How to Evaluate Employee Performance in a Small/Medium Sized Hospital

Small and medium scale enterprises are the bedrock of any vibrant economy. In 2005, the Central Bank of Nigeria classified industries thus:

Enterprise	No of Employees	Asset Base (Naira)
Micro	</= 10	< 1.5 Million
Small Scale	11-100	</= 50 Million
Medium Scale	101-300	50-200 Million
Large	>300	>200 Million

Using the classification above, many hospitals in Nigeria and the developing world can be categorized as small or medium scale hospitals. Such hospitals usually don’t have a formal method of evaluating employees’ performance neither do they have a structure in place to do that.

It must be noted however that many hospital owners do not evaluate employee performance not because they don’t want to but because they don’t know how to.

This post will teach you how to evaluate your employees using simple criteria. After studying the example below, you can develop criteria that will fit your hospital and expectations.

The first step to performance evaluation is answering the following questions:

What will I evaluate?
The three most important criteria to evaluate include:
• Personal Qualities
• Professional Qualities
• On-the-Job Qualities

Who will do the evaluation?
Evaluation can be conducted by employee (self rating), peers, immediate supervisor, and management. The use of multiple evaluations (i.e. combination of all four) helps to reduce problems of validity and reliability. The ratings from each level of evaluation can be averaged to get the employees final score.

How will it be done?
Methods to use may include written tests, rating system, oral interviews or a combination of all three.

How often will it be done?
Depending on your peculiar needs, performance evaluation may occur biannually, annually, biennially or every 3 years.

What will I do with the outcome?
This may include setting performance improvement goals for employees as well as plans of action to implement them.

What are the consequences for employees who do not meet standards?
Consequences may include placing employees on probation (then reviewing employee performance at the end of the probationary period), training and development, transfer of employee to another unit, demotion of employee or outright termination of appointments for those who refuse to improve.

Finally, you must discuss areas of the performance review including the employee's feedback. Then record the evaluation in the personnel files.

Let’s see how the actual performance evaluation is done using the Rating Method. The criteria I will use are
• Personal Qualities
• Professional Qualities
• On-the-Job Qualities

These are further divided into several sub-criteria and rated on a scale of 1-5 as indicated below.
• 5 = Consistently exceeds expectations
• 4 = Frequently exceeds expectations
• 3 = Achieves/meets expectations
• 2 = Inconsistently meets expectations
• 1 = Performs below expectations

Example
John Ebele is a laboratory scientist working at Demy Hospital. He is due for his annual performance appraisal and the owner of the hospital, Dr. Yahaya rates him on the three criteria of personal qualities, professional qualities and on-the-job qualities as shown below. He scores 10.7 out of a possible 15 points.

NAME	CRITERIA	RATING (1-5)	AVERAGE RATING (max score:5)	TOTAL SCORE(15)
JOHN EBELE	PERSONAL QUALITIES ·        Integrity ·        Diversity ·        Initiative ·        Innovation ·        Respect ·        Growth	·        3 ·        4 ·        5 ·        5 ·        1 ·        4	3.7	10.7
	PROFESSIONAL QUALITIES ·        Interpersonal skills ·        Quality of work ·        Stewardship ·        Reliability ·        Productivity ·        Knowledge	·        2 ·        4 ·        3 ·        3 ·        4 ·        3	3.2
	ON-THE-JOB QUALITIES ·        Duties and Responsibilities ·        Health and Safety ·        Professionalism ·        Efficiency and Effectiveness ·        Continuous Development	·        3 ·        4 ·        4 ·        4 ·        4	3.8

The next step after the evaluation will be to review the rating with the employee.

Using our example, Dr Yahaya will discuss with Mr. Ebele on areas that need improvement. For example, he got a score of 1 in the respect criteria. This obviously has to be improved. The steps to be taken for improvement are discussed and a time frame for the next evaluation is agreed upon by both Dr Yahaya and Mr. Ebele. He may also require training to boost his performance in other areas. This should be determined and implemented as well.

Regular performance evaluation is a must for every serious minded hospital. It is important that you have a thorough knowledge of how to perform evaluations.Kindly go through the example again so you will fully grasp the steps involved.

 I will write on another aspect of HR management in a subsequent post.

See you soon….