Performance Evaluations

Yes, my current nursing manager wants our input on evaluations for the CNAs since we work with them directly. What she does is give us a copy of the same one she uses--it's a three page thing with boxes that have room for writing things. Evaluations are done at the end of 90 days on new employees and then yearly. No, we do not have a union. I just follow the questions that the form asks. I don't happen to have one around at my fingertips, but what I remember of them is that there are sections for attitude, professionalism, appearance, work performance, attendance, teamwork, and flexibility, I believe. There are also one or two questions about continuing education. I just fill out the form. It is then given back to the nursing manager. What she does is merge it with what she wants to put on the final evaluation that is going to be given to the employee and go into their personnel file. I take the time to write freely about things, especially if there have been problems with an employee. It's up to the manager to filter out inappropriate comments we might make. For the one's I do now, if I know about a particular incident that the CNA screwed up I will mention it on the evaluation form and leave it up to the manager to decide whether or not to include it. I do that in case the manager forgot the incident. She has 40 people to manage and she can't remember everything--I couldn't. Consequences are that if an employee gets a really bad evaluation they may or may not know who ratted them out.

Because I did employee evaluations at a nursing home when I was a shift supervisor there are a few things I know about doing them. The best advice I was given about yearly evaluations is that an employee should never come away from their evaluation meeting with a look of surprise about anything bad on it or feeling in shock over bad things on it. Good shock over nice things said to them is OK, however! :chuckle Nothing on their evaluation should be a surprise to them. I tried very hard to stick by that rule.One, is that you can't write bad stuff that the employee needs major correction on unless you have written paperwork (write-ups, disciplinary actions) to back up what you say. You're writing has to be worded very carefully. So, if I had someone who had a real negative or crappy attitude and I knew there was no paperwork to back that up I would write something like, "would like Susie to have a more positive outlook on her work situation." I always tried to put things down very diplomatically if I could. No matter how lousy an employee is, you owe them respect. Besides, ten years from now you might run into Susie at the shopping mall and you don't want her clocking you for something you said in a nasty way on her evaluation that made her quit the job. Even worse would be if she ended up being your boss someday.(ouch!) When an employee got a lousy evaluation and refused to sign the evaluation I would just note on the signature line that she refused to sign. I always made it very clear that if they disagreed with anything on the evaluation they had every right to write a response to it as there was a section at the very end for that. If you are the sole person doing evaluations try very hard to have some evidence to back up any claims of wrong-doing you are going to make. Also, if the outcome of the evaluation is going to affect whether or not the employee is going to get a raise, be very sure you are being fair and can, again, back up the bad stuff. I would deliberately tweak the final scores so that a lousy employee was one point shy of getting into the "no raise" category when I was trying to make a point with a marginal employee. Evaluations are very powerful tools. You can sometimes bring quiet people out of their shells with a good one and send a crappy person out the door by angering them. Just so's you know. . .employee evaluations go no further than the organization, so no one outside the organization ever gets to see them, UNLESS the employee asks for a copy (I always offered them a copy) and then shows it to everybody in the world. There's no accounting for some people's stupidity.

My big rule is to try to be FAIR and try very hard not to deny someone their raise if their raise is based on their evaluation. If you have a crappy employee, the way to "take them out" is to get the people they wrong write them up on a memo so you have it in writing. Better yet are official disciplinary action forms. If an employee was disciplined for something during their past year it should definitely be addressed on the yearly evaluation and a xerox copy of it attached.

I suggest that you get a blank copy of the evaluation form and sit down from time to time with it (so you don't fry your brain) and try to come up with some adjectives or short phrases for each section of the evaluation that you will be able to use. A thesaurus can be very helpful for this. Write these things on this reference copy. If you have access to previous written evaluations in an employees file, look them over. Steal any good phrases you happen to run across and add them to your reference copy. You need some variation otherwise you start thinking that maybe you ought to just get a rubber stamp!

Lastly, I always tried to make the person who I was giving an evaluation to try to feel comfortable. It needs to be done in a private area where no one else can overhear what is being said (confidentiality, you know). No matter how bad some of the stuff is you have to keep calm and as unemotional as possible. The employee will provide enough emotion. Don't appologize for anything you've put on the evaluation that is honest and truthful. If the person cries, let them cry, but don't appologize--they have to realize the consequences of their actions. It is also a good time to reinforce policies and procedures and try to re-direct some of their unacceptable behavior. So, for instance, if you are evaluating their cooperation as a team member and they really kind of suck at it, you should say things like, "I like to see you doing this and such." You may not have the opportunity to really get through to them until the next years evaluation. I used to almost always give the CNAs a xerox copy of the written attendance policy with their evaluations and noted that on the evaluation because they almost all had a poor attendance record.

The worst is if you have to give an employee an evaluation done by your manager. In those cases, there's not much you can do if the employee objects to something on it because you weren't the one that wrote it. You can agree with the employee all you want and put the blame for anything the employee disagrees with on the person who wrote the evaluation. Just give the manager a note about the employee's response to it, or encourage the employee to write a comment at the end of the form before they sign it.

Any other questions? Your first couple will be a little stiff and uncomfortable. Once you get the hang of doing them they get easier.