Greg Priest
Management Services Committee Member
Priest Electric

Everyone hates performance evaluations ... especially writing them. But there’s a tip that helps me when the time comes to write/format them.

Performance evaluations are NOT an event; they’re a process. If you’re sitting down once a year with your co-workers for a review, you can’t just expect to write a year’s worth of happenings at one sitting. That’s painful to write, painful to remember and painful to recount face-to-face.

Keeping a performance journal is the best way I’ve found to help with accurate, timely and meaningful reviews. It’s not a daily activity; it just means when you have those thoughts like:

• Linda did a great job today, 02/14/24, putting in extra time on a field service call (FR2322) until the job was complete.
• Linda reassembled a critical motor wrong, Job R8963 for the City WWTP. She left set screws loose, slingers came loose because of it and it cost $2833.00 in re-work and warranty.
• Linda never put Job R8124 on the rewind list. It never got prepped for rewind and resulted in a 3-week delay on completion of the unit.
• I caught Linda on Friday afternoon 05/03/24 helping a customer with his small swamp cooler motor at the front counter. She ...
  • 1) Didn’t let it come into the shop as a repair (thank you)
  • 2) Helped the customer look for one online on his phone and sent him the link. 

It’s easy to write your thoughts down and place in a file you revisit when it’s time to write those evaluations. The process is fair and well-balanced because you took the notes at the time of the performance, and isn’t a rushed, stressed explanation completed in one sitting.

If you do keep notes on your employees, keep them password-protected on your computer or in a file inside a drawer that you don’t share with anyone else. They’re your thoughts until you put them in the review, and it’s very easy to copy and paste from a file. I always include dates and job numbers or customers. That way, when we do have a conversation, disagreement or coaching moment, our memories are validated with notes taken during the past year.