Survey Use for Employee Assessment Part 2

Earlier we discussed a method that uses surveys, rather than a single manager’s opinions, to create employee evaluations and other assessment data. The idea is that by polling all managers that have worked with the employee and weighing them equally, one can get a good idea of the employee’s true abilities, and the data itself will give the manager (or those that disagree with the assessments of others) an opportunity to reflect on that data and see if perhaps one of their judgments was mistaken. However, the value of these surveys is not limited to employee evaluation alone. It may also be a good way to judge the abilities of the manager themselves.

The reality of management that many companies seem to forget is that the skills of the manager are based solely on how the employees respond to them, not whether they have previous skills or experience. The best manager is still a bad manager if the employees do not appreciate the person’s leadership, as true management involves the ability to create satisfied employees. Yet employees are rarely asked their opinions of management beyond employee satisfaction surveys, which are often based off things too broad to get real results.

Rather than guess how well employees respond to the manager, executives and company leaders can poll the employees themselves, get their true opinions, and use that as they create an evaluation of another member of management. This would have several benefits, including: It would help companies discover when a manager’s appearance isn’t matching their true skills. It can spot potential employee satisfaction problems and causes early.

It can give a voice to employees, which could potentially improve satisfaction. It gives management the potential to receive real feedback. As usual, there is some risk.

Managers with very few employees may take out their review with those that work for them, and the person that collects the data needs to be trained in not only keeping the information private and away from the manager, but also ensuring that no details are leaked that could give away which employees provided any harsh reviews. It would involve a great deal of training and trust from both the company and the employees to put something like this in place.

But there is no better way to evaluate how a manager is doing than by asking those that they manage, and ignoring their input is likely to be a harmful business practice.