Employee Evaluation in Child Care

Last week we talked about Employee Self-Evaluation.  This is our prerequisite to our formal evaluation.  While the evaluator should have detailed observations of the employee’s work throughout the evaluation period, we like to see the employee’s own evaluation of strengths and weaknesses.

Each new employee is given a 90-day probationary period (although employment is not guaranteed for the full 90 days).  The probationary period gives both the employee and the employer an opportunity to see if the program is a good fit for them and if they are a good fit for the program. Your Employee Evaluation will help you make your side of this decision. 

Following the probationary period, your employees should be formally appraised of their performance on an annual basis.  A note on this:  Some programs schedule all evaluations at the same time every year.  For example, March is evaluation month.  While this makes it easy to remember when each evaluation needs to be done, it makes that particular month a nightmare for the evaluator(s) and makes it much more difficult to conduct a thorough evaluation for each employee.  We recommend conducting annual evaluations on the employee’s anniversary, whether it be the anniversary of hire or the anniversary of the probationary evaluation.

Your actual Employee Evaluation form should be, primarily, a reformatted version of your Job Description.  If you are requiring that your teacher plan and implement a developmentally appropriate program, you need to evaluate on their ability to do just that.  We go section-by-section through our Job Descriptions to write our evaluations.  Do not include anything on the evaluation that is not included in the Job Description; that's simply not fair to your employees.  

In addition to a rating system to evaluate the employee's performance, your Employee Evaluation form should also contain space to explain why each area was rated as it was, with examples of the employee's performance.  It should also contain space to detail any goals that you, as the manager, have for the employee for the upcoming year and any personal goals that the employee has.  This will be your opportunity to designate any necessary coaching or training for an employee that is having difficulty or additional training and/or responsibility for an employee that is showing great promise.  

If you don't already have an Employee Evaluation form, check ours out at: http://daycaretools.com/DaycareProducts.aspx#Personnel  

Misty