PERSONNEL EVALUATION

Personnel evaluation



Personnel Evaluation

Introduction

Employee evaluation provides a basis for assessing and reviewing staff performance and planning their development. A clear strategy will allow staff to maximize their potential contribution to an organization. It should provide clarity around what outcomes expected, motivate staff to perform better, encourage cultural fit, provide focus on the desired results, and facilitate communication. Employee evaluation can also assist with career planning and provide the employee with a training and development plan. A formal personnel evaluation strategy will facilitate objective and honest assessment and encourage open and constructive feedback. The evaluation phase is the formal assessment of performance and generally conducted on an annual basis. It assesses how effectively agreed objectives have been carried out and targets met, whether the effectiveness been compromised or constrained, the personnel's strengths and development areas, and what personal and/or career development and training actions should be taken during the next evaluation period (Hood & Peters, 2004).

A more informal system of personnel evaluation is appropriate for volunteers. This could be based around informal developmental feedback and discussions of future volunteering plans. As with the proper personnel evaluation process, volunteer performance discussions assist with opening communication channels with volunteers and provide an opportunity for both the organization and volunteer to articulate their respective expectations of the volunteer role, responsibilities and conditions. Many nonprofit and for-profit sport organizations governed by a board of directors. In such instances, the organization should incorporate an evaluation of the board of directors as a commitment to good governance. Assessing the work of the board may consist of an evaluation of the operation of the board and its committees by company directors, and/or a self-evaluation. The latter commonly used in nonprofit boards, to review the board's composition for constituent representation, board expertise, and commitment. Boards also are responsible for setting the compensation, and annually evaluating the executive director or CEO (Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, 1988).

State agencies' personnel evaluation systems

The choice of methodology for assessing the state agencies' personnel depends on the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of personnel in the organization, staff category, which supposed to assess, as well as the availability of time, human and financial resources, which the agency is willing to devote to assess the organization's personnel (Glasman & Heck, 2003).

Management by Objective (MBO)

Management by objective (MBO) is an evaluation system used by public managers in state agencies as a means of goal setting to increase personnel performance. Many variations of MBO systems exist in various organizations. However, there are four common elements that characterize MBO management systems: (1) strategic goal setting, (2) participative decision making in the goal-setting process, (3) explicit time period to evaluate performance, and (4) periodic evaluation feedback to encourage or modify behaviors. Although MBO systems were not originally underpinned by goal setting theory, the success of MBO systems is dependent on principles of goal-setting theory. Specifically, goal-setting theory posits that specific and challenging goals lead to higher performance than do easy or vague ...