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Theory and practice of personnel management - Shchekin GV

5.2. Methods for assessing employees

One of the main functions of the personnel service at enterprises and institutions is to assist the administration in determining the business and moral qualities of employees with a view to their full mobilization in the workplace and in the service sector. In many countries, business organizations issue specialized journals and bulletins, which regularly highlight methods for evaluating, selecting and arranging personnel in traditional ways, and using the latest innovations [1; 5].

In particular, the National Association of Heads of Personnel Services of France devoted one of the issues of the journal "Personnel" to the problems of organizing work on evaluation and recruitment. As shown by the publications, the personnel assessment systems practiced in France are very different in complexity. At medium-sized enterprises, greater freedom of action is given to the heads of departments, who, with the approval of the directorate, practice from time to time interviews with subordinates; While reports on such conversations are not always brought to the attention of the subordinates themselves.

In some enterprises there are more developed systems that provide for the appraiser to fill in the working document, where he sums up his work, assesses his own successes and masters the assigned work area. This document serves as the starting point for interviews (organized annually or after one and a half years). However, management does not always inform personnel about the evaluation of their work. Finally, at large firms, conversations with subordinates are not limited to the discussion of professional cases, but also to assess their potential capabilities. Documents of the interview are signed by the attestee, his immediate supervisor and the next head of the office. These complex systems provide for maintaining a dossier for each respondent. However, according to the testimony of French specialists, most of the assessments contained in the personal dossier are of an average character of the type "satisfactory". They explain this by the fact that the heads of shops and services do not want "unrest" in the team. Therefore, poor workers do not receive unsatisfactory assessments because of managers' apprehensions to hurt their self-esteem, and good employees remain out of sight of the management of the enterprise or institution.

Sociologists note that the personnel services in France depart from the former practice of assessing the cadres according to the system of school scores, because it discourages young professionals when hiring. In place of arbitrary evaluations of superiors comes a more balanced and comprehensive evaluation of employees based on the results of interviews and their working documents. In this case, the interested person can appeal to the management with a protest about the disagreement with the assessment made to him. In general, the employee is judged not so much by the results of his official duties, as by his creative abilities. It is also noteworthy that the evaluation (certification) of cadres in France is used more often at large enterprises than on medium and small enterprises, and more in institutions than in material production.

In the book "The Art of Management" B. Galambo analyzes two approaches to the evaluation of workers. The first one is based on the tasks and requirements of scientific management of production, focusing on the evaluation of cadres through a detailed description of official duties, which, in the opinion of the administration, makes it possible to evaluate the results achieved in an objective manner. At the same time, the author points out, if two employees give an assessment simultaneously, then they should come to the same conclusion. In this assessment, the interview is not mandatory. In practice, this approach has found its limited possibilities due to subjectivity.

The second approach is based on the concept of "human relations", following the establishment that "a happy man is a productive worker". In this case, interviews play a decisive role, since they allow you to better know the employee, determine the difficulties that he faces, and outline ways of eliminating them. But with this approach, the inability of some leaders to successfully conduct a conversation, so many heads of shops, departments and services related to personnel management, resort to the advice of specialists. In general, these approaches complement each other [1; 5].

Practice shows that the classical frame evaluation system with the help of the listed methods does not always function successfully. In practice, many heads of shops and services of enterprises prefer to fill in personal cards (working papers) for employees and send their dossiers to the personnel department, without losing time for an interview with interested persons. Therefore, young engineers are attached to mentors who give assessments to their wards. They should not take the posts of the immediate leaders of their wards. Each month they meet for meetings within the "commission of young professionals" and make judgments about increasing the salary to each of their sponsored ones. Thanks to a good knowledge of the production structure and available vacancies, mentors help young professionals to find work to their liking and promote their promotion.

According to observations by Western specialists of the personnel service, the attitude of employees towards the procedure of interviews with their immediate superiors is ambiguous. It is noted that all interviewees feel a certain constraint before the interview as before the exam, and some express dissatisfaction with the fact that immediate managers can not immediately affect their career and earnings. Hence the desire of the respondents to meet with leaders of a higher rank, on which the increase in wages and promotion depends. In this regard, some experts suggest not to reconcile regular interviews with salary and career issues, as they must be resolved higher and should not affect the "easy" course of the conversation.

Western systems of personnel assessment systems and methods have different names: annual personnel certification, performance evaluation, assessment of achievement of set goals, etc. Theoretically, all these systems include the following elements: evaluation of the results achieved, annual interviews, consideration of annual totals Work and training, attestation for the year, the definition of goals (objectives) and evaluation of the results obtained, management of the choice of goals, etc. The common for these systems of staff assessment is the need for periodic interviews of managers with subordinates. At the same time, the interviews should cover three main topics:

• definition (choice) of goals in the form of an individual work plan with subsequent control;

• professional adaptation of the employee in the workplace or mastering the assigned task;

• needs and prospects for the professional growth of an employee, sometimes outside his workplace [1; 5].

