Your new retail store has hired the perfect group of employees to run an effective operation. Now it has been a few months and you are looking for ways to evaluate your employees. Monster.com offers some insight into effectively evaluating the retail employee.

As managers, your days can be filled from morning to night. Evaluating employees is a seemingly easy task to put off until later. Unfortunately, if we don’t take the time to review employee performance, they may leave for an employer who does.  It isn’t a task that most managers enjoy, so what are some things we can do to make it a more palatable task?

First, don’t think about it as a critical event. If it is scheduled as a routine process, say every three to six months, it can be viewed more as a way to evaluate performance and make improvements, rather than a critical process. Start with a bottom up approach, asking the employee how they feel their job is going and how you may offer help to them in reaching their goals. Start with the positive! Everyone is doing something well.

Properly implemented performance reviews, evaluations and the resulting feedback can provide productive feedback to help employees improve their performance. Suggesting needed changes in performance is part of the process, and when offered in a positive environment can foster the needed improvement. Suggesting changes and coaching employees to improvement is an effective way to provide feedback. How might this look in a real world example?

Do you see how that conversation started on a positive note, let to the employee answering his own questions and working toward the common goal? It would have been a completely different conversation and tone, had the manager come in with “John, you are too slow, and you need to get 20% more work done on your shifts than you currently are. What are you going to do about that?” We ended with the exact same outcome, improving performance, but in a positive way.

Of course this isn’t always possible, but if we begin by looking at the effort put in, the abilities of the employee and the clarity of how tasks are defined, we can determine job performance. If you have an employee, who after many positive reviews and coaching from managers or supervisors, is still not working up to potential, it is necessary to look at other evaluation and feedback options.

Graphic rating scales and checklists can be used, which rate an employee on a scale for things like output, job knowledge and attitude. These may be less effective, as they immediately put an employee on the defensive for a poor rating. They may however be needed in certain situations where a more positive approach is not working well or you are receiving complaints from other employees.

So do evaluations often, begin with asking the employee how they feel they are doing and how the company or manager may help them complete their job more efficiently. Offer positive feedback and guidance along with a coaching mentality to help employees improve performance.