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Performance rating scales provide critical data points for improving performance in your business.
When issues, such as compensation decisions, are at stake, develop a performance rating scale that’s fair and equitable.
Why?
Most traditional processes are arbitrary.
In other words, managers rate employees based on their experiences rather than an objective performance rating system. This makes it biased and creates room for resentment by employees who feel overlooked.
Workplace landscapes and organizational charts are increasingly getting complex.
This makes it nearly impossible to apply traditional-based rating systems, especially if your goal is to attract and retain top talents.
We recommend you upgrade how you assign value to employee performance.
One of the tested and recommended Performance Rating Scale-friendly charts and graphs you can use is the Likert Scale Chart.
The chart is easy to read and interpret. Also, it comes with multiple answer options, which go up to 10.
Spreadsheet applications, such as Microsoft Excel, lack charts and graphs for measuring your team’s performance.
Yes, you read that right.
We recommend you install a third-party add-in in your Excel to access performance scale rating charts, such as the Likert Scale Chart.
Keep reading to learn how to do this.
Before jumping right into the how-to guide, we’ll address the following question: what is a performance rating scale?
A performance rating scale is a tool you can use to measure an employee’s level of performance or achievement.
This tool provides quantitative and measurable assessments for decision-making. You can easily administer a performance rating scale via a survey, which can be web or paper-based.
Performance rating scales can be numeric (e.g., 3, 4, and 5).
Or alphabetic (e.g., a, b, c), with letters or numbers corresponding to various answer options, such as “b = satisfactory” and “4 = excellent.”
Performance rating scales are everywhere
For instance, after you visit the doctor or order food, sometimes you get a small survey asking for your preferences.
Rating scales can help you to measure employee performance and shorten the appraisal process quantitatively. Besides, you can easily solicit feedback from more people in a single review cycle.
Before diving deeper into performance rating scales, we’ll quickly review the three data types often collected via a survey. And they include:
Nominal data is data organized into categories.
Also, the answer options have no relationship. In other words, they are not ordered. More so, they lack a numeric relationship.
For instance, which of our four major values do you aspire to live up to?
Binary data means yes or no responses. Check out more examples below:
Ordinal data is made up of an ordered list. In other words, answers to a question are mostly made up of a list of possibilities with a clear ranking.
For instance, Do you receive coaching from your immediate manager or supervisor?
How would you rate the frequency of our open-door policy?
How would you rate our new schedule?
In the coming section, we’ll take you through the benefits of a performance rating scale in your business.
You don’t want to miss this.
A performance rating scale can help you expand your understanding of how your employees perform.
We recommend you make data-informed decisions, especially in promotions, compensation, and growth opportunities.
Remember, without a systemized way of gathering data, you’re likely setting yourself up for inaccuracies and biases when making decisions.
Employees want to understand what’s expected of them to get incentives, such as a raise, scholarship, promotion, etc. The aforementioned requires data collection that’s centered on established performance criteria.
Employee satisfaction surveys can help your business revamp its workplace culture to attract and retain top talent.
Secondly, you can easily gain insights into the buttons you should push to get more from employees. In others, you can easily learn what motivates and pushes them to pursue a common goal.
Remember, when your staff is engaged, they’ll feel valued.
Also, they’ll believe in their tasks and go above and beyond to succeed. They’ll even enjoy it more.
Thirdly, an employee satisfaction survey can help you reduce turnover, which is costly in the long run.
When you retain your staff, you’re retaining knowledge and investment you’ve made via training.
According to recent research by McKinsey, among the benefits that employees seek are:
The last point (coaching) is critical, especially in the sales department. Your sales reps need personalized coaching to perform at high levels and meet targets.
Top athletes and entertainers have personal coaches to help them double down on their strengths while working on their weaknesses.
For instance, in the NBA, players work with personal coaches by analyzing past games to spot strengths and weaknesses.
Performance rating scales, such as a Likert Scale Chart, have a straightforward interface, which implies your analysis should be faster and easier.
Start by checking the aggregate rating of the performance review. For instance, the overall rating (as shown by the Likert Chart above) is 3.3 out of 5, slightly above average.
Focus on issues that require urgent intervention. Secondly, check the negative ratings.
Why?
Positive responses provide a good feeling. You can easily motivate yourself to double down on your effort when employees give you a vote of approval.
