How to Build an Effective Managerial Evaluation Form (with Sample Questions)

“Ask for and give regular feedback.” If you’re a manager, you’ve likely heard this message so many times you’re repeating it in your sleep.

Good news: we’re about to turn this advice on its head, literally.

The era of top-down feedback is over. It is time for employees to have their say. Sure, frequent, specific feedback increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and performance. It also helps contribute to a culture of psychological safety in an organization. But this is only true if it goes both ways. Like anyone in your company, leaders need the opportunity to learn development lessons and receive feedback so they, too, can grow and better serve the mission of the organization.

Read on for some tips on building a better managerial evaluation form and a companion downloadable with sample evaluation questions.

Management evaluations should be a priority for your organization.

TIP #1: Make Management Evaluation a Priority

If companies don’t gather feedback on manager performance, they won’t know which managers may be contributing to increased turnover. Direct managers of teams have a significant impact on employee engagement, productivity, and workplace satisfaction. Career coaches are advising their clients to choose their boss, not a job. Moreover, good employees leave bad managers. Which is why the fact that many companies don’t utilize manager evaluation forms at all is about to change in a big way.

And your organization should be leading the charge.

In a recent people management study, Predictive Index found that 94 percent of employees with great bosses have a passion and energy for their jobs, while only 59 percent with bad bosses say the same. That’s a 35-point difference! According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 40 percent of employees might look for a new job at a new company in the next year—and a bad boss is likely a big reason for it.

TIP #2: Use Open-Ended Questions

The connection between personal and professional satisfaction is strong, so give employees the chance to express themselves with open-ended questions. Then, follow up with them in-person to further clarify answers and receive context.

TIP #3: Define Terms in Your Questions

The one common issue with managerial evaluations that use open-ended questions and adjectives like “good” or “effective” is that these terms are entirely subjective. Employees may not know how to identify “strong” or “excellent” management performance. When your evaluation uses terms like these, define them with specific examples or actions.

Click here to download a list of sample managerial evaluation questions. These questions will help your organization determine managerial strengths and areas of improvement. 

Behavioral assessments are valuable leadership development tools for organizations.

The Value of Behavioral Assessments as A Leadership Development Tool

The SHRM is seeing organizations make investments to manage the influx of people data better. Deloitte Consulting LLP’sBersin™ market study found that high-performing people analytics teams collect data from an average of seven channels to generate rich insights and complex actions for business impact.

To be effective, today’s organizations need to be social enterprises. Complex webs are replacing top-down flows of information and feedback. This is good news, as companies are both generating profit and improving the lives of workers, customers, and communities. People analytics, including effective managerial evaluations, can provide needed insights into the individuals holding leadership positions to better accomplish complex and multi-pronged organizational goals.

Once your organization has insights about its leaders, it can take specific actions to address weaknesses. For example, Gallup found that companies that implemented formal management policies around strength-based practices like communication realized a 9-15 percent increase in employee engagement. Doing so also led to a 72 percent drop in employee turnover in companies previously struggling with high turnover.

Narish International helps organizations build higher-performing teams. Click below to learn how!