The Ugly Truth About Employee Assessment Tools

Not all employee assessment tools are evil, but those once-a-year performance appraisals certainly seem ineffective. Find out why in this cool infographic.

Performance appraisals are one of the most common employee assessment tools and yet also probably the most ineffective method for assessing anything relevant about your staff.

Why is this? The following infographic from OfficeVibe reveals thirteen disappointing facts about performance appraisals.

Increasing the frequency of feedback

My favorite part of this infographic is the solution mentioned at the end: "the trick is to have more frequent feedback."

So managers just need to give employees feedback more frequently? That seems alarmingly simple.

We know that receiving feedback is important in general, but WHY is it so important for employees to get it on a regular basis? A detailed article by Fiona Lang called "The Importance of Feedback" identifies a problem called the "feedback famine" and explains it really well:

"The Feedback Famine is a vacuum that occurs when people do not receive enough information about their performance. We are not talking about formal performance feedback but ongoing, regular and informal feedback. It is timely, specific and may help the individual receiving feedback relate to:

• Whether or not they are achieving their goals
• What they are supposed to be achieving in their role i.e. why their role exists
• What they are currently doing well and what areas require improvement
• How they are impacting on others in the workplace

Feedback is the cheapest, most powerful, yet, most under used management tool that we have at our disposal. Feedback is powerful as it helps people get on track, it serves as a guide to assist people to know how they and others perceive their performance."

Finding some new assessment tools

So it seems that to motivate employees and improve engagement, managers need to offer more frequent feedback about job performance than the once-a-year review. Here at via680, we developed Ving with the capability to specifically improve this area.

Ving is a smarter messaging tool that gathers practical data about your recipients and how they interact with your messages. Send and receive feedback by creating questionnaires, surveys, and assessments that automatically track employee interaction and comprehension. Ving is a very effective way to distribute feedback and then measure its impact.

Stop being disappointed by ineffective performance appraisals. Make your employee assessment tools work for you by committing to more frequent, helpful feedback.

What kinds of employee assessment tools have you had success with? We would love to hear your thoughts!