In police work, people who are doing the one thing they may have always wanted to do with their lives often have low engagement with a department’s overall mission and vision. Why is this? In his book The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lencioni describes three reasons why people disengage from their jobs:

1. Anonymity: They feel their leaders don’t know or care what they are doing.
2. Irrelevance: They don’t understand how their jobs make a difference.
3. Immeasurement: They cannot measure or assess for themselves the contribution they are making.

As a lieutenant, I reviewed the annual evaluations my sergeants prepared on their officers. To say that these were poorly written was an understatement. I even had one supervisor prepare one generic evaluation and then just cut and paste the different officers’ names on their evaluations using the exact same ratings and comments.

Recently, a major scandal was uncovered involving DWI officers in my former department. The FBI had opened an investigation and learned that certain officers had taken money and gifts from an attorney in exchange for not showing up in court. The officers directed arrestees to meet with the attorney’s paralegal, who promised to get their cases dismissed for a fairly significant fee. This had been going undetected for many years. At last count, 12 officers have either resigned or been terminated. Four officers have already pled guilty to racketeering and other charges and face up to 100 years in federal prison. Over 250 active DWI cases were dismissed by the district attorney after this was discovered.

Employees want feedback to know where they stand. They don’t want to be left in the dark about their status with their agency.

The sad truth is that this corruption would never have happened if the mayor hadn’t put a project on hold that I was working on to update our outdated performance evaluation. He made it a low priority behind some insignificant initiatives he wanted implemented. One of the core dimensions in our proposal was “work ethic,” and a related behavioral anchor mentions “missed court” as a red flag. The performance evaluation would have either prevented or caught these seemingly minor infractions and might have saved the department’s tarnished reputation, along with the careers of the officers involved. 

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this article, the answer is yes! Performance evaluations are necessary because they provide a structured framework for assessing employee performance, identifying areas for improvement and fostering growth, ultimately benefiting both the employee and the organization. Performance is the value of employees’ contributions to their department over time. That value needs to be measured in some way. Employees learn what their key strengths are and where they should focus their development efforts. Evaluations also serve to make sure that tough feedback is delivered rather than swept under the rug. This article explains some of the key components of a fair and effective evaluation system.

Purpose of performance evaluations

Performance evaluation systems should provide the employees with the opportunity to fine-tune their career development by building skills for current and future assignments and supporting the community by meeting the department’s mission, vision, goals and objectives. This will help ensure that the agency can manage and mitigate risks in an ever-changing environment.

The overall purpose of performance evaluations consists of several basic functions: 

• Provide adequate feedback to each person on their performance.
• Serve as a basis for modifying or changing behavior toward more effective working habits.
• Provide data to managers with which they may judge future job assignments.
• Improve job satisfaction by letting the employee know their work is considered worthwhile and essential to an organization.
• Let the employee know their efforts are appreciated as an important part of the department’s overall mission, strategic plans, goals and objectives.
• Let the employee know whether the job is being performed correctly or where improvement is needed.
• Achieve behavioral modification, control and motivation.

Elements of a good evaluation system

The evaluation should accurately measure the quality of work completed by employees and document their performance. It should also provide feedback to align employees with organizational values and objectives. A good system will produce accurate appraisal documentation to protect both the employee and employer. All personnel should be trained to understand the system. The system should set clear expectations at the beginning of a rating period and develop improvement plans as needed. These systems help organizations recognize employee contributions and foster growth within the workforce. 

Departments should incorporate the performance evaluation system as part of a comprehensive strategic plan. That plan should address performance management, individual development planning, career path, academic growth and mentoring. Typically, an agreed-upon list of the agency’s core performance dimensions and competencies are developed based on input from all personnel and incorporated in the evaluation. Examples of core dimensions include:

• Initiative, Work Ethic, Job Knowledge, Interpersonal Skills, Personal Readiness
• Time Management/Planning, Organizational Skills, Judgment/Decision Making
• Productivity: Output (Quantity), Outcomes (Quality)

Behaviorally anchored rating scales

One system that has been developed and used successfully is the Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS). There are several advantages to this system:

