What Is Staff Assessment?

Staff assessment is the process of monitoring an employee’s competence and professional growth. It includes reviewing goals and providing training. It also enables management to determine the strengths and weaknesses of employees.

During an assessment, a manager should avoid negative comments and instead focus on positive observations. Javitch suggests presenting feedback in a two-way dialogue with employees and highlighting how they can improve.

Personnel Hiring

An assessment is a useful tool in hiring new employees. You can use personality, soft skills, culture fit and situational judgment tests to determine if candidates exhibit the traits and values that are associated with your company’s mission. These assessments are designed to match job attributes to employee profiles, which leads to both employee and employer satisfaction.

Questionnaires are one of the most commonly used assessment tools. Candidates answer questions, which gives you a complete picture of the person’s personality, emotional traits and level of current motivation. Questionnaires can also be a component of other assessment metrics, such as employee engagement and customer feedback surveys.

A key consideration when implementing an assessment is the potential for bias. It is important to communicate clearly with candidates leading up to, and during, the test to avoid putting them in an uncomfortable situation that could lead to an unfair evaluation. Also, it is important to avoid assessing things that have nothing to do with their job duties, as this could be considered discriminatory.

Performance Evaluation

Employee evaluations offer the opportunity to document an employee’s workplace strengths and weaknesses. They can also help a company identify training and development needs. For example, if an employee is consistently failing to meet customer expectations, the evaluator can provide the employee with additional training in that area.

The employee evaluation process involves comparing an actual performance with preset standards and documenting the results of the comparison. This can include the employee’s self-evaluation, as well as the supervisor’s rating.

Many employees dread the face-to-face performance evaluation meeting with their supervisors, but this can be a good time to discuss career growth opportunities and salary. If the supervisor and employee have been communicating openly throughout the year, nothing should come as a surprise to either party during this discussion. However, if you have a complaint about your evaluation, check your employment program or collective bargaining agreement for the appropriate processes to follow. This can vary from program to program, and may involve a written letter or an ombudsman.

Training

Staff assessment, when done properly, helps to address training needs of employees. However, it is important to make sure that the feedback given during this process doesn’t focus too much on negative aspects of their work performance and that it focuses on both areas where they need improvement as well as on the things they are doing well.

For example, the 360-degree assessment method, which allows you to gather feedback from multiple sources including peers and managers, is an excellent way to get a more complete picture of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. You can also consider using the pre-structured report generated automatically by the assessment software to help you streamline this process.

A major consideration when conducting a staff assessment is to ensure that the new rates of assessment are applied consistently at all duty stations. This is particularly important in situations where new rates of assessment result in lower net salaries than the existing ones.

Compensation

The productivity of employees shapes the success of a company. Employees are encouraged to stay on task through goal setting, and their work is rewarded through regular staff assessment meetings. During these assessments, staff receives both positive feedback on the work they’re doing and areas where their performance can be improved.

For example, you might address the rate at which an employee is advancing through discussed goals or the degree to which they meet established standards of job performance. You also might evaluate an employee’s professional behaviors, communication skills and knowledge of the job.

Some organizations use a questionnaire, called the 360-degree method, to assess employees. This approach to staff assessment collects comprehensive data on a person by gathering feedback from colleagues, subordinates, supervisors and the employee’s self-assessment. Using this technique eliminates the subjectivity of one-sided feedback and gives you a complete picture of an employee’s strengths, weaknesses and overall motivation levels. Several different methods for determining compensation are available, including salary surveys and market-based adjustments.