A Manage My Practice Classic: 5 Questions – A Deceptively Simple Performance Evaluation

This post is one of our top ranking posts of all time.

This tells me that people continue to struggle with the process of evaluating employee performance.

The point of the “5 Questions” evaluation is not to underline that the employee is often tardy or doesn’t complete assignments on time – those things should be dealt with outside of this process (remember the old adage “No new news at the performance evaluation.”) They can be added to #3 as goals, but the idea is to to dig under those things and see if the employee is dissatisfied, overwhelmed or under-challenged.

I typically use this form at 90 days after hire, then at the one year mark, then every 6 months thereafter.

Yes, evaluating this much is very time-consuming – but it pays BIG dividends.

Invest in your employees by using this form and meeting for at least an hour – you might be surprised that it’s one of the most in-depth evaluations you’ll ever do!

Here is a VERY succinct performance evaluation that I’ve used for years. Called “5 Questions”, the employee completes it, submits it to the manager, then together they discuss, evaluate and add to it during the evaluation interview. Here are the questions:

1. What goals did you accomplish since your last evaluation (or hire)?
2. What goals were you unable to accomplish and what hindered you from achieving them?
3. What goals will you set for the next period?
4. What resources do you need from the organization to achieve these goals?
5. Based on YOUR personal satisfaction with your job (workload, environment, pay, challenge, etc.) how would you rate your satisfaction from 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent.) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

You do have to stress that question #5 is not how well they think they’re doing their job, but how satisfied they are with the job.

The great thing about this evaluation is that it is one piece of paper and not too intimidating. Staff can use phrases or sentences and write as little or as much as they like. If it’s hard to get a conversation going with the employee, ask them “What was your thought process when you assigned your job satisfaction a number __.” Usually that opens the flood gates!

If you use a goal-oriented evaluation like this one, you’ll find that employees will grasp that you are asking for their performance to be beyond the day-to-day tasks, and to focus on learning new skills, teaching others, creative thinking and problem-solving and new solutions for efficiency and productivity.