Human resources aren’t just responsible for filling job vacancies – they also have to ensure that the employees in those positions are meeting their responsibilities and performing their roles at the necessary level. That’s why HR professionals are always on the lookout for a means of assessing employee performance that can accurately pinpoint areas where a member of staff is excelling and, more importantly, the aspects where improvement is needed. To this end, a high proportion of HR managers favor the graphic rating scale method, also known as the Likert scale. Many find this appraisal system to be helpful in evaluating employee performance and showing the way to increasing productivity. However, the graphic rating scale does pose some challenges of its own, so it’s important to look at the positives and negatives of this methodology before implementing it in the workplace.
Graphic Rating Scale 101
A graphic rating scale proposes a list of desired behaviors and character traits across different professional and personal criteria from which staff can be rated against a numbered scale. Some criteria that are likely to be assessed could include:
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Initiative
- Punctuality
- Self-motivation
Questions will elicit responses with which these factors can be graded, often on a numbered scale from 1 to 5, where a score of 1 will usually be very negative and a score of 5 will be very positive. The scale will usually take one of two forms: a discrete scale where responses range from “negative”, “positive”, “neutral”, etc.; or a continuous scale which provides a number range at different ends of the scale and asks where an employee ranks on that spectrum.
Examples of Graphic Rating Scales
Source: Survey Monkey
Let’s go over some examples of how a graphic rating scale might be implemented.
1. “How would you grade the employee’s communication skills?”
Pick the statement below that best answers the question:
- Very poor (the employee regularly fails to disclose important information, is poor with customers, and/ or confuses other team members)
- Poor (the employee struggles to communicate with colleagues and customers)
- Average (neither particularly good nor bad at communicating)
- Good (the employee has a good manner with colleagues and customers and conveys important information in a timely manner)
- Excellent (the employee’s communication skills bring demonstrable value to their position and improve the efficiency of whatever team they’re on)
2. “This employee is self-motivated”
Select the answer you most agree with:
- Strongly disagree (the employee needs constant micromanagement and doesn’t complete assignments unless prompted)
- Disagree (the employee does the bare minimum and rarely shows initiative)
- Neither agree nor disagree (the employee’s self-motivation isn’t noticeable one way or the other, or they haven’t had many opportunities to show initiative)
- Agree (the employee rarely needs chasing up for their work and shows good initiative where it can help)
- Strongly agree (the employee completes all their assignments ahead of time and often takes on extra duties without having to be asked)
3. “Score the employee on their attention detail”
Source: Ahoy Team
Provide an answer from 1 to 10 where 1 equals consistently inaccurate work and 10 equals routinely flawless performance.
Advantages of Rating Scale
Whilst imperfect, the graphic rating scale does offer HR chiefs some advantages for evaluating employee performance.
- Easily understood: It’s easy to grasp the function of the graphic rating scale, and it takes little to no instruction for managers to complete it. Additionally, employees should have no trouble comprehending the criteria that they’re being graded against, even if they might query the results.
- Generates actionable insights: By measuring employees’ most relevant behaviors for succeeding in their roles, the graphic rating scale can quickly identify areas of performance that require improvement and supply useful feedback to both managers and team members. Since the results are standardized, the graphic rating scale is more likely to reveal patterns and trends in behavior that could prove more insightful than more isolated criteria.
- Inexpensive to implement: Because the graphic rating scale is relatively simple and doesn’t rely on complicated methodology, it’s cheap for managers to implement even in larger businesses.
Graphic Rating Scale Disadvantages
Although we’ve looked at some of the advantages offered by the graphic rating scale, there are some obvious weaknesses that significantly lessen its appeal as a practical evaluation system:
- Subjectivity: The graphic rating scale’s greatest flaw is the innate subjectivity of all the criteria and questions it allows for. Personal interpretation of the answers to the different questions is almost impossible to avoid, making it difficult to produce any concrete, objective insights from the evaluation model.
- Inconclusive mid-range results: Answers to questions that fall in the middle of the scale provide little to no useful insight regarding employee behavior. Scoring a “3” on a scale of 1-5 or answering a question with “neither good nor bad” simply generates empty data on a large portion those tested which will muddy the quality of the scale’s results and.
- Unconscious bias: Despite our best efforts, it’s almost impossible to stop unconscious biases from influencing our answers on the graphic rating scale, especially when grading qualitative criteria. An employee who has strengths in one area can cause managers to overlook otherwise glaring weaknesses elsewhere. Conversely, a big weakness might lead to a graphic rating scale undermining the assessment of an employee who makes valuable contributions in a different category.
By grading all employees on a flat set of subjective values, it’s possible the foundation for the graphic rating scale method doesn’t take into account the active criteria that help employees deliver results. To effectively implement the graphic rating scale, it may be necessary to take extra measures to counterbalance these inherent drawbacks and look at the performance of employees according to additional data-driven criteria.