• Validity: Officers and their supervisors who know the job develop the behavior descriptions. Their expertise creates construct validity, which means BARS measures what it is intended to measure. The evaluation should be consistent with the operational definition. The content validity means the performance dimension rating is consistent with actual behavioral anchors demonstrated by the officer being rated and documented by their supervisors.
• Ease of use: Because behaviors are well-defined, the supervisor and their subordinates understand them without extensive explanations or training. As a result, the raters don’t have to spend hours writing long narratives to justify ratings. Behaviors are present, or they are not.
• Clear standards: BARS creates mutual understanding between supervisors and their personnel on what they are reviewing and opportunities for improvement. That understanding facilitates a developmental discussion.
• Consistency: Because behavioral statements are simple and straightforward, there is little variance regardless of who is assessed or the assessor.
• Individualization: There are commonalities among roles across the organization, but each position in the organization should have a unique set of role-related behaviors based on their assignment (e.g., detective behavioral rating measures versus those of the patrol officers). 
• Impartiality: The focus is on behavior, not the value of the person being evaluated, which enables frank, open discussions avoiding personal bias or letting one positive or negative work factor affect overall assessment of performance.

Criteria for implementation

There should be well-defined criteria for successful implementation of a performance evaluation system. These are as follows:

• Relevancy: The system requires supervisors to make judgements on critical and important work behaviors.
• Sensitivity: The system distinguishes and separates workers by work quantity and quality. It should provide valuable and accurate ratings. Supervisors should be rated by their superiors to ensure that rating errors are avoided, such as strictness, leniency, central tendency, halo effect, recency of events or personal bias.
• Reliability: Ratings accurately measure subordinates’ performance. Objective statistics, data, personnel and Internal Affairs files should be reviewed to support or justify any given rating. Supervisors should keep daily journals on their officers to document examples of both exemplary performance and questionable decisions and actions. 
• Acceptability: The system should be acceptable to the agency and the personnel being rated. How the results will be used is the key to acceptability. An officer’s motivation to improve their performance may change if their ratings provide informed decisions regarding career development, compensation, promotions and other HR-related matters. Opportunities for specialized training may also be based on performance evaluations. Clear objectives aligned with organizational goals will ensure that employees’ efforts contribute to the mission. Specific and measurable data provide clear expectations for employees.

Benefits of performance evaluations

Transparency is essential for a healthy workplace. Workplaces will often succeed or fail based on how efficient and open their channels of communication are. Employees want feedback to know where they stand. They don’t want to be left in the dark about their status with their agency. Employee engagement improves when performance evaluations are effective. Understanding the importance of the work you are doing is a critical step in feeling more engaged in the department as a whole. Allow your employees to see the greater picture and help them find their place inside it.

Performance evaluations help you recognize when an employee needs additional training. When you have regular employee evaluations, it becomes much easier to separate those who are trying to succeed and those who simply don’t care enough about their jobs to put in the effort. Employees who do good work deserve recognition. 

Performance evaluations also help your employees set goals. Give your employees something to work toward, and make sure their expectations are crystal clear. Use employee evaluations as a platform where goals can be established and monitored. Evaluations improve employee retention. When your employees are given clear goals, open lines of communication and reward systems that they agree to and participate in, they will be happier, more engaged and more productive. All of these things lead to higher employee retention and better morale.

Giving ongoing feedback

The main purpose of an effective performance evaluation is to assess and improve individual performance, provide ongoing constructive feedback for development and align employee goals with organizational objectives. Performance evaluations can identify specific skill gaps or training needs, allowing organizations to tailor development programs accordingly. Many agencies only do performance evaluations annually, which does nothing to provide useful real-time feedback. 

To ensure consistency and relevance, the best performance evaluation systems provide ongoing checkpoints before the final evaluation is placed in the employee’s personnel file at the end of the one-year rating period. These could consist of quarterly progress reports. The initial checkpoint is more of an orientation establishing expectations and setting goals. The second and third checkpoints are ongoing progress reports to let the employee know where they stand. Some type of performance improvement plan can be established during these stages for those officers who are having difficulty meeting the department’s standards. Those plans can help the officer improve before the fourth-quarter review and final permanent rating. There are performance evaluation software programs available that can help agencies develop a custom online system. Access to databases with pertinent performance-related information on the ratees can help ensure reliability and acceptability.

Employee reviews are about establishing communication between employees, supervisors and management teams. Evaluations should emphasize rewarding people who perform well over disciplining those who perform poorly. Options for improvements should always be considered without instilling fear of repercussion.

Engaged officers will stay with their department longer, and evaluations create clear expectations and opportunities to discuss whatever issues might arise in the organization. When you handle performance evaluations with care, everyone wins.