Interviews can be conducted according to a pre-planned plan (based on a special questionnaire-formulary). The collected information goes to the department (management, service) of the cadres and serves as a basis for developing plans for vocational training and retraining of personnel, for managing the promotion of workers in the service, and, finally, for coordinating and controlling decisions to increase wages in the framework of a general concept in this field. Many Western experts believe that the conversations of subordinates with leaders are an important means of communication within the collective.

In the staff assessment book of Thomas H. Patten, intended for the administration of enterprises and institutions, the author notes that determining the value of an employee on the basis of his character traits does not provide reliable conclusions that can easily be challenged under the pretext of their "subjectivism", so it is better to evaluate employees according to the results Their work and behavior.

According to many experts, an effective method of encouraging employees is to inform them about what the administration or institution expects from them. Employees of the administration and the personnel service should avoid linking the results of the interviews with a simultaneous increase in wages, since in this case the conversation can only be reduced to this issue. Do not change the rating system every year. It is advisable to evaluate the employee's work within the framework of his direct duties, but not just this, as his professional growth can be slowed down. An annual interview should not be a surprise for the employee, it should be a continuation of everyday contacts with the immediate leadership. The Human Resources Department is responsible for ensuring that interviews take place in the proper form and, at the request of the participants, facilitate the conversation procedure. The duty of the personnel service is also the study of all completed questionnaires for an objective judgment on the level of requirements imposed on the staff, focusing on the best samples. On the eve of the conversation, the manager should review all previous assessments of the employee. Attestation at enterprises and institutions should be introduced, beginning with the highest levels of management, which must undergo a 20-hour training using business games [1; 5].

Despite the shortcomings, the evaluation of the employee depending on the implementation of the goals is an effective method of verification and allows you to better plan the activities of the organization. The interested employee can himself set goals (tasks) by analyzing his capabilities and taking into account weaknesses, after which these issues are discussed with the management. Such a system should be used at will, and its implementation requires several years.

According to Western experts, the role of the personnel service in the traditional methods of assessing all employees is as follows:

• the development of the program and the definition of the calendar terms for assessments (attestation), familiarization of interested persons with them;

• providing the heads of shops and other units with the necessary documentation;

• wide familiarization of personnel with the personnel assessment system and methods of its application;

• training of managers at all levels of technical methods for attestation;

• Annual consolidation of the results of the work on personnel assessment and the formulation of relevant conclusions;

• coordination of efforts to implement measures resulting from the results of attestations, including vocational training (training), promotion, wage surcharges, transfer to another job, etc .;

• improving the system of performance indicators, their content and application [1; 5].

In recent years, new methods of selection and evaluation of personnel using scientific and technical methods have been widely disseminated abroad. These include psychological tests, graphology, the "scenario of life", special questionnaires, the study of brain activity with the help of computers, and so on.

Typically, the tests fall into three groups:

• psychomotor, whose purpose is to analyze reflexes and dexterity;

• intellectual, through which are determined the ability to abstract thinking, analysis, determining the essence of the problem, etc.;

• Personal, revealing the main features of the character.

The graphological method of determining the abilities of a person according to the nature of his handwriting is attached to psychological ones. Analysis of handwriting and manner of writing allow, according to experts, to determine the degree of intelligence, sociability and willpower of the candidate. The graphological method has recently been often used in hiring labor and is advertised in specialized literature, but it should be noted that in order to successfully master it, you need three years of study and several years of seniority.

Evaluation of the candidate using the "life scenario", ie, through information about the vicissitudes of his work biography and family life, clarifying the circumstances of life, from childhood itself, which occurs during a conversation with a specially trained personnel officer, is based on the fact that , According to experts, the "scenario" is a plan of life predetermined by the parents' genes, which received their support and was justified in the course of subsequent events. This method is an auxiliary one and can not replace the traditional methods of personnel assessment based on documents and detailed conversations.

In recent years, some companies have emerged, specializing in the development of modern methods for the selection and evaluation of cadres with the provision of consulting services. For example, the firm Personnel Administration (USA) has developed a questionnaire containing 90 pairs of judgments-assessments of the positive and negative properties. The respondent must choose his own judgments that best characterize him. According to the results of the survey, a chart is drawn up, the analysis of which gives an idea of ​​such qualities as dynamism, sociability, style of work, emotionality, independence, direction, ability to lead, etc. At the same time, 20 factors of human behavior are evaluated; Factors of personal life are affected only to a small extent. The procedure for completing the questionnaire lasts 10-15 minutes and, according to the authors of the method, gives immediate "feedback". This method, called the "preferred level method," has been used for more than 15 years in various countries of the world on a contractual basis. According to the company's employees, they can be used at any enterprise and in any institution to assess employees of any level, from the operator to the CEO [1; 5].