Performance
7
min read
When it comes to employee surveys or performance reviews, the support for a rating scale is often conflicted. While some organizations believe that a rating scale is quite effective to get a macro view of employee and organizational parameters, others feel that it offers a myopic view.
However, we cannot neglect the overall importance of using a rating scale to measure critical employee parameters and identify areas to focus on.
Through the course of this article, we will help you understand —
- why a rating scale is important,
- the different types you can leverage and
- the steps to pick the right one for your specific needs
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Why do you need a rating scale?
To improve anything, you first need to measure it. Performance rating scales help you do just that. It gives you a clear picture of employee performance and engagement, the gaps in it and helps you with relevant ideas to improve upon. Here’s how —
1. Uniform standard and transparency
A rating scale can help you capture employee pulse on different factors in a uniform and transparent manner.
Since there are a limited number of options, there is a standard trend that comes out from a rating scale.
Specifically focusing on employee performance, a rating scale can help you measure the performance of all your team members on a uniform scale, ensuring a standard and transparent approach to appraisals and review.
2. Quantitative assessment
Second, employee rating scales are exceptional tools for quantitative assessment on different organizational parameters. This can be a great way to capture data points and statistics on factors like engagement, alignment, motivation, performance improvement, etc.
Such data points can enable you to compare trends over time and identify whether or not the organization is going in the right direction.
3. Easy to administer
Finally, a rating scale is easy to administer.
The rate of completion is quite high when it comes to a rating scale.
At the same time, calibration of results is faster and easier for you. While it is important to derive qualitative responses as well, a rating scale can provide an effective starting point for interventions.
Collecting, analyzing and taking action on employee survey comments are great way to bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative responses from an employee rating scale.
Read how to use employee survey comments for better employee experience to learn more about this.
Different types of rating scales
Now that you have an understanding of how a rating scale can help your organization, let’s quickly explore the different types of rating scales that you can leverage.
While the basic foundation of all employee rating scales is common where the respondents have to select between a few options, the nature of the option varies significantly.
The number of options for each rating scale can range from 2 to 7 depending on the variance that you wish to add and the clarity you are able to create between the difference for each option.
1. Numeric vs Descriptive
The first type of rating scale can be distinguished on the basis whether the options are numeric or descriptive in nature.
When to use numeric rating scale
A numeric rating scale involves questions whose answer options are the form of numbers which signify the pulse of those providing the rating.
Here lowest and highest scores refer to being least likely and highly recommendable respectively.
Here’s another example:
This is one of the top examples for using a numeric rating scale, where you don’t need much information from your employees, but just want to get a quick snapshot. However, a numeric rating scale can be ambiguous at times, and each point on the rating scale could have different connotations for different individuals.
When to use descriptive rating scale
A descriptive rating scale, on the other hand, is one in which the responses are more verbose in nature and are able to capture employee pulse in a more effective manner. There are several types of descriptive rating scales that you can leverage.
One of them is the Behavioral Anchored Rating Scale (BARS). The idea is to identify one behavioral aspect that you wish to get insights on and attach a few anchors to it. Then rating takes place on each anchor which ultimately adds up to the behavioral rating. Below is a quick example for performance rating on teamwork for an employee
Rate Mr. X on the following anchors of team work (scale of 1-5)
- How easy is it to collaborate with him?
- How regularly does Mr. X engage with the team?
- How often does he genuinely listen to feedback by others?
2. Likert vs Semantic
When to use Likert rating scale
In the Likert rating scale, the options are generally descriptive in nature and they seek to measure the response to a particular statement.
Instead of a direct question, you can add a statement for your employees to share their view on, from a list of options.
Q2. ‘I believe it is easy to collaborate with other team members’
- Strongly Disagree
- Disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Agree
- Strongly Agree
It is best to have an equal number of positive and negative responses, with a neutral response, if required.
When to use semantic rating scale
A semantic rating scale has similar characteristics. However, while the Likert scale has a description for each option, the semantic scale provides two extreme options like success and failure with no names in between. Your employees can rate the statement based on the degree of extremity.
For example,
Q1. I believe Mr. Y pays attention to detail in his work
3. Nominal vs Binary
When to use nominal rating scale
In the nominal rating scale, there are a few options under the questions, which don’t have any relation to one another. This can be a multi checkbox sort of scale
When to use binary rating scale
In the binary rating scale, there are only two option, Yes or No that the employee has to choose from
How to choose the right rating scale for your needs
Once you understand the difference between the various employee rating scales, you need to identify which one is the best for you. Chances are that you will need to experiment with a combination of a few based on different requirements.
Step I: What is the need?
Start by exploring what is the need. This suggests you need to be very clear on what you seek to achieve from the rating — better performance, more engagement or something else (specify). Here are a few use cases and the best rating scale for each
a) Deep understanding on a specific parameter
Use the BARS rating scale from the descriptive type and you will be able to gauge pulse on different anchors for a particular parameter.
b) Measuring attitude and agreement to a particular statement
Consider the Likert scale and encourage your employees to react to a statement or belief/ attitude to the degree they agree to it.
c) Gauging eNPS
Use the numeric rating scale to gauge how likely your employees are to recommend others to work in your organization.
On the same lines, you can identify the use case and align your needs to select the right rating scale.
Step II: Is the rating scale valid?
Next, based on the need, once you identify a rating scale, try to understand if the options you have captured are able to measure what you seek to gauge or not. For instance —
- If you want to understand the top values your employees align with, you cannot use a binary scale or the Likert scale, rather a nominal scale will be the right option.
- However, if you want to understand whether or not your team aligns with a particular value, the Likert scale is ideal.
Step III: Does the scale cover the variance?
You need to first gauge the intent variety of responses you are likely to receive and choose the rating scale accordingly. For instance, for some parameters, only three options are enough to capture a variety of perspectives. On the other hand, some might need as many as seven options with incremental differences between each. Thus, identify the right scale based on the expected variance.
How to create a qualitative rating scale
Most of the employee rating scales that you see can help you capture a quantitative assessment of the organizational parameter. However, you can also facilitate qualitative assessment with a rating scale by ensuring the following:
1. Leverage descriptive rating scales
Start by leveraging descriptive employee rating scales instead of numeric ones. These scales, in diverse forms allow you to capture deeper insights about employee pulse as compared to a numeric rating.
2. Ask the right questions
Ensure that your questions are not only data oriented like Do you agree, or how likely are you, etc. Questions on the top organizational values or best ways of recognition require mutually exclusive options that give you deeper qualitative understanding.
3. Be mindful of the wording
Use the words that your team members most align with, which are commonly used in the organization. For instance, if you use health initiatives as an umbrella term, putting words like wellness might lead to a poor rating.
4. Have a clear description
Each option in the rating scale should have a clear description. For instance, you need to be clear on what strongly agree means or what a rating of 1 signifies, to ensure everyone is on the same page.
By now, you know that having the right rating scale for a specific purpose is the key to understanding and managing your employees. SuperBeings offers you different kinds of scales to choose from and guides you to pick the best one for your specific business need. You can book a quick demo with one of our experts to see how to leverage this.
Suggested Reading
10 employee performance review tips for managers
Complete guide to continuous performance management (Free Download)
