How To Write Employee Performance Review

How To Write Employee Performance Review – 7 Steps

Feedback is breakfast for champions and equally important is the way in which the feedback is provided to employees. Writing an employee performance review is an important part of providing feedback apart from regular follow-up discussions. Putting things down on paper has always been effective mechanism for performance review. This gives an opportunity and act as ready reckoner for employees to which they can even go back and align their performance. Hence it is important for managers to write an effective employee performance review for growth and success of the members of their team.

The main motivation of the employee performance review should always be to help employees grow. Talking about negatives and discouraging employees only leads to severe results. Negatives should definitely be talked about but it should be in a manner that pulls them up and motivate them to improve their performance. A motivating an inspiring discussion along with a judiciously written performance review goes a long way in developing a team of winners.

Below are 7 steps that would act as important guidelines when you set to write employee performance review. These steps essentially also defines the structure and the way review can be conducted

1) Goals- A review without assessment of Goals is meaningless. Each one of us needs parameter to be measured on and goals are the best way to give structure to them. A good employee performance review always takes the goals that has been given to employees into consideration and structures the format around it. An assessment of how employee has performed on goals act as a good reference for employees too.

2) Objectivity- It is important to remove any subjectivity and bring Objectivity into picture. Generic statements with no reference to figures should be avoided. Bring Objectivity by referring to numbers rather than plain vanilla statements. Once employee knows that they have a defined targets they automatically get motivated to achieve the same. In absence of numbers they have confused view about their goals.

3)360 Degree Feedback- It is desirable, though not important, to get feedback from inter or intra team members with whom the employee has interacted. These feedbacks can help you to not only validate your thoughts but put a ground for feedback too. A 360 degree review also helps employees to develop whole round personality rather than getting biased towards specific individuals or functions.

4) Structure-The structure of employee performance review is also very important. Your goals should be to talk about only those things that matters by removing those that does not hold much weightage. Often there are things added to have extra knowledge without solving any purpose and that should be removed. You need to focus your attention in areas that matter the most.

5) Grading- Based on the achievements it is important to grade employees. This becomes more important when you are handing a bigger team. Grading helps the employee to see where they are vis-à-vis others and hence help them to set their targets. It also helps them to understand what is expected out of them so that they can align their performance accordingly. This is important step when you set yourself to write employee performance review.

6) Focus –The focus and tone of your review should always be positive. Yes, there are no harm in mentioning the missed targets or areas where the employee has not performed but you need to put a strict check on tone and words. The written performance review needs to be related with discussion and hence you can leave certain points for discussion only. Also when numbers are there things becomes self evident. The purpose of appraisals is a performance check. Make sure you make best use of this opportunity.

7) Future- Apart from past you can drop a hint at places in terms of expectations in the future. Another way to highlight this is by talking about negatives and how you want the behavior to change in the future. Relating past with the expectations from future can really do wonder for employees.

These are simple yet effective steps that have a major impact on the morale of your employees. Employees do eagerly wait for their review and are much willing to be serious about it too. Additionally it sets a platform for discussion that happens subsequently. The above is the simple checklist that you need to be aware and would definitely help you when you set yourself to Write Employee Performance Review.

Picture- Dörnveek Märkkstyrn