Giving your employees regular feedback and a performance review is crucial to any proper performance review program. It helps to keep employees proactive, engaged, and motivated. Besides, getting reviews is ideal for collecting feedback and helping you on setting realistic project goals.
Performance reviews are a way to show your employees you are paying attention to their development and will help them to understand the places they need to improve, giving them the tools to do so.
In this article, you will learn how to use an employee review template to check employees' performance in your business, their different types of performance reviews, and how to make one of your own (with the help of some performance review templates as well).
What is a "Performance Review"
A performance review form (or employee evaluation form) assesses an employee's performance in the business. Its goal is to identify the employee's strengths and weaknesses, give them actionable feedback, and set clear goals for self-improvement.
Many studies have proven that regular and diverse feedback will substantially improve employee performance. Additionally, workplace research suggests that such feedback will also improve engagement levels and prevent talent attrition.
An annual performance evaluation was the go-to method for most companies. Still, employees started favoring more regular feedback from their higher-ups. To capture these benefits, you must create a schedule for regular performance reviews for all team members.
What to Include in a Performance Review Template
There are several sections to include a wide array of information regarding the performance review of an employee, which will include:
- Basic Information: For analysis and demographics, you need to include the employee's name, ID, position, department, reviewer's name, and reviewer's title.
- Review Period: To track an employee's professional growth, it is crucial to include a review period (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual) on the performance review template as well as when it took place.
- Rating System: The most important part is that the employee needs to understand each rating point. It has to be a sufficient explanation to ensure they understand it.
- Evaluation Items: What particular skills or aspects of the job are you evaluating.
- Goals: Employees need to know what will be the next expected set of goals. It will allow them to see the performance review rating they need to accomplish.
- Comments Field: Here, you can get extra employee feedback. It is a useful way to glean honest comments and allow the employee to showcase achievements or discuss some aspects of the job they found challenging. It is a great way to close an effective review process.
- Signatures: The employer and the employee need to sign and acknowledge that everything went as agreed.
How to Be Prepared For The Performance Review Process
Consider a "performance review" like a dialogue between both parties filing the roles of giver and receiver. They need time to prepare their assessments and commentary to have an impactful conversation.
Without any lead-up work, the performance review session will lack substance, failing to deliver its core objective (promoting desired employee behaviors).
Managers
Managers need to use the available metrics to make an objective evaluation, review past goals, and track KPIs (key performance indicators) of the employee's work. The manager can do so by analyzing outcomes instead of outputs, focusing on the employee's positive contributions rather than the hours or effort they put in.
Managers should seek additional feedback from a particular employee with their colleagues or other managers who have interacted with them if they have any doubts.
And lastly, managers must set aside personal biases, cleansing their judgment of common unconscious biases.
Employees
On the other hand, employees must collect and prepare evidence for their next performance review. These can include different accomplishments, feedback from colleagues and superiors, and any other aggregated KPIs.
Also, your employer would be interested to hear what else the company can do to support and improve your own performance. So, prepare to provide feedback, too.
The employee needs to think about their own development and career goals. Ask yourself questions like which career paths will sound appealing to you or what you would like to accomplish next. Consider both horizontal and vertical career growth opportunities.
Then, you will be better suited to answer the questions on your next employee performance review. Be honest and avoid inflating your personal rating, as you will be putting yourself in an awkward position.
What Are the Different Types of Performance Review
Let's check what the different types of employee performance review templates available in the market are and which are the most relevant.
Weekly Performance Review
It is a simple performance review template, which in the long-term, putting together would be very useful when collated over a set timeframe.
Weekly performance review templates don't need to collect a huge amount of data each time and don't need to be goal-oriented. They are mostly useful for record-keeping and making sure the project stays on track weekly.
They are particularly useful and good for fast-moving projects.
Monthly Performance Review
A monthly performance review is particularly useful for businesses that employ freelancers or people on short-term contracts. They used to have a probationary period for new hires, where the review could be part of the onboarding process.
New projects would also benefit from a monthly check-in to keep the employees on track, ensuring that each team member has all the resources and skills required and trying to avoid any early catastrophe on the project.
Most employees prefer to have monthly check-ins with a regular cadence of progress reports rather than getting a single annual performance review for the whole year.
Quarterly Performance Review
Some companies tend to divide their business into four different quarters throughout the year (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4).
Each quarter will have its goals and targets to attend, alongside a specific budget to work on. So it makes sense that these sorts of businesses employ quarterly performance reviews.
