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Tips for Performance Evaluations

What are SMART goals?

An important part of managing an employee's performance is establishing goals for the upcoming year. The purpose of setting these goals is not to detail daily activities, but to help define larger challenges that the employee will work toward during the coming year. To write effective goals, use the SMART criteria:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Results-based
• Time-bound

Creating SMART goals helps the employee and supervisor clearly understand what is expected from the employee in order to ensure that they are properly evaluated.

How to Write SMART Goals

To be effective, every written goal should adhere to each of the SMART criteria:

• Specific: The goal should define specific results and provide concrete details on what is to be achieved. For example, "Start writing a monthly department newsletter" is more specific than "Improve inter-department communication."
• Measurable: When writing the goal, define how the employee and supervisor can measure its success. There are several ways to measure goals:
  1. Behavior: An observable change in an employee's actions
  2. Quantity: A numerical increase or decrease
  3. Quality: How well the result meets the criteria set in a goal
  4. Cycle time: Time from request to completion; processing time
  5. Efficiency: Resources (time, budget, people) applied to achieve the result
• Ambitious and Achievable: Goals should be challenging and go beyond employee's day-to-day duties while at the same time be achievable.
• Results-based: When writing, state the results to be achieved rather than the activity or work processes leading to those results. Focus on what the employee is responsible for accomplishing.
• Time-bound: Establish a time limit. State the date by which results must happen, or, for ongoing expectations, specify how often the goal or expectation must be met as well as how often it will be reviewed.

Example SMART Goals

• Reconcile the department financial reports by the fifteenth of every month with no increase in reconciliation errors.
• Lead the assessment and redesign of the department's webpage in order to create a professional, student-focused website. Develop, revise, and design by September 2013.
• Reduce overtime in the department from 150 hours per month to 50 hours per month by the end of the fiscal year with no increase in student complaints.

Performance Goals vs. Development Goals

Performance Goals: Performance goals are the "what" the employee is working to accomplish. They are tied to departmental and/or Viterbo's strategic priorities. Here is an example of a performance goal:

• Performance Evaluation Forms – By Aug. 1, 2019, develop and implement a new performance management system for staff and administrative employees using clearly defined processes and guidelines so employees and supervisors can more competently evaluate performance and develop their careers.

Development Goals: Development goals focus on areas the employees can develop in order to grow their job or advance in their career. Here is an example of a development goal:

• Public Speaking – To increase my effectiveness in giving presentations I will join Toastmasters by March 31 and attend at least six monthly meetings by the year's end. I will ask John Doe to provide feedback on my presentations using the Toastmasters format after each staff meeting during the year.

Being Effective in Your Role: Tips for Employees

While SMART goals are important, remember that you are evaluated on both goals and competencies. Goals define what an employee is tasked with achieving throughout the performance cycle, while competencies define how an employee completes his or her goals and day-to-day activities. Goals and competencies are not mutually exclusive, but are two halves of an effective whole. Here are some tips to help ensure that you are effective in both goals and competencies:

• Make an effort to understand the goals of your position, your department, and the University, and draft personal objectives for the year to support those goals.
• Seek clarification when needed to understand expectations.
• Provide performance documentation and feedback to your supervisor.
• Keep track of performance throughout the year using your calendar or journal to record your accomplishments and challenges.
• Act on your supervisor's feedback and coaching.
• Work with your supervisor to evaluate performance – both during your review and throughout the year.
• Look for opportunities to improve your work.
• Take advantage of professional development opportunities, including Viterbo professional development sessions, training, conferences, and webinars. Report back to your supervisor on the tools you have learned.

Documenting Performance: Tips for Supervisors

When documenting performance, note both what and how. Performance goals define what an employee is tasked with achieving throughout the performance cycle, that is, expectations for results. Competencies define how an employee completes these tasks, i.e., the behaviors they use as they work to deliver results. Goals and competencies are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are interdependent parts of effective performance. For example:

• An employee who achieves outstanding results but who leaves bruised relationships in his or her wake is not likely to be able to maintain these results over time, especially if they require the help and support of others.
• An employee who is outstanding at maintaining excellent interpersonal relationships but does not deliver results undermines the performance of the team, function, and possibly the university.

Only by documenting both what and how can one accurately assess an employee's performance.

Evaluating Performance

• Have employees fill out the self-evaluation portion of the assessment. Feedback from employees on their own performance provides their perspective and a starting point for the performance discussion.
• Seek feedback from key co-workers. This provides a full picture of interactions.
• Consider the degree of difficulty in assignments. Is this the same work as in the past or something newly acquired? Has their work expanded in scope or amount of responsibility? Were there any projects that caused great results with little contribution?
• Judge performance, not potential. Focus on actual contributions and results achieved. This is a review of "accomplishments", not of "potential."
• Judge achievement, not progress. Be diligent about reviewing successful attainment of positive results and contributions during a fixed period of time rather than crediting effort, activity, or progress.
• Review performance for the entire cycle. The evaluation must reflect an employee's performance over the entire period of time covered by the review. One month of outstanding performance does not offset eleven months of mediocre performance, even if it occurred in the month immediately preceding the review.
• Review each objective independently. Do not let reviews of one objective influence the review of another. Employees often do better in some areas than others. Therefore, review each aspect of performance independently of others.
• Be a courageous, conscientious reviewer. This may be the toughest guideline of all. Supervisors who succeed here are scrupulous about giving a favorable evaluation of performance only when the employee has really earned it. They know that the easy, comfortable route is to give people a "break" or the benefit of the doubt –no conflict, no difficult review discussion.
• Avoid rating pitfalls:
  1. Leniency – The tendency to use a less stringent set of standards to rate an employee, resulting in an inflated rating.
  2. Halo Effect – The tendency to give an employee an overall rating, either positive or negative, based on the evaluation of a single performance objective, which results in an inaccurate evaluation of overall performance.
  3. Central Tendency – The tendency to avoid rating employees at the high and low extremes and to cluster all ratings at the center of a rating scale.
  4. Impressions – The tendency to rate an employee on the basis of impressions and gut feelings rather than on concrete, observable examples of performance, behaviors, and skills gathered over a period of time.
  5. Recency Effect – The tendency to rate an individual on his/her most recent performance or contributions rather than on performance during an entire review period.