Employee Evaluation From Form to Function 

Four-point scales for employee performance assessments just weren’t getting the job done at Associated Estates. Supervisors were using numbers to rate employee performance in a slew of skills, such as customer service and personal initiative. The company found that the rigid, quantitative system was not accurate or beneficial to employees and management, according to Associated Estates’ Vice President of Human Resources Dan Gold.

The Performance Appraisal Document the company had been using to evaluate employees didn’t allow for specificity for the varied positions within the organization. “It is often difficult for managers to classify people into a definition of what was bad performance by using a low score of 1 and a great performance of 4,” says Gold, who joined Associated Estates, a Cleveland-based REIT that owns and manages 12,000 apartments, in January 2009.

Gold spearheaded a policy change to categorize all employees and revised the employee-review document now known as the company’s “work plan document.”

Gold says the entire process took approximately seven months to develop and launch. Support from the senior management team was essential, he says. The project began with about three months of discussion among senior management, who determined that Associated Estates needed to improve the process for driving performance across the organization. The next three months consisted of program development. The program took about one month to implement.

Career Bands and Basic Behaviors
To better appraise employee performance, the company implemented a system that better defined expectations for each employee. For starters, the company established “career bands.” The system laid out a hierarchy of employment levels (supervisory, contributory, etc.), categorized different jobs by department and defined each position’s role within the organization.

In the next step, Gold says, core competencies or basic requirements were set for all employees. “We set basic behaviors [or competencies] that everyone measures against in a performance review,” Gold says.

These behaviors are different for an entry-level career band and a senior-level career band, he explains. They include effectiveness in overall communication; collaboration and teamwork; adding value and creating focus/motivating others.

The company also measures whether employees add value for customers, partners and shareholders. Entry-level employees add value in different ways than senior-level employees, Gold notes, so the way in which a maintenance technician adds value is measured differently from the way a senior vice president adds value.

Revising the Form
After the career bands and basic behaviors were established, the HR executive turned to the actual document used for employee reviews. The old form was relatively bare bones. It did not set clear expectations for specific roles, but rather measured in generic terms.

“On the old [performance review] form, an example was given under ‘Initiative’ as to what might get a rating of 1 or 4, but the example was not geared to any particular level,” Gold explains.

That changed. “Now it is clearly defined, and we use behavioral observations: This is how we expect so-and-so to behave,” he says. Looking at the new form, an employee can see that performance is about observed behaviors—what people are engaged in, Gold notes.

The personalization includes role-specific definitions of behaviors for all roles, whether leasing consultant, maintenance technician, staff accountant, IT support specialist or any other positions.

In addition to the greater specificity for career bands, behaviors and expectations, the scale rating system has given way to three categories: “Needs improvement,” “Exceeds expectations” and “Meets expectations,” Gold explains. Behaviors may also be rated as progressing or diminishing.

The new ratings create a more precise way of measuring performance based on actual behaviors, helping employees and their supervisors have a better conversation and develop a plan for work performance. As a result of all the modifications, Gold says, “Each person gets a performance review very specific to his or her career band level and the expectations set for that particular position.”

Form Into Function
To implement the form in time for year-end reviews, Gold traveled to Associated Estates’ eight regions in November and trained all property managers, regional managers, regional vice presidents and corporate managers on the new document’s use.

This new performance evaluation document is to be used formally in year-end annual reviews, Gold says, as well as informal meetings between supervisors and staff at the mid-year mark.

The form is given to new employees when they are hired so they are aware of how the company determines and assesses its employee performance expectations from the outset. It also gives them a sense of what the performance review entails, Gold notes.

“This tool and process is going to facilitate better and more meaningful discussions about performance between supervisors and employees,” Gold says. “We’re happy so far. More meaningful evaluations are happening.”

Rachel F. Goldberg is a freelance writer in Alexandria, Va.

Was this article helpful to you?