74
Ask Offenders for Self-Evaluation

Let difficult employees provide an assessment of themselves. This advice may strike you as the equivalent of handing an enemy a platform. But workers tend to be more critical of themselves than their supervisors, according to some attorneys who advocate employee participation in the evaluation process. Admitting to a problem, especially on paper, is half the battle of solving it.

Extend the employees’ participation to evaluations of their supervisors, especially difficult managers. That could provide eye-opening feedback because a wide gap often exists between how managers view themselves and how their subordinates see them. In a survey by Hudson, a New York City staffing company, nearly all managers (92 percent) rated themselves as good managers. But just 67 percent of workers gave their managers favorable reviews. Your evaluation process moves closer to a true portrait of all your employees when you get a look at them from the equivalent of a wide-angle lens.