Common Factors Affecting Graphic Rating Scale Outcomes
Among the challenges posed by the graphic rating scale, some considerations frequently come into play that can skew the test’s outcome. Keep on the lookout for these and take measures where necessary to minimize their impact.
Halo Effect
The Halo Effect refers to a cognitive bias single trait or aspect about someone comes to dominate their overall perception. The Halo Effect could also come into play when an employee turns up to work very smartly dressed, which may cover the fact that their actual performance is lower than that of their less well turned out colleagues. The same might occur when a colleague who uses a wide vocabulary is judged to be more intelligent than less verbose team members. KPIs and other statistical information can help guard against its impact.
Recency Effect
Recency Effect occurs when an employee’s perception is defined by recent events, even if they’re anomalous to their long-term behavior. For example, if an employee lands a series of valuable hires in a short space of time, their previous periods of poor performance might be overlooked, even though their success is an exception to the rest of their record. This is why it’s important to look at recent performance in the context of their overall work history.
Stereotyping
We’d rather not imagine that our colleagues, let alone ourselves, could allow discrimination to cloud our judgement. However, the fact remains that, consciously or otherwise, many people will allow their judgement of factors such as race and gender to impact their perceptions about someone. In a qualitative assessment such as the graphic rating scale, this can be particularly hazardous, so ensure that the management team responsible for employee evaluation has a diverse makeup, or employ a diversity officer within the company to oversee the process.
Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of the Graphic Rating Scale
With the right steps, it’s possible to minimize the disadvantages posed by the graphic rating scale. Consider these tips to leverage this assessment system for more valuable insights that can paint a clearer picture of employee performance.
Set Your Goals
Before you put together any assessment, it’s important to consider what results you want to produce with an evaluation. Think about the criteria you want to measure, and how this will tie into your broader HR strategies, and the wellbeing of the business overall.
Make Questions Objective
The areas of performance you’re investigating should be grounded in the context of an employee’s professional performance and their ability to fulfill their duties in the workplace. Asking a question such as “Is the employee happy in their role?” doesn’t really address the quality of their work or their performance in any meaningful way, and the answer will be very difficult to grade on a scale. Avoid ambiguous criteria like “loyalty”, “creativity”, etc. and focus on the behaviors relevant to the role such as “punctuality” or “attention to detail”.
Lead With Desired Behaviors
When applying the graphic rating scale to a particular role, first establish the desired behaviors for that position. Is it a key requirement of the role that the employee is self-motivated? Or do they need to be good with customers? Appraise the desired behaviors for each role and use these to create questions that appraise these behaviors most effectively.
Combine the Graphic Rating Scale With Other Evaluation Methods
To compensate for the graphic rating scale’s tendency towards subjective analysis, use the method in tandem with other systems for grading employee performance. Using other HR tools can prove useful in assessing the results of the graphic rating scale alongside key performance indicators (KPIs) for HR employees, such as:
- Prospects contacted
- Prospects screened
- Prospects interviewed
- Prospects successfully receiving a job offer
- Prospects officially hired
These criteria can be more effective than graphic rating scales alone since they represent the quantitative contributions an individual employee has made to your HR department. For example, where an employee might not rate highly against a subjective metric like teamwork in the graphic rating scale, they may still be excellent at advancing candidates through a particular stage of the hiring funnel, and therefore count as a positive asset to your business.
You can help measure these KPIs with a tool such as SignalHire. This service offers a powerful range of lead generation functions to help HR professionals proactively source and contact valuable recruits when searched for by skills, current and former employers, and even location. While SignalHire is a great resource for finding new hires, it also offers the capacity to track KPIs for a particular project or client company, thanks to a range of customizable filters that can be studied according to individual HR professionals. This results in a concrete evaluation of employee performance that can complement the insights provided by the graphic rating scale.
Source: SignalHire
Combined with tools for extracting verified email addresses for hires and the capacity to search through over 600 million professional profiles on social platforms, this makes SignalHire a multi-use tool that can streamline a wide variety of critical recruitment processes.
The Bottom Line
As we’ve seen, the graphic rating scale brings its own set of strengths and weaknesses to the table for any HR professional who wants to develop an accurate assessment system for employee performance. Whether its heavily subjective approach to evaluating skills will appeal is likely to come down to your own personal management philosophy. Using the graphic rating scale alongside thorough analysis of KPIs using a recruitment tool like SignalHire will offer the most reliable indicator of an employee’s true performance.
However, it’s worth noting that KPIs aren’t the last word in employee evaluation either: executive and leadership roles require a lengthier and more detailed recruitment funnel than junior or entry-level positions, and this weighting may not always be reflected in the raw figures for how many new hires a recruiter has successfully achieved. So utilize different methodologies at once to ensure that you’re generating balanced profiles of employee performance.
