Employee Performance Appraisals: Strengths and Weaknesses  

For a company to go above and beyond, keeping the employees happy is something essential. To ensure a motivated workforce, you need to consider their working style, their work culture, and your metrics to track their growth. Evaluating employee performance appraisals strengths and weaknesses are where you can start.  

Depending on the type of feedback you want, you can evaluate them through open-ended discussions or surveys.  

In this article, we’ll explore performance appraisals, some examples, and tips that can help streamline this process.  

Performance Appraisals for Employees  

Let’s face it; employee appraisals are supercritical. It keeps your team valued, motivated and happy. Moreover, besides helping you improve your team’s productivity, these can help evaluate the shortcomings of your team.  

You can tap into where they lack and whether or not they are an excellent fit for the post. Generally, appraisals are annual processes. And this helps evaluate an employee’s core strengths and weaknesses.  

Evaluating performance appraisal’s strengths and weaknesses can help you build a better team. For annual appraisals to be more than just buzzwords, you need some real methods.  

Employee Strengths & Weaknesses 

Before we explain this, we need to understand that every employee is different. They differ in working style, problem-solving tactics, and strengths or weaknesses.   

But how would you calculate a particular trait as a strength or a weakness for your company? It’s pretty simple. If this trait adds value to your company, it is most likely a strength. Weaknesses do just the opposite. Leaving a weakness unattended can lead to lower productivity, low team spirit, or a toxic work environment.  

It is essential to address such weaknesses before time, so they don’t cause a dent in your company’s culture.  

Pro Tip: To analyze your employees’ strengths and weaknesses, you can create an employee evaluation form on SurveyPoint. With several templates to choose from, you can build an engaging survey within seconds. You can also make one from scratch if you wish to add your own unique touch.  

Examples of Employee Strengths  

Here are some of the most common strengths of an employee:  

• Motivation 
• Creativity  
• Problem-Solving  
• Focus  
• Adaptability 
• Independence  
• Willingness to Learn  
• Feedback Receptiveness 
• Commitment  
• Varied Skillset 

Examples of Employee Weaknesses  

Here are some examples of employee weaknesses:  

• Passiveness  
• Over-sensitivity 
• Disorganized Behavior 
• Aversion to Feedback 
• Lack of Confidence  
• Being Critical  
• Procrastination 

How To Evaluate Strengths and Weaknesses in Employee Performance Appraisals?  

One of the most challenging tasks is figuring out how to evaluate an employee during the appraisal cycle. To start with, giving honest feedback is one thing. However, providing constructive feedback is a whole other thing.  

While you can start by gushing about their strengths, you must also mention their weaknesses and end with what they can do to improve things. Performance appraisals have specific criteria that you can follow to evaluate employees’ strengths and weaknesses.  

Here are the six employee evaluation criteria you must keep in mind:  

Are They Team Workers?  

A happy team means a happy working environment. And the ability to work collaboratively with clients and co-workers can significantly benefit a company’s growth. Working in a team also helps you achieve goals faster. On the other hand, being anti-team can affect the team’s morale and problem-solving skills.  

Evaluating the teamwork spirit of an employee will allow you to determine their contribution level to the company.  

Are They Adaptable? 

One thing common about most companies is the rapidly changing environment. Being comfortable with new changes or procedures can be an essential criterion when evaluating an employee. This is important in embracing new technology or responsibilities and adapting to changing environments when a crisis hits. 

Rigid employees can undermine productivity and lower the morale of the team. 

RELATED: Performance Appraisal Templates You Can Use In Your Next Survey 

Do They Have Interpersonal Skills?  

It is essential to know that not all employees interact in the same way. How they react to their co-workers might differ from how they talk to their managers.  

To build a powerful team, fostering stronger work relationships is essential. Evaluating employees’ interpersonal skills can help determine which task best fits them. 

Do They Have The Knowledge?  

Employees need to have the proper knowledge. You can gain a deeper insight into these strengths by evaluating their knowledge, skills and expertise. 

Evaluating job knowledge can also help you determine whether an employee has leadership skills.  

Do They Pay Attention To Detail?  

Employees who pay attention to every detail are more likely to complete the task efficiently. This can affect the entire organization and reduce the number of mistakes. 

However, if any employee is laid-back, you must remember that sometimes mistakes can be costly. 

What Are Their Communication Skills?  

Here, communication is the key. Strong communicators who can easily present and understand the information help build efficient teams. Communication should be transparent, both written and spoken. 

3 Modern Employee Performance Appraisals Methods  

The right performance appraisal matter would be different for different companies. However, here are the three most common performance method techniques that can help you make your appraisal cycle smoother.  

Management by Objectives (MBO) 

Employees and managers collaborate to plan, identify, organize, and communicate objectives critical to the appraisal. Once all the goals are set, a team can discuss the progress made by individual employees to determine the feasibility of their plan.  

This method is usually used by companies having overarching goals and objectives. The companies use SMART methods to evaluate if that particular goal or objective is attainable. 

As a result, all employees are evaluated at the end of the year. The reward for success is a pay raise while transferring future training is the punishment for failure. 

360-Degree feedback  

This method gathers feedback from employees’ managers, peers, and customers. Apart from eliminating bias, the feedback technique also offers a clear understanding of every employee’s competence. 

This method has five critical components:  

• Self-appraisals: It allows employees to reflect on their performance and understand their strengths and weaknesses. 
• Managerial reviews: In this part, feedback is taken from the reporting managers.  
• Peer reviews: After covering the hierarchical structure, peer reviews help gather insight into what certain team members think about the team. 
• Subordinates appraising manager: This one is a delicate step. The reporters often have a lot to say about a team member.  
• Client reviews: The last step is to get feedback from the client.  

RELATED: The Best 360 Feedback Tool To Look Out For In 2022 

Assessment Centre Method  

First introduced in 1930, this assessment helps employees understand how other team members view them and how they can be assessed.  

This method can predict future job performance failure and enhance the knowledge base.  

Summing It Up 

Evaluating performance appraisal strengths and weaknesses can be a mandatory part of keeping your team motivated and the workplace happy. Aside from revamping the culture, annual appraisals also offer constructive feedback. This allows the employees to evaluate their skills and weaknesses.