Conversely, it can easily blind you to believing you’re on the right side of things.
Focus on negative ratings. You’ll learn what needs to be improved to increase employee satisfaction.
Take note of the gray areas, representing neutral sentiments.
Yes, you read that right.
The middle ground is significant as well. Ideally, you want to know why some of your employees are sitting on the fence.
Once you establish their deeply felt needs, drive them to your side (green zone).
We’ll take you through the top 3 performance rating scale examples in the coming section.
Let’s dive in.
This section will take you through how you can use a Likert Scale Chart to display insights into performance review data.
Also, we’ll show you the common Likert Scale Variant used by most human resource departments worldwide. Some of the variants we’ll cover are 10-point Likert Scale Charts.
A 10-performance rating scale (Likert Scale Chart) offers you 10 answer options.
Your employees will have ten options each time they come across a performance review survey question. The survey-based visualization can help you narrow down the precise opinions of your team.
Check out the 10-point Likert Scale below.
How often do you get hands-on coaching from your supervisor?
In the ensuing section, we’ll show you the best rating scale chart for visualizing employees’ performance review data.
A Likert Chart is one of the tested and recommended graphs for visualizing performance review data. It’s easy to read and interpret. In addition, the chart provides insights similar to an IELTS band score chart, helping you assess performance levels effectively. These insights can guide strategic decisions and boost productivity in your business.
The chart uses horizontal bars to display the overall ratings, plus the rating of each survey question.
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application you can use to store, organize, and analyze data.
You’re unlikely to find graphs and charts designed purposely to visualize performance review data, such as the Likert Scale Chart.
We’re not advising you to do away with Microsoft Excel.
There’s an add-in you can easily install in your Microsoft Excel to access performance review-based visualizations.
The application is called ChartExpo.
What is ChartExpo?
ChartExpo is an add-on you can easily install in your Microsoft Excel to access survey-oriented visualizations.
Keep reading because, in the coming section, we’ll take you through how to analyze performance review data.
This section will use a Likert Scale Chart in ChartExpo to visualize the review data below.
| Questions | Rating | Responses |
| How would you rate customer service training? | 1 | 409 |
| How would you rate customer service training? | 2 | 274 |
| How would you rate customer service training? | 3 | 430 |
| How would you rate customer service training? | 4 | 888 |
| How would you rate customer service training? | 5 | 710 |
| How satisfied are you with how customer service answered your questions? | 1 | 167 |
| How satisfied are you with how customer service answered your questions? | 2 | 622 |
| How satisfied are you with how customer service answered your questions? | 3 | 525 |
| How satisfied are you with how customer service answered your questions? | 4 | 394 |
| How satisfied are you with how customer service answered your questions? | 5 | 820 |
To get started with ChartExpo in Excel, install ChartExpo in Excel from this link.
A performance rating scale is a tool you can use to measure an employee’s level of performance or achievement.
This tool provides quantitative and measurable assessments for decision-making. You can easily administer a performance rating scale via a survey.
Performance rating scales can be numeric (e.g., 3, 4, 5) or alphabetic C = Not Meeting Expectations.
Employee satisfaction surveys can help your business revamp its workplace culture to attract and retain top talent.
Secondly, you can easily gain insights into the buttons you should push to get more from employees. In others, you can easily learn what motivates and pushes them to pursue a common goal.
Performance rating scales provide critical data points for improving performance in your business.
Workplace landscapes and organizational charts are increasingly becoming complex. This makes it nearly impossible to apply traditional-based rating systems that are less objective.
We recommend you upgrade how you assign value to employee performance to avoid resentments down the line.
One of the tested and recommended Performance Rating Scale-friendly charts and graphs is the Likert Scale Chart.
Why?
The chart is easy to read and interpret. Also, it comes with multiple answer options, such as a Likert scale.
Spreadsheet applications, such as Microsoft Excel, lack charts and graphs for measuring your team’s performance.
So, what’s the solution?
We recommend you install an add-in, such as ChartExpo, to access Likert Scale Chart and other satisfaction survey-based visualizations.
ChartExpo is a Microsoft Excel add-in loaded with ready-made performance review-based visualizations, such as the Likert Scale Chart.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-made graphs for visualizing employee performance review data.
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