When the time for employee performance evaluation comes around, it spells of a lot of work and stress. Many evaluations have to be prepared and more stressful is the part when your team member argues on what you have documented.

There is an effective and easy way to do this if you can plan your activities towards this exercise. It will normally stretch over a period of a year or the duration of a project.

1. Do Performance Planning At The Beginning

At the beginning of the year or the project period, prepare a performance plan. List the various areas that the employee will work on and what are the expected results.

This will include both objective and subjective measures. Sales value achieved or number of customer contacts made are examples of objective measures. Providing guidance to colleagues will be a subjective measure.

2. Do Periodic Performance Reviews

For an annual performance period, it is best to do quarterly reviews. It is important that at least one review is done mid-way before the final evaluation. This applies to both annual reviews and shorter projects.

Evaluating employee performance periodically is key to the success of the final evaluation. You will find that the review gives an opportunity for both employee and manager to get a similar level of understanding of what is expected of the employee. This will make your final evaluation less argumentative and less stressful as expectations are better understood.

It also provides an opportunity for the employee to make appropriate changes in how he is doing his work. To find out that he is not doing it correctly at the final evaluation is way too late.

These reviews should also be documented as a reference both to the manager and the employee.

3. Do The Final Employee Performance Evaluation

Some managers tend to write the final reviews on their own. This is not only time consuming, but typically you will find that the employee can get argumentative on the areas where the evaluation is not very good. This applies more to subjective measures. While objective measures may not face exactly the same difficulties as they are numeric, you will find that some employees will argue that the situation and circumstances were not conducive to achieving the numbers.

The better way to handle this is by getting the employees to do performance self evaluation. Provide them with the appropriate forms in which they will document their performance rating for each of the areas documented in the performance plan. Notes will need to be made to support the rating.

You will notice that when people do self evaluation, they typically will not go overboard on how they rate their performance. Even if they started off this way, as they write the supporting comments, reality will set in.

This is also where the periodic reviews play a big part. These reviews would have set the level of expectations against which the results are evaluated. It takes away the possibility of the employee not having clearly understood the performance plan.

You can then do the final employee performance evaluation based on the self evaluations submitted. The basic documents are already written for you. You only need to edit any changes and get them all formatted to a given standard.

It will be less stressful and argumentative during the review with the employee because of all the earlier steps you have taken.

While focusing on doing employee performance evaluations the easy and effective way, note that there are other benefits to be gained both by you and the employees.

As a manager or supervisor, you get the opportunity to inform in writing what is expected of the employee. Right at the beginning, any differences of expectations are cleared. During the periodic employee performance appraisals, any deviations are caught so that adjustments can be made to help achieve the planned objectives.

Both these activities provide the manager an opportunity to coach and guide the employee. The manager has played the role of the coach and the employee gets on-the-job guidance and feedback.

Employee performance management through these evaluations can be done the easy and effective way. It also provides a sense of satisfaction and achievement when you find that it also leads to a better working relationship with the employees. You will also find performance improving because of the methodical way of setting targets, guiding and measuring.