[Best Practices] Making The Grade

Performance evaluations have joined the ranks of death and taxes — inevitable. Along with death and taxes, we have come to dread them. We look at a blank piece of paper and struggle to find something "meaningful" to say. Finally, at a loss for words, we scribble down a few thoughts, identify some generic improvement areas and then put off conducting the appraisal until the last possible minute.

Performance evaluations can be a valuable tool in running pest control businesses. They not only asses an employee’s current level of performance but can aid us in planning our training schedules, in validating our strategic business plans and assist us in future hiring needs.

If you want to make performance evaluations as effective as possible for your pest management firm, here are some guidelines to help.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. Many pest control companies use generic performance evaluations. These are written to be elastic — which means they can fit any company regardless of their product or service. This means that a pest control company of 20 employees is using the same criterion to evaluate performance that a Fortune 500 company uses to evaluate its employees. Evaluation areas are often general and don’t deal in specific performance or behavior. When using a generic tool we cannot capture a true picture of an employee’s performance. General headings such as "productivity" do not allow us to address specific aspects of an employee’s performance in that area of their job. Employees often have multiple responsibilities and the reviewer is forced to give an overall evaluation rather than being able to focus on specific areas of the employee’s productivity that were outstanding or that need improvement.

A good question to ask yourself when you review a "canned" evaluation format is this — "What is important to me?" and "Does this tool help me reach it?" Will your employees walk away from their annual performance appraisal with a tool to use in improving or enhancing their performance or will they walk without much guidance or direction?

Performance evaluations do not need to be lengthy or verbose, but they do need to capture the employee’s specific performance and suggest improvement or enhancement strategies. Creating your own performance evolution, one that fits your company and your industry’s needs, may be time consuming but it will pay dividends in the long run.

BE OBJECTIVE. On page 150 is a portion of a pest control technician’s performance evaluation. It identifies a job function, states the actual performance level, states a required level of performance and then allows the evaluator an opportunity to grade the employee’s performance.

Using a format similar to the form on page 150, the evaluating supervisor can check their records of an employee’s performance and plug in the actual performance data vs. the goals that had been set. The comment section allows us to take note of exceptions. If an employee did not reach their goal because of business reasons it should be noted and not necessarily be taken as a negative factor.

This type of performance evaluation can be completed quickly and gives the evaluator an opportunity to concentrate on creating strategies to help the employee improve their performance. It can help reduce the emotional factor in the em-ployee’s eyes because the "numbers don’t lie."

The "comment" section of this appraisal allows for the evaluator to note exceptions in performance, either positive or negative. If an employee did not reach a goal because of reduction in business, length of time in their position or other uncontrollable issues, an adjustment can be made to reflect the exception.

CONSISTENCY. Nothing can cause us more aggravation and ultimately legal hassles than being inconsistent in evaluating employee’s performance. Charges of favoritism and discrimination can often surface when an elastic or free-form style appraisal is used. If you develop a clear cut set of goals for each job function, all employees should be evaluated against those goals.

The important part of your job as an evaluator is to make sure that each employee understands these goals and they will be used as a measuring stick. Performance evaluations should hold no real surprises for the employee. A consistent appraisal done in a predictable format allows employees to work on improvement areas and anticipate any pitfalls they might encounter before the annual review and make the necessary adjustments and seek help in correcting areas that are not positive.

WEIGHING THE INTANGIBLES. Eighty percent of every performance evaluation should center on actual job performance. That is, how did the employee stack up vs. their daily, weekly or monthly requirements and quotas? Twenty percent of the evaluation should center on the intangible areas — attitude, customer service skills and team work.

These areas are often hard to identify concretely. A good way to identify them is to look at the employee’s job description. Each position should have a clearly defined job description. Along with the job requirements, duties and qualifications, there should be behaviors required that a person in the position must have to perform the job successfully.

Pest control technicians certainly should be evaluated on their people skills, their ability to communicate and the attitude they take towards their jobs. These characteristics should point back towards the objective criterion.

A technician may lose three accounts from their route over the previous year. Why? If the reasons were economic in nature, lack of resources by the client or a lower bid from a competitor, the technician can do little or nothing to control this. But, what if the accounts were lost because the technician didn’t communicate well with the customer or their attitude was surly or unprofessional? This can contribute to a decline in performance and should be addressed during the evaluation as a contributing factor to a low score in an objective area.

We have a tendency to be over forgiving when it comes to performance lapses by rationalizing that an employee is loyal, has a good attitude or is a team player. But if their performance does not reflect these skills then one of two possibilities exist: the employee doesn’t understand the function of their job and all it entails, which means we provide them with more training and development; or they are not suited to do the job long term.

Attitude and team work are vital to our pest control company’s success, but they are often contributing factors to objective performance.

LEARN TO LISTEN. When conducting the performance evaluation makes sure you give the employee ample time to address your assessment. By doing this we often find out about things about which we had been previously unaware. Equipment failure, lack of communication and supervisory issues all may come to the forefront as an employee struggles to explain a poor performance area. Some of them may be valid.

The performance appraisal is the one opportunity employees have to speak their mind about the company, their job and their plans for the future. Listen to them. Sometimes the difference in an average performer and an outstanding performer is created when the employee sees that you care enough to listen to them and support their own goals and objectives. Just be sure that in offering encouragement and support that their goals and objectives align with yours.

CONCLUSION. These are just a few tips to help you navigate the employee performance appraisal waters. You have probably developed many more and if not, now is a good time to get started. With all the investments we make annually, the most valuable one is still the people who represent your pest control company’s service.

The author is with Jurkiewicz Consulting Services, Owensboro, Ky. The company offers training in human resources, OSHA compliance, business planning and more. He can be reached at jjurkiewicz@giemedia.com.