5 Steps to Performance Evaluation System

Performance evaluations, which provide employers with an opportunity to assess their employees’ contributions to the organization, are essential to developing a powerful work team. Yet in some practices, physicians and practice managers put performance evaluations on the back burner, often because of the time involved and the difficulties of critiquing employees with whom they work closely. The benefits of performance evaluations outweigh these challenges, though. When done as part of a performance evaluation system that includes a standard evaluation form, standard performance measures, guidelines for delivering feedback, and disciplinary procedures, performance evaluations can enforce the acceptable boundaries of performance, promote staff recognition and effective communication and motivate individuals to do their best for themselves and the practice.

The primary goals of a performance evaluation system are to provide an equitable measurement of an employee’s contribution to the workforce, produce accurate appraisal documentation to protect both the employee and employer, and obtain a high level of quality and quantity in the work produced. To create a performance evaluation system in your practice, follow these five steps:

1.Develop and evaluation form.  

2.Identify performance measures       

3.Set guidelines for feedback

4. Create disciplinary and termination procedures.

5. Set an evaluation schedule.

It is also advisable to run the finished system by your attorney to identify any potential legal problems that should be fixed.

1.Develop and evaluation form
Performance evaluations should be conducted fairly, consistently and objectively to protect your employees’ interests and to protect your practice from legal liability. One way to ensure consistency is to use a standard evaluation form for each evaluation. The form you use should focus only on the essential job performance areas. Limiting these areas of focus makes the assessment more meaningful and relevant and allows you and the employee to address the issues that matter most. You don’t need to cover every detail of an employee’s performance in an evaluation.

2. Identify performance measures
Standard performance measures, which allow you to evaluate an employee’s job performance objectively, can cut down on the amount of time and stress involved in filling out the evaluation form. Although developing these measures can be one of the more time-consuming parts of creating a performance evaluation system, it’s also one of the most powerful.


3. Set guidelines for feedback

Feedback is what performance evaluations are all about. So before you implement your performance evaluation system, make sure that everyone who will be conducting evaluations knows what kind of feedback to give, how to give it and how to get it from the employee in return.

4. Create disciplinary and termination procedures

In some cases, even after a thorough performance evaluation and a discussion of expected improvements, an employee will continue to perform poorly. You need to be prepared to handle such a situation by having well-defined, written disciplinary and termination procedures in place. These procedures should outline the actions that will be taken when performance deteriorates – a verbal warning, a written warning if there is no improvement or a recurrence, and termination if the situation is not ultimately resolved.

5. Set an evaluation schedule

Once you’ve built your performance evaluation system the evaluation form, the performance measures, the feedback guidelines and the disciplinary procedures  you just need to decide when to conduct the performance evaluations. Some practices do all employee evaluations at the same time of year, while others conduct them within 30 days of each employee’s anniversary of employment (the latter may work better since it spreads the work of the evaluations out for employer and employee). However you decide to schedule the evaluations, ensure that each appraiser consistently meets the deadline. Ignoring employees’ overdue evaluations will make them feel devalued and may hurt morale and performance