Determining Overall Performance Ratings

After performance data have been gathered for each employee, there is usually a need to compute an overall performance score. This is particularly necessary for making administrative decisions such as the allocation of rewards. Computing overall performance scores is also useful in determining whether employees, and groups of employees, are improving their performance over time.

This is a critical advantage of approaching performance management with a performance analytics mindset. We use performance data collected on an ongoing basis to create meaningful insights that help individuals grow and develop, and to improve individual and team performance. Two main strategies are used to obtain an overall performance score for each employee: judgmental and mechanical. The judgmental procedure consists of considering every aspect of performance, and then, arriving at a defensible summary.

The use of weights allows the supervisor to come to an objective and clear overall performance score for each employee. In most cases, the mechanical method is superior to the judgmental method. A supervisor is more likely to introduce biases in computing the overall performance score when no clear rules exist regarding how to combine the performance dimensions. As far as the computation of overall scores goes, the mechanical method is superior to the judgmental method.