If your organization won't have one, now will be the perfect period to introduce a Program Evaluation system.

Why is this the opportune time for your organization to apply an outcomes management, (Program Evaluation) System?

Performance evaluation systems can be classified along a range of dimensions that capture variations in their structure, content, and process characteristics. Among-the most important dimensions are the following:

Who/what is evaluated? Do we evaluate the individual, board effectiveness the workgroup, the division?

Who performs (and has input into) the evaluation? Is it produced by each individual's immediate supervisor? Peers, subordinates, or customers? How much input does the person being evaluated has in to the evaluation and in appealing the results?

Time-frame: short to long. What will be the time frame over which data are collected (either formally and objectively or informally) before evaluations are rendered?

Objective/formulaic versus subjective/impressionistic evaluations. In certain cases, performance is measured very objectively, using unambiguous measures of different facets of performance. By way of example, a salesperson could be scored on Euros sales, new customers developed, and increases in orders by old customers, and each of these being put on some standard scale (e.g., standard deviations from the mean performance of salesmen in the organization) and then weighted 40%, 40%, and 20%, respectively. However, employees in a facility could be evaluated and rated in accordance with the subjective overall impressions of their immediate superiors.

When objective or formulaic evaluations are used, there will be the further issue of how closely tailored the formula must be to the matter of each individual. At one extreme, every similarly situated individual in the firm (say, every salesperson) is evaluated using the exact same rigid formula. The middle ground includes cases in which folks are evaluated against their own previous performance; improvements are noted, however the same categories are utilized for each individual. At another extreme are systems by which each individual in each period has a specially tailored group of goals and objectives. A prime example of this really is management by objectives schemes, by which each individual takes part in designing his or her set of objectives.

Relative versus absolute performance. In some instances, employees are evaluated upon an absolute scale-for example, sales volume, units produced weekly, touchdowns scored, or dollar value of hours billed to clients. In other instances, performance is evaluated on some sort of relative basis, or performance is measured on a mixture of absolute and relative performance. Often times, the benchmark that is used is the performance of other individuals, either in the organization or outside, who are presumed to face the exact same productive environment and constraints and also to possess similar capability levels. In other cases, performance is measured relative to the person's own previous performance.

Forced distribution versus unspecified percentages. When summary categories are used, a forced distribution (a lot of percent in category 1, so many in category 2, etc.) could possibly be employed, or perhaps the percentages may go unspecified. Note that where forced distributions are used, there has to be some sort of relative performance evaluation going on, even when only implicitly.

Multi-source versus single-source evaluation. In some systems, data are gathered entirely or largely from a single source, such as the individual's supervisor. Other evaluation systems gather performance appraisals from many sources-customers, peers, supervisors, and so on-where each source is asked to appraise those aspects of performance that the source can reasonably be expected to know about.

Multi-criterion versus single summary statistic. In perhaps the majority of performance evaluation systems, all of the data are ultimately massaged into a single summary rating statistic of overall performance. Many dimensions of performance may enter into this statistic, however the final outcome is one-dimensional. In certain other systems, there is absolutely no attempt to formulate just one statistic. In the middle are systems where there is a summary statistic which is very coarse (just about everyone is within the same category), grading many dimensions.