Employee Evaluation Tips: How to Conduct Performance Reviews

An employee evaluation is an annual review of an individual employee’s work and overall job performance. Throughout this evaluation, supervisors and employees work together to rate how well the latter performed their responsibilities—for example, facilitated customer satisfaction, found creative solutions for problems, cultivated interpersonal skills throughout their working relationships, and so on—based on established metrics. After the review, the supervisor helps set goals for the upcoming year while also making a suggestion to higher-ups about pay raises for the employee.

Employee performance evaluations further an employee’s professional development, increase employee engagement, and gauge employee satisfaction. They also give supervisors a chance to practice their performance management skills by providing balanced, constructive feedback and to encourage employees to improve in concrete ways over the next year.

It’s important for employee evaluations to feel nonthreatening and conversational to foster an open and hospitable work environment and company culture. This means allowing for performance evaluation comments from the employee side, making job performance metrics understandable, and creating an atmosphere of mutual problem-solving and constructive criticism.

An employee evaluation can be nerve-racking for both the supervisor and the employee. Take these eight tips into consideration to make sure the review goes smoothly:

1. 1. Address areas for improvement. There’s always room to improve your quality of work—for both managers and their team members. Use this evaluation to politely point out areas of less-than-optimal to poor performance while suggesting concrete steps and innovative solutions to help the employee excel. This might mean asking how you can help the employee learn how to become a more effective team player, improve their communication skills, or simply arrive to work in a timely manner.
2. 2. Balance out your constructive feedback. Couch any talk about an employee’s weaknesses with a recognition of the same employee’s strengths. Effective constructive criticism consists of balancing out both positive and negative feedback. If you maintain a kind, understanding, and positive attitude throughout your performance review comments, your employee will likely feel more driven to improve their performance for you.
3. 3. Compare performance against official duties. Use the tasks and duties in the employee’s initial job description as metrics to evaluate how well they’re performing currently. Of course, there are some extremely basic competencies that you might not include, such as punctuality and the ability to meet deadlines. But both the supervisor and employee can use common sense when it comes to evaluating performance based on these more general terms.
4. 4. Give employees time to prepare. Include the employee in every step of the annual performance review process, including in initial preparation. Remind them during more routine check-ins about how you’ll evaluate their performance. Give them early access to the employee evaluation form so they can formulate their own point of view on their performance throughout the year. Allow them to submit employee evaluation comments as a self-assessment before you compare notes with your own feedback.
5. 5. Keep the evaluation conversational. Both the supervisor and employee can expect to practice active listening skills throughout the employee performance review. This is an opportunity for both parties to discuss new solutions to streamline workflow and improve performance face-to-face (whether virtually or in person). Make the actual review process feel like teamwork.
6. 6. Set measurable performance goals. To attain higher levels of performance, employees need concrete, realistic goals to achieve. It can be helpful for supervisors and employees to set goals mutually rather than for the former to simply dictate them to the latter. Use the areas of improvement noted in the evaluation process to formulate these goals. Supervisors can follow up with their employees regularly about their progress attaining these goals throughout the year until their next performance review.
7. 7. Suggest pay increases to higher-ups. After a successful and effective performance review, supervisors can decide how much of a pay raise they think is appropriate for their team members. If the employee has done an admirable job furthering the company’s goals, a higher raise might be in order than if they had merely done an adequate job. In the case of poor performance, no raise might be necessary. Once the supervisor makes a decision, they can elevate their suggestion to human resource management and any other stakeholders involved in final financial decision-making for the company.
8. 8. Use quantifiable metrics. Ensure the employee understands the evaluative metrics and their relevant rating scale early in the review period. This will help with their own self-evaluation, especially in gauging their performance on more expansive subjects. For example, things like dependability or problem-solving might need firmer definitions than time management in meeting deadlines (as the latter is a little more easily quantifiable).

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