Ronald B. McKinley, PhD, MBA, SPHR, Vice President, Human Resources and Employee ServicesFollowing the FY14 performance review cycle, UTMB Health established a task force to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the institution’s employee evaluation process.
This task force, led by Human Resources, received and solicited feedback about the review process and the ePerformance system from employees, managers and faculty members across the entire institution. Input was collected through individual conversations, focus groups, worksite questionnaires and other channels.
We would like to thank everyone who shared their thoughts and feelings with us. Performance evaluations are an important part of our efforts to help people grow professionally, and your input on improving the process is greatly appreciated.
Work is already being done to improve many of the areas you commented on, including education and training, process flow and content, and system configuration. To meet your needs and the needs of the institution more effectively, we are:
- Improving education on the various roles — employee, manager and second-line manager — of the evaluation process;
- Providing additional education on creating goals that are better aligned with individual expectations, using a three-point scale to accurately assess and document varying levels of performance, and evaluate the behavioral components of the institution’s core values;
- Reviewing the wording of the measures in the Outcomes section of the Manager/Supervisor and Executive templates and partnering with subject matter experts to ensure that standard definitions are available and understood across business areas;
- Enhancing ePerformance training to highlight features that assist with data entry;
- Reviewing the weight assigned to each section in the performance review documents to determine if they are still appropriate;
- Adding functionality to the ePerformance system that allows content to be easily copied from the employee’s self-evaluation to the manager’s evaluation;
- Reconfiguring the ePerformance system to reduce the number of automatic email notifications and to make the content of the emails more specific; and
- Removing electronic approval steps that do not add value.
These changes and enhancements have been endorsed by executive leadership and will be completed in the coming weeks.
Thank you again for providing valuable feedback and for helping to improve the evaluation process at UTMB Health. If you have any questions, please contact the HR ePerformance group.