Why assess employees?

  1. The direction of assessment is the direction employees need to strive for in their work.
  2. People are not that self-disciplined; assessment indicators are needed to constrain or urge employees.
  3. Establish a fair mechanism where everyone's work value and benefits are calculated based on a common assessment standard.
  4. Clarify the positive guiding role of assessment; otherwise, employees often think the boss is trying to find reasons to deduct their pay. These are the general principles. In specific assessment system design, there are mainly three orientations:

01 Orientation towards employee work input or results This orientation is based on creating value for the company, using the employee's actual workload or work results as the measurement standard. From the boss's perspective, this assessment orientation is good, and the principle is simple: employees create benefits for the work, and the company calculates the employee's contribution through assessment. It's fair, more work means more reward, isn't that a win-win? Objectively speaking, the core of this assessment orientation is to first look at how much contribution the employee has made to the company and how much value and benefit they have brought, and based on this result, the boss then calculates and distributes benefits. That is, all the work value of employees is to create benefits for the company. Of course, this is not wrong; otherwise, why would the boss need employees? To worship them like ancestors? This assessment model is more suitable for companies with relatively sound management systems, clear division of labor among positions, certain horizontal support capabilities among positions, departments, and systems, high employee recognition of the company's reputation, and few historical legacy issues. At the same time, the orientation of assessing based on the value created by employees for the company is essentially controlled by the boss. On the surface, it should not overly reflect that this is the boss's unilateral will; more consultation mechanisms between the boss and employees should be incorporated. The final assessment system should reflect that it is the result of joint consultation between the boss and employees. Moreover, these assessment standards should not be static; they should be supplemented and improved annually based on the situation.

02 Orientation towards employees' standardized execution ability In companies with relatively sound management systems, employees only need to execute work according to established standards and processes. This is the process; they do not need to be responsible for the results, only for the work process. For example, sales personnel should follow established standards to do terminal store files, visits, displays, merchandising, customer relations, etc., which is doing the process work well. Objectively speaking, as long as employees do these processes well, the results generally won't be too bad. Many times, employees' poor performance is because they did not do the relevant process work well. Although some companies also involve assessment of the execution process, the weight is relatively small, and more emphasis is on assessing results. Employees also focus more on results and do not pay much attention to the process. The ideal state is for employees to be responsible for both the process and the results, but this is almost impossible. If employees had this awareness and execution ability, they would have started their own businesses long ago. Assessing employees' execution ability of current established standards, in turn, forces bosses to continuously strengthen standardization construction, forming an effective combination between process and results. Furthermore, this assessment method is more suitable for the initial stage of new employees, where they don't need to rush to produce results but can learn and do things according to established standards. If they can't even do the process well, how can the quality of future results be guaranteed?

03 Orientation towards employees' personal growth Whether assessing employees based on process or results, both emphasize the employee's contribution to the company, first satisfying the company's interests, then considering the employee's personal benefits. Another approach is to avoid company interests and use the employee's personal growth as the assessment standard, such as setting assessment standards for work ability, learning achievements, work attitude, customer evaluations, innovation awareness, etc. The purpose of this assessment orientation is to promote employees' personal growth, enhance their personal value, and also first address the issue of employees' personal work ability. At the same time, it effectively establishes employees' positive perception of the company. Normal employees, those who are responsible for themselves, should have a higher acceptance of this assessment method that cares about their own abilities. If there is resistance to this assessment model, then the employee has no cultivation value.

Author: Pan Wenfu Originally a private business owner, he operated a family distributor company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several production enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and the integration of retired military personnel into private enterprises. He has continuously broken down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and maintains updates on material collection and solutions.

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