What are the most common performance evaluation mistakes?

1 Lack of preparation

One of the worst things you can do as a manager is to conduct a performance evaluation without proper preparation. This can lead to inaccurate, vague, or biased assessments that can demotivate and frustrate your employees. To avoid this mistake, you should set clear and measurable goals for each employee at the beginning of the evaluation period, collect relevant data and feedback throughout the year, and review the employee's achievements and challenges before the meeting.

3 Recency bias

Recency bias is another cognitive bias that affects how you remember and evaluate someone based on the most recent events, rather than the whole evaluation period. For example, if an employee performed exceptionally well or poorly in the last month, you might give them more weight than their performance in the previous months. To avoid this mistake, you should keep track of the employee's performance throughout the year, review their progress regularly, and balance your feedback with examples from different time frames.

4 Central tendency

Central tendency is a tendency to rate everyone as average, regardless of their actual performance. This can happen when you want to avoid confrontation, conflict, or criticism, or when you lack clear criteria or standards to differentiate between levels of performance. To avoid this mistake, you should use a consistent and objective rating scale, such as a numeric or descriptive one, and provide specific and constructive feedback to justify your ratings.

5 Ineffective feedback

Feedback is an essential part of performance evaluation, as it helps your employees understand their strengths and weaknesses, and how to improve their performance. However, feedback can be ineffective if it is too general, vague, or negative, or if it is delivered in a harsh, defensive, or insensitive manner. To avoid this mistake, you should use the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely) framework to give feedback, focus on the behavior and not the person, use positive and negative feedback in a balanced way, and encourage dialogue and action plans.

6 Lack of follow-up

Performance evaluation is not a one-time event, but a continuous process that requires follow-up and support. Many managers make the mistake of forgetting or neglecting to check in with their employees after the evaluation meeting, or failing to provide them with the necessary resources, training, or coaching to help them achieve their goals. To avoid this mistake, you should set realistic and mutually agreed upon action plans with your employees, monitor their progress and challenges, and provide them with ongoing feedback and recognition.