A common recommendation for addressing developmental opportunities in an employee’s performance evaluation is to (a) point out areas of weakness, (b) provide one or more concrete example of each weakness, (c) list steps the employee can take to improve her performance, and (d) identify measurements of success.
If you have an underperforming employee who clearly wants to succeed and whom you are not ready to put on a performance plan, consider taking the following steps for a performance evaluation in lieu of the commonly recommended approach.*
- Prepare an evaluation following the method above, but do not submit it.
- Sit down with the employee and go over each point in the evaluation prepared under step 1.
- Tell the employee that (a) and (b) are your concerns, but, only (c) and (d) will be included in the formal evaluation.
- Replace (a) and (b) with a statement that you’ve gone over specific concerns and examples with the employee, that (c) are the steps the employee can take to continue to progress, and (d) are the measurements of that progress.
- Submit the revised document as the final evaluation.
Under this method, you can document the employee’s weaknesses without the employee feeling punished. In fact, this method might increase the employee’s loyalty and increase their committment to improving.
*This is in addition to documenting the employee’s accomplishments.