Three months should be sufficient for an employee to get stuck in and achieve goals, targets and develop and learn. Let's say that is enough time to gather proper feedback for them.
You can use a quarterly review alongside weekly and monthly performance reviews to create an extensive report and organize your next employee review meeting.
Annual Performance Review
Annual performance reviews are being replaced or augmented, working together with the other alternatives.
This performance review simply has too much information to handle well, and a year is far too long for employees to get actionable feedback about their performance expectations.
But doing reports throughout the year collated with a 12-month overall performance review would be useful as a bank of information, providing that the feedback has had actions attached to it.
Best Practices and Tips When Making a Performance Review Template
Here are some of the best pieces of advice when making your own performance review template.
Set SMART Goals
"SMART goals" are short for "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound" goals.
If your objective is just "improve productivity," you aren't setting anything, and it is hard to meet and measure as you don't give anything tangible to grade the performance with.
Set a realistic and measurable metric within a certain review period, so you can give proper feedback to the employee.
Use the Performance Review Template as a Conversation Starter
Assessing employees only via written reviews could decrease their understanding of their job performance and might close the door to feedback and questions.
You need to make sure that the company and the employee are on the same page. It will increase employee engagement, and you can use the review template to start conversations with the employee in person.
Both of you will get more insight from the discussion if both understand their purpose and value.
Give Feedback and How to Improve
Don't give negative feedback without providing a way how they can fix the issue. You will end up demoralizing your employees with no purpose.
When you want constructive criticism, always suggest how they can rectify their issue in the future. Or ask them what they need in order to improve their performance at the company.
Focus on the Future
Managers usually restrict employee reviews to discussing their current roles and responsibilities while completely ignoring their future careers.
You are missing a valuable opportunity to discuss the employee’s future. It will allow you to find ways they can grow in their career within the company.
Try asking them questions like "what would be their dream job" or "how would they change their current job if they could." The employees' response will allow you to find opportunities for people to do the work they are passionate about.
Check These Performance Review Templates For You!
Now that you understand what’s the deal with employee performance reviews, it’s time to learn how you can make one of yours.
The best way to establish a performance review is to get a template ready which suits what you are looking for. Below you will find several performance review templates available to download for free. All that is required is to have some basic programs such as Microsoft Excel, or Word installed on your PC.
If you need a CD key for both Word and Excel, you can purchase one at a low price in the RoyalCDKeys store. You can get the latest version of the Office package, which includes Word and Excel, together with many other programs such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, and many more.
Employee Performance Review Template
With this template, you will be able to create an evidence-based approach to evaluate employee competencies and job behaviors.
Then, you will able to approach the employee and talk about their past performance and have an honest discussion using your direct reports.
You can download it as a Word document from Forbes.
Annual Performance Review Template
This annual performance review template focus on assessing management competencies. You will be able to list as many competencies as required to evaluate job performance and use the rating system and comments section to provide constructive feedback.
Download this template as an Excel spreadsheet from Smartsheet.
Employee Performance Review Spreadsheet Template
You can use this template to review if managers have already checked on some employees and discussed their performance with them, alongside a summary of how everything went with them.
Download it for Excel from Monday.
Employee Performance Evaluation Template
This detailed template allows supervisors to check on more personal aspects about a particular employee, like their relationship with their teammates and how effective it is at their job. It comes with a comments section for both parties as well.
Download it as a Word file from the CNM Community College.
Employee Evaluation Form
This template is more straightforward than previous performance review templates. But it can be further expanded as all the competencies come with a comments section if you wish to have a more thorough review.
Download it as a Word document from HR360.
Self-Evaluation Form Template
With this self-evaluation template, you could take advantage of peer review from your employees and check how they see their work.
Then, you will be able to analyze if they were honest with their answers or how they see themselves at work. It will lead to more employee engagement.
Download it as an Excel file from WPS.
Contractor Performance Review Template
Just like you would want to check on an employee's performance, you may want detailed feedback from a contractor if your business employs them.
It comes with specific competencies to check on your contractors and provides comment sections for both parties if you want to discuss it further.
Closing Thoughts
The whole performance review process can be challenging for employees and managers. Especially if they don't have an established framework to guide such conversations.
A performance review template will help you to ensure to have successful interactions within the organization between both managers and employees.
Use any of the templates provided above to get started and have an effective performance review program in the company.