What is a performance review?
A manager, team leader or supervisor is responsible for completing performance reviews. They use a performance review to evaluate and document an employee’s work performance. The purpose of a performance review is to create a written record of every employee’s work behaviour. An effective performance review captures details of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. It needs to give praise to high performing employees and express concern for underperforming employees who need discipline or guidance.
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What does a performance review cover?
A performance review must be objective and professional to provide the organisation’s executive team with an accurate record to refer to when making decisions about promoting or letting employees go. Despite the different types and formats of performance reviews, each performance review’s content is usually similar. The typical areas of assessment in a performance review cover the following areas:
- Technical skills
- Quality of work deliverables
- Ability to meet deadlines and keep to schedules
- Attitude to work and towards colleagues
- Ability to work in a team
- Ability to overcome work challenges
- Dependability
Sample performance review
A performance review’s content varies between industries and may depend on the organisation’s culture. This is a generic sample of a performance review that covers the basic requirements of a performance review:
“Tom started as a technical trainer six months ago. During this time, he has consistently met and frequently exceeded managerial expectations. Tom can adapt his teaching style to cater to individual employees and remains positive while under pressure at work. Tom’s attention to details is excellent and he always completes his work tasks to a high standard.
Unfortunately, Tom struggles with time management. At times he focuses on a single employee’s training needs and forgets the timelines to complete his tasks. Tom’s communication skills are outstanding and trainees love his training sessions. However, his training sessions often diverge into lengthy off-topic discussions during the allotted training time.
As an individual, Tom is respectful of his colleagues and he treats them with consideration. He gives constructive feedback to trainees and is patient when they struggle with new concepts. Tom’s positive attitude and pleasant personality have improved the atmosphere in the training sessions. I am confident that Tom has the potential to be highly successful with constructive feedback and guidance. To address Tom’s weaknesses, I recommend that a supervisor has a one-on-one meeting with Tom to discuss this review and to set goals with Tom for long-term improvement of the issues raised. With the proper guidance, Tom could qualify for a promotion within the following year.”
Valuable tips for completing a performance review
Performance reviews are most valuable when they are objective and relevant. Follow these tips to make sure your performance reviews produce the desired results from your employees’ performance:
Have a consistent grading system
A critical aspect of a performance review is having a consistent grading system when evaluating employee performance. Some organisations grade employee performance using a grading scale from one to ten. Other organisations follow a more qualitative approach involving the manager or supervisor writing freeform paragraphs about an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Whichever grading system you choose, you need to apply the same criteria and procedure in the performance evaluation and reviews for all employees.
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Objectivity is critical
It’s important to carry out a performance review objectively to prevent friction from a personal review. When doing a performance review, a manager needs to focus on the employee’s behaviour and results instead of their intentions or motivations. Managers need to avoid emotional or inflammatory language when writing a performance review as this could result in conflict and tension between them and their employees. Instead, managers need to focus on objective facts in a performance review. Objective observations will be more accurate and useful for evaluation purposes.
Avoid bias
A manager should be cautious about personal bias that could interfere with the accuracy of a performance review. Bias can be about different factors, including an employee’s level of experience, age, attitude and personality. Managers need to be aware of bias and avoid it to ensure performance reviews are empathetic and accurate.