Why do we need to evaluate employees? It doesn’t seem like it’s necessary to do it. When the company was small, there were just a few founders. Does it need to be assessed? Of course not. Even for large companies, if you want to find negative cases, you can definitely find many companies that develop well without evaluating employees.
purpose of assessment
So what is the purpose of the assessment? There are three assessment purposes that I can think of:
- Make the give and take as fair as possible.
- Build high-performing teams and weed out unqualified employees.
- Ensure that employees' personal goals are consistent with corporate goals, and motivate employees to achieve their personal goals through the performance appraisal mechanism.
On the other hand, if your company does not have these problems, then there is no need for assessment.
These three purposes seem to be relatively empty, because they cannot be quantified, and if they cannot be quantified, there is no way to assess them. Therefore, if a company wants to assess employees, it must first quantify the assessment indicators. Behind these indicators is one or more that meet the above goals. For a company, the most important goal is to enable the company to achieve its corporate goals.
To achieve corporate goals, a common tool used by companies is goal management. The so-called management by objectives is to decompose the company's overall goals from top to bottom into the personal goals of each employee. The KPIs (key performance indicators) and OKRs (objectives and key results) we often hear are actually goal management tools.
It's just that KPI pays more attention to results, while OKR pays more attention to the way to achieve the goal. The so-called O is more like a guide in a direction. Most companies use KPI assessment because KPI assessment is very simple and the results speak for themselves. But the shortcomings are also obvious. First of all, your assessment indicators must be quantifiable. How to assess work that cannot be quantified? Secondly, you have no way to assess the process, and you cannot control problems during the assessment process.
Assessment by the technical department
It is difficult to quantify the work of technical personnel, but how to assess it without quantification?
Version 1.0
Our company didn't have assessments at the beginning. One reason was that there were only a few people, and there was only one person for each position. The responsibilities were very clear and personal abilities were easy to see. Later, as the number of employees increased, we wanted to provide some incentives to employees, and we thought about how to provide them in a reasonable way. At this time, a simple KPI will be assessed: assessment results. If the business growth rate reaches expectations, a portion of the profits will be given as bonuses to colleagues in the technical department.
But when it comes to implementation, how everyone divides it becomes a problem. We know that there is a free-riding phenomenon in the team, which means that a person in the team does not create any value but can receive the same rewards as other colleagues who create value because of the team's results. This is actually unfair.
Version 2.0
Later, we started to add some assessment indicators based on business needs. Specifically, first set a base score of 100. If a bug occurs, different points will be deducted according to different levels. If there is no problem, 2 points will be added by default; if the project is delayed, 2 points will be deducted. If the team wants to recruit at this stage, you can set a recruitment indicator. It is recommended Joining one person adds more points. Each score can eventually be redeemed for cash.
After running this for a while, I found that most people were swinging up and down at the basic score. There is little incentive for employees. It did not achieve the goal I wanted: to guide employees to improve their abilities while receiving high rewards.
Version 3.0
To achieve this goal, there must be clear indicators to guide employees. So you still have to quantify the results of your work. So in 3.0, I started to learn from the ideas of the ORK tool and find some key indicators to indirectly explain the work results of employees? For example, can I quantify a person's work-related abilities through a score? For example, communication skills, problem-solving skills, execution skills, work attitude, project management skills, management skills, etc.
Let me start by saying that there is no perfect assessment method, only the method that suits your company. The assessment methods I describe below can be used as a reference, but do not copy them blindly.
Quantitative Capability Model
We divide personal abilities into two dimensions: general ability dimension and professional ability dimension.
1. General capability dimension
The definition of general abilities is the abilities that are required regardless of the position. Based on my team and industry owners, I divide general abilities into four key abilities: communication ability, problem-solving ability, execution ability, and work attitude.
1. Communication skills
The communication ability here mainly refers to communication within the company, specifically how to express the information that needs to be conveyed during the research and development process in words that the other party can understand through communication. It needs to be both on the same frequency and efficient.
2. Problem-solving ability
If you want to solve problems, you must first have the ability to discover and locate problems. Then use professional methods to solve the problem.
ps: We have recently made adjustments to solve problems through upstream thinking. The more upstream you are, the more complex it is, and the greater your ability to formulate solutions.
3. Execution ability
Goal-oriented and the ability to complete predetermined goals and tasks. Including the willingness to complete the task, the methods and methods to complete the task, and the degree to which the task is completed. We can divide the completion of tasks into two types: individual tasks and team tasks.
4. Work attitude
It’s not that I want you to do it, it’s that you want to do it yourself. Specifically reflected in the initiative to think about the purpose of the demand. For the smooth progress of the project plan, take the initiative to undertake work beyond one's own responsibilities
2. Dimension of professional capabilities
The dimensions of professional ability assessment for different positions are also different. I take programmers as an example, and coding is a very important dimension.
coding ability
Code will not lie. If what you write is good, it is good. If it is not good, it is bad. It can be scored from four aspects: "solving problems, being easy to understand, being portable and reusable, and being easy to expand".
If I were a manager, I would also assess project management capabilities and talent development.
project management capabilities
The purpose of project management is to bring the project online smoothly. result oriented.
talent development
In addition to their own ability to solve problems, managers must also cultivate more excellent subordinates to solve problems.
In addition to the above, departments can also put forward some indicators based on their actual conditions. For example, if the company requires the technology department to make patents, I will include the assessment of the number of patent applications in a short period of time. In addition, I will also evaluate whether the team leader can share knowledge. The purpose is to create a learning organization.
Knowledge sharing
In fact, scoring is not the most difficult part here. Because as long as you think about it, you can quantify it. Quantitative standards vary, but the problems are not big. Because modifications can be made during execution, the key is to quantify the execution afterwards.
How to give grades in actual work?
Although there is a scoring reference, in actual work, the specific implementation is not easy. Our company's assessment is project-based, so the time span of the assessment is also based on the project. Generally, 2-3 projects constitute a cycle. For scoring, the method I adopt is subjective evaluation + factual explanation. ps: The scoring rules must be made clear at the beginning.
Subjective evaluation means asking the team leader to evaluate the team members and give them scores. If the score exceeds 6 points, specific facts must be presented. For example, if you want to give a colleague a high score for solving problems, then within this month/quarter, has he achieved the standard of "being able to identify key problems and propose multiple effective solutions, and clearly explain the pros and cons". If it does, then yes.
There will also be some special cases here. For example, if certain circumstances do not occur during the assessment period, resulting in failure to meet the regulations, the current score will be based on the last time. In other words, if his problem-solving ability was 8 points last time, these iterations of the version are relatively simple and there are no problems, so there is no way to give specific facts. In this case, the previous rating will be continued.
How to give assessment rewards and punishments?
After all the scoring is completed, the top 20% of colleagues will take away 50% of the bonus amount, and the middle 70% will get the remaining 50%. The last 10% gets nothing.
My energy is limited, so I only focus on the top 20%, which are the core talents of the company. There is a saying that gives 20% to anyone who wants to get better or make a fortune. The last 10% is what the company needs to focus on cultivating. Through the assessment, I can know where he has weaknesses and where he has strengths. This will make it easier to focus on training. If you are still at the bottom in several consecutive assessments, you can only change positions or leave. As for the middle 70%, we need to clearly tell them that they can become the top 20% if they work harder.
This is actually an evaluation system that can be used for assessment and recruitment. If you have any inspiration, please leave a message for discussion.