Employee assessment is mainly done through job satisfaction. The level of job satisfaction of an employee relates to the commitment shown by him/her in the job and will be an indicator of employee assessment. Can job satisfaction be measured? What are the main attributes of measuring job satisfaction? How to do Employee assessment? All these types of questions are answered in this article.

There are number of ways of employee assessment. The most common ways are

1. Rating Scales(Single Global Rating)

2. Summation Score

3. Interviews

4. Action Tendencies

5. Critical Incidents

(1) SINGLE GLOBAL RATING:

The most common approach for Job Satisfaction is the use of rating scales. These scales fall into two general categories. One is called tailor made scales which are constructed for a particular aspect. The second set comprises standardized scales which before their use, have been developed to establish group norms on the scales and to ensure reliability and validity of the measuring instruments. The tailor made scales are frequently used in practice.

There are two main standardized scales. They are:

(1) Job Descriptive Index (JDI) developed by Smith, Kendall and Hulin (1969)

(2) MINNESOTA Satisfaction Questionnaire.(MSQ).

The JDI has separate scales for satisfaction with pay, promotion, supervision, work and co-workers.

The MSQ has 100 questions, five items for each of the following 20 factors:

(1) Ability utilization (11) Moral values

(2) Achievement (12) Recognition

(3) Activity (13) Responsibility

(4) Advancement (14) Security

(5) Authority (15) Social service

(6) Company Policies and practices (16) Social status

(7) Compensation (17) Supervision-Human relations

(8) Co-workers (18) Supervision-technical

(9) Creativity (19) Variety

(10) Independence (20) Working conditions

Another method is that, as implied from the terms, in single global rating all the employees are asked to respond to one single questing may be “By considering all factors of job how satisfied are you with your job?” Employees are needed to respond by reporting “a figure” based on a rating scale. Ratings are from 1 to 5 as follows.

1. Highly dissatisfied

2. Dissatisfied

3. No comment

4. Satisfied

5. Highly satisfied

Thus the ratings can be noted for an employee if a question is given to him his reply will measure his attitudes towards his / her job.

(2) SUMMATION SCORE:

The summation score considers employees attitudes towards various aspects of the jobs. The important aspects of job included are nature of work itself, supervision, pay, promotion, coworkers etc. The scores given for each of these aspects are added to give the overall Job Satisfaction score of an employee.

(3) INTERVIEWS:

It is another method of measuring Job Satisfaction. In this method each employee is interviewed personally. The employees do give their opinions, which reveal whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the job.

(4) ACTION TENDENCIES:

These represent the inclinations people have to avoid or approach certain things. By gathering information about how they feel like acting with respect to their jobs, the Job Satisfaction can be measured.

(5) CRITICAL INCIDENTS:

This is based on the Herzberg’s two factor theory of motivation. In this method the employee is asked about the specific incidents in the job in which they were particularly satisfied or dissatisfied. These incidents were then further analyzed in determining which aspects were closely related to positive and negative attitudes

These are some methods adopted for employee assessment.