Pressure, stress, and extra demands on your time can make it challenging to fairly evaluate employee performance during a crisis such as a pandemic. Snap judgments and ambiguity can interfere with fair assessments. These 3 steps will make this process easier for you and fairer for employees, even as the pandemic rages on:
- Define effective criteria before making critical decisions about workers. Consider what is important for each role, then create definable, measurable metrics for success. For instance, instead of “creative new avenues for communication,” use “establish strategic plan for employing social media and other platforms and document increased engagement over time.”
- Align decision makers. Bring managers together to ensure everyone is on the same page and shares definitions, then discuss how they will evaluate performance on each measure. Shared metrics will help prevent bias and ensure fair evaluations.
- Engage others in being consistent and equitable. Have managers monitor each other on performance evaluations. Have them watch for instances where someone is being ambiguous in their evaluation and misusing assessment criteria. For instance, if someone downgrades an employee for missing an unscheduled meeting because that person was volunteering at the polls or at a foodbank, remind the manager that you agreed that volunteering would be encouraged. If missing the meeting didn’t impair the employee’s performance, it is important not to penalize him/her.
