Our experience has allowed us to learn that each company approaches its evaluation processes differently. However, a common question that arises when organizations want to implement a feedback or performance evaluation process is whether to allow employees to conduct their own self-assessment. In our opinion, not only is it recommended, but it is one of the most powerful sources of information that a company can have. Here are our reasons:
-
Fosters a participatory communication process: Performance evaluation processes are evolving towards more continuous initiatives where feedback is ongoing rather than once a year. To adapt people management to these new needs, it's essential to involve all team members, starting with self-assessment.
-
Helps employees become aware of objectives: If we do not give the employee the opportunity to know directly what is expected of them and what their tasks are, it will be more difficult for him to get involved in the corporate mission.
-
Enhances transparency: Self-assessment contributes to creating a transparent evaluation process where individuals are valued based on objective criteria. Building a culture of transparency begins by allowing employees to communicate their own perspectives.
-
Facilitates more productive feedback meetings: The primary purpose of performance evaluation is to provide feedback to the team, highlighting areas for improvement and outstanding achievements. When employees have already reflected on their own performance, the feedback meetings with their managers become more productive, as both parties can better understand and discuss their conclusions.
-
Puts the employee at the center of the organization: Allowing every participant to contribute their opinions demonstrates a clear commitment to a corporate policy that values the individual within the organization.
-
Encourages free consulting: The feedback, suggestions, ideas, opinions, and various insights provided by employees during self-assessment are immensely valuable. They often surpass the benefits of any consulting project conducted by a third party to understand what's happening in the organization.
-
Impact on overall evaluation: Some organizations assign a certain weight to the results of self-assessment in the overall evaluation score.
-
Supports a culture of continuous improvement: For those companies new to performance evaluation, launching processes that initially focus on self-assessment helps employees become familiar with the important aspects of their work. This approach allows them to understand company expectations without feeling judged by third parties.
There are organizations that even contribute a certain weight of the result of the Self-assessment to the overall evaluation score.
Others, especially those that address performance evaluation for the first time, launch processes that, initially, only contemplate Self-Evaluations, so that the employee can become familiar with those aspects of their work that their company considers important, without feeling judged by third parties. By making their own assessment of the objectives expected of them, they are making the culture of continuous improvement their own.
At Hrider we believe that companies give the floor to the employee to involve them in the feedback process because, after all, they are the protagonist of their own professional development.