing his work performance.

In a perfect world, the employee would thank the supervisor for the critique, whether good, bad or indifferent, and go off whistling happily that now he understood exactly where he fell short of the company’s expectations, and how he can remedy the shortcoming.