Performance Evaluation

Upon hearing the term "performance evaluation" my mind immediately pictures suits, conference rooms and everything else associated with corporate life. As far as I've witnessed, in the culinary industry the words performance appraisals and evaluations don't have much meaning – but that's not to say their importance holds any less weight. When finishing up on the line at the end of a busy night, having your chef come up and tell you that you did a good job is the closest thing to a real evaluation I've ever seen. It's effective though because you feel recognized for your hard work. Receiving feedback while working in the kitchen seems to be the only way our progress is verbalized. Personally, I don't think that performance review from a superior needs to formal to be effective. Getting evaluated on the spot from your chef is better than getting a review of your work after a year because you can correct yourself right away. In this industry you find out almost instantly the moment you make a mistake or have your success recognized. We almost always know where we stand in our work as chefs or bakers, if we take something out of the oven and it's burned or a dish gets sent back to the kitchen – something obviously went wrong. When serving food, our performance is evaluated with every dish that goes out of the kitchen.