Why Employee Assessments Are Essential for Companies

At a certain point in time, every company, large or small, realizes the need for personnel evaluation. For the successful development of an organization, its managers must know the existing issues and continuously work on their improvement. These tasks are effectively addressed through employee assessment.

What Are Employee Assessments?

Employee assessments are a complex system for identifying personnel characteristics, thus enabling management to make competent decisions aimed at increasing personnel and company productivity. Personnel assessment procedures are essential for most aspects of work, including employee:

• Recruitment
• Training
• Promotion
• Dismissal

The main objectives of employee assessments are:

• Determining the ratio between the employee’s maintenance cost and the amount of work performed by the same staff member. In other words, they are defining whether the employee is bringing profit to the company.
• Assessing current employees’ potential. Finding out whether it is possible to promote some of them to managerial positions without finding and training new employees.
• Identifying every employee’s functional role - whether the person is a team player, leader, motivator, etc.

Ultimately, the measures based on employee assessments positively affect the individual workers’ performance and the company as a whole.

How to Conduct Employee Assessments

There are many approaches to personnel assessment, but they are usually grouped into two main categories.

Qualitative Methods

Qualitative assessment includes:

• The matrix method compares a particular person’s qualities with the ideal employee model for a specific position.
• Task completion assessment is the most straightforward approach for evaluating an employee’s work performance.
• The 360-degree method provides employee evaluation based on feedback from colleagues, managers, subordinates, clients, and self-assessment.
• Group discussion. It is a conversation between an employee and a manager or experts in this field about the person’s work results and prospects.

Quantitative Methods

These methods are considered the most objective since the results of their implementation are expressed in numbers:

• Scoring method. For each professional achievement, the staff receives a certain, predetermined number of points, summed up at the end of a specific period.
• Rating scale. A group of managers compiles employee ratings. Then all ratings are compared with each other to define the least and the most productive staff members.
• A performance test is yet another effective method to check the employees’ expertise and compare the results.

All of these employee assessment methods are capable of assessing only a certain aspect of an employee’s performance or socio-psychological characteristics. However, the most effective assessment approaches combine both qualitative and quantitative methods. 

For more information on developing effective employee assessments, saving your organization money, and improving HR processes, keep an eye on our blog.