Exceeds Requirements: Students and coworkers feel comfortable coming to this employee with questions and comments.
Demonstrates excellent oral and written communication skills. Poor: Frequently comes to the wrong conclusions and assumes things. Did not make sure that all subordinates were productive at all times, which is a daily requirement of this job. Needs Improvement: Needs to develop analytical skills necessary to weigh options and choose the best way to deal with situations.
Spends too much time focusing on less important aspects of daily job. Meets Requirements: Often offers workable solutions to problems. Uses good judgment in solving problems and working with others.
Uses PPR ratings in making decisions related to new hires, promotions and merit increases. Exceeds Requirements: Can zero in on the cause of problems and offer creative solutions. Displays strong analytical skills. Outstanding: Always offers ideas to solve problems based on good information and sound judgment.
Displays initiative and enthusiasm during everyday work. Conducts research or seeks counsel of experts to gather information needed in making actual decisions. Demonstrates poor customer relations skills. Frequently carries on personal conversations in person or on the phone while clients and customers wait. Needs Improvement: Gets annoyed with clients who ask too many questions.
Frequently forgets to follow through on customer requests. Meets Requirements: Usually maintains a competent and professional demeanor in dealing with clients and the public.
Courteous and knowledgeable. Tries to be helpful. Exceeds Requirements: Answers all questions promptly and accurately. Forwards any complaints or problems to supervisor immediately. Outstanding: Always follows through and finds the answers to any questions and reports back to the customer promptly. Employee has received numerous letters of commendation for excellent customer service.
Wastes supplies. Deleted required software in error. Never services equipment. Needs Improvement: Doesn't heed warning messages on equipment. Sometimes forgets to turn equipment off at the end of the day.
Doesn't always get equipment serviced as recommended by the manufacturer. Meets Requirements: Takes good care of equipment and uses supplies efficiently. Turns off and secures all equipment at the end of the shift. Exceeds Requirements: Quickly learns new software programs. Uses queries and reports to maximize efficiency in the office and find errors.
Outstanding: Is able to troubleshoot and solves all work related problems quickly and efficiently. Reports problems immediately if to the appropriate personnel. Important documentation for projects has been lost or destroyed erroneously. Does not plan ahead to meet work deadlines.
Needs Improvement: Does not keep supervisor informed of potential problems as they arise. Project plans are poorly designed. Project plans are not carried out as assigned or on time. Meets Requirements: Prepares project plans on time and in sufficient detail. End of year statements are complete and accurate. Maintains and monitors progress of project plan in order to stay on target. Exceeds Requirements: Gets the most out of scarce resources. Or do they want something in between?
Asking will ensure you give the right amount of detail and save time for both you and your manager. Some areas of quantitative achievements are:. These areas are all quantitative , easily measurable and able to be compared. These kinds of things are good to include in your performance review, but you should also include qualitative achievements.
Qualitative achievements are things that are not purely based on numbers. They can also be based on your goals from the previous year, and could include things like:. If you work in a certain industry, such as finance, and believe your knowledge of the finance industry has greatly increased and your job has improved because of it, write this in your review.
These kinds of things are important to your employer. This approach can help you come up with the accomplishments you may not have considered. It can also help you word the accomplishments you have mentioned, in a way that shows the company in a good way. Rather than just saying certain projects were completed, you can include statements about benefits to the company, such as automation of manual processes or customer satisfaction.
Your manager will appreciate it if you make them look good, both in the work you do every day, and the accomplishments you highlight. Use this concept to think of accomplishments and how to word them. If your manager looks good, then they will be happy, and your team will look good as a result. Thinking of your team as a whole can be another good concept when writing year-end accomplishments. As a team, what have you done this year that has been a highlight or that has stood out?
Also, what have you done to help your team out? Perhaps you came up with a better way for your team to do something internally, whether it is easier or faster. Maybe you helped review code for other team members or mentored new employees or organised team events. Accomplishments like this should be mentioned.
These are great areas to refer to when thinking of what to write in your performance review. If you look at your goals from the previous year, write a little on how you have achieved them. As mentioned at the top of this post, focus on the positive. You can also refer to comments made by your manager or human resources member, or whoever gave you feedback last time.
If they have suggested areas for improvement which they usually will , then you can write a little on these and how you may have improved or achieved them. Another part of what to write in a performance review to get a great result is to set some goals for the upcoming year. Companies like employees who have direction and focus on their future, and who like to improve themselves.
Think about what you want to achieve in the future, both in the short term and the long term. I have written a post on why you should set career goals which could be helpful. Some goals you could set are:.
I found the inspiration for this post as I was filling out my own performance review. My review with my current employer happens every June, and the process starts in April. I need to come up with some goals for my review for the upcoming year, and I thought, what do I put down? After filling out my own review form and sending it to HR, I thought, how could my readers benefit from this experience?
So I decided to write this article to help you come up with some goals for your review. I've delivered more than 50 reviews with this approach over 3 years, most of them well-received. I decided to write this post after presenting some of the concepts internally and on a local meetups, with a few requests to share it more broadly. As with any topic that's around management: take it as inspiration and a source of new ideas, not a recipe to follow.
