3 Steps to Evaluating Your Employees’ Values
Performance reviews are meant to show the progress of employees toward their goals, but this isn’t the only facet of employee performance you should consider when evaluating employees. To truly understand how your employees rank as performers, you also need to understand how their values align with the company’s.
The reality is when employees don’t align with your company values, they’re likely to become dysfunctional, self-segregated workers.
Want to stop that from happening and get the rundown on what your employees really value? Here’s how to evaluate your employees’ values against your company’s:
1. Determine and Communicate Your Own Values
First and foremost, before you can evaluate the values of others, you have to understand your own. You may already know the values your company holds dear, but do you know how those values relate to your employees? Communicate your values in a way employees can understand and apply to their own roles.
When reviewing an employee’s performance, be sure to investigate how they embody company values – or fail to do so. Ask yourself questions like, “Does this employee bring integrity to the workplace?” and “Are they kind in how they interact with others?” These questions will help you get a clearer picture of how well an employees matches up with the organization’s values.
It is important to recognize that not all company values are appropriate to evaluate during performance reviews. If you do decide to include certain values that may be hard to rate, don’t leave judgments up to your gut. First, create an explanation of what a “good” and a “bad” rating would look like. Then, you can assess employees based on how closely their behaviors match the descriptions.
Creating systems and protocols for evaluating to assess value alignment is not only beneficial to you as a manager, but also to your employees themselves. Employees who know and understand their company’s values are 51 times more likely to be fully engaged than those who do not.
2. Handle Violations
Once your company values are set and have been communicated, you need to reinforce these standards in addition to evaluating employee alignment.
What happens if an employee does not display the values your company wants to display? As a manager, it is your job to address these guideline violations. These conversations are difficult, and employees may sometimes take the criticism personally. However, you can turn these uncomfortable situations into opportunities to inspire personal and professional growth.
Your employees may not realize the bad habits they have or they ways they are failing to meet standards. By explaining to employees where they are falling short, you can help them get back on track and improve their performance.
3. Be an Example
It’s not fair to hold your employees to certain standards if you yourself fail to meet them. Walk the walk.
People learn better by example. Furthermore, 60-90 percent of all communication occurs nonverbally, so don’t just tell employees what to do – show them how it’s done!
A version of this article originally appeared on the iRevü blog.
Michael Heller is the CEO and founder of iRevü.