And take it as a way to challenge yourself: where can you improve on how you do performance reviews? Note : this article is primarily aimed at managers delivering reviews. I'll be writing a follow-up post for tips to prepare better for your performance review, as an employee. Sign up to the newsletter to get notified of this. For a performance reviews to be fair, levels and expectations need to be well-defined. If they are not, you can still get good feedback - but it will be subjective feedback.
This was the case at most companies I worked at. Luckily, some companies are making their definitions public. A few good examples are these:. If your company doesn't have levels and expectations clearly defined for developers: this is a blocker to fair performance reviews. If you're a manager, make it your job to fix this and put together one, pulling together experienced managers and engineers to build the first version.
A good chunk of my approach to perf reviews is driven by the bad reviews I've had. I made a list of the characteristics that were the bad thing about them:. After having received over a dozen per reviews, talking with many others, and now being on the other side of the table, having reviewed or delivered close to reviews, here are three observations I have of the process.
As I was writing my first-ever performance review, I wanted to avoid the bad performance reviews I've seen, as well as keeping in mind the impact these reviews have on people. But it wasn't just anti-patterns I wanted to get around.
With the goals set, let's get into how I deliver them. But before we get to the meeting, preparation is key. And when I say prepare, I mean preparing from the very start - months before, or as early as when the employee joins my team. You can't do good performance reviews without understanding the person, and setting baseline expectations early on.
So as soon as someone new joins my team, I start with a few things:. I believe in the need to prepare for important meetings.
The more important they are, the more preparation is needed. Performance reviews are perceived as one of the most important meetings for engineers - at least, when it's the first one with a new manager.
So I prepare accordingly. Collecting the substance of "what" and the "how" is where I spend most of my time. I want to make sure I get the facts right - and working with software engineers, much of the work of people is readily available.
Here's the things I go through:. This part is one I spend a lot of time on, especially if it's the first time doing a perf review for a person on my team. My goal is to uncover all the great work people have been doing - even if it's something they might have forgotten. I keep a checklist that used to look like this - I update this at before every cycle:. Performance reviews have a recommended format - which I ignore, until it's time to fill it in the tool.
Here's how I write my reviews, in a separate document:. As I'm done with the review some time before delivery is due, I make sure to prepare people - especially if I've found examples on not meeting expectations, that was not communicated before. I check these examples, and give a heads up on what kind of feedback they should expect during this session, and what growth areas we'll talk about.
I always have a separate performance feedback, and a separate compensation meeting. I've tried different setups, and this is the one that worked best for quality discussions, and feedback. As soon as people hear their compensation numbers, their brain re-focuses and any conversation about improvement is moot.
This is the case for myself, and it was the case for all my directs. So as much as people would love to know those numbers, I don't do it in the same meeting. I start the meeting by setting expectations: what the format will be, that they'll get all of this in writing. I start by going through the achievements for the period - which is a good way to establish trust, and show that I've done my homework as well.
Then, I go through the feedback on each area. I avoid the feedback sandwich, sending one message. I then pause and encourage people to share their thoughts by questions like "What do you think? I pay attention to body language - when people tense up, they are likely disagreeing, and I try to have them voice why. Better talk about it now, than later. Wrapping up, I ask them to reflect on the review with questions like "How do you feel?
What if people disagree? I was vary of openly inviting people to voice their concerns, and sure enough, I had a few people tell me they felt a small or large part of the review was incorrect or unfair. I do keep an open mind on me not necessarily having all the context. So if I have missed information, facts or feedback, the review might not reflect their performance, indeed. This is another reason I start the review with their achievements - anything relevant I missed might impact the review.
When it's clear that I missed or might have mis-interpreted key parts, I ask for them to gather these examples on short term and do a follow-up meeting the next day. I have revised my rating in the past, when I missed important details, and the person rightfully called this out. What if people disagree of my interpretation of meeting expectations?
This is trickier, but resolving this is key, to keep trust between the two of us. This is the reason I have specific examples of not meeting or exceeding expectations and actionable feedback on how to improve, to get there. Either way, I find it important to know as early as possible - during the review - if people are unhappy with their qualitative assessment. And this is also why I always decouple the financial conversation from this kind of feedback. People might be happy or unhappy with the qualitative feedback, but feel different about the financial numbers.
One is easier to resolve, than the other. I've had several people ask for examples of performance reviews. Performance reviews will be different for each company, and can be specific to each manager. Still as inspiration, I thought to share what I have seen, and what I use.
For self-reviews for engineers to use as performance reviews , you can find these here. Here is how this example appraisal or evaluation looks like:. For performance reviews that engineering managers deliver , see a template for performance reviews that I use - I'm sharing it here as inspiration.
If you're someone who does performance reviews, I encourage you to build your own. Putting one together can make focus points clear, ensure consistent delivery between people, and also reduce bias. Especially writing the feedback ahead of time, over making it up as you go is a powerful tool to deliver more objective and less biased feedback. Needless to say that the above was my approach: your mileage might vary and what worked for me, might not work for you.
I was curious though: what are leading thoughts on good performance reviews in the management industry? So I turned to an authoritative source, the Harvard Business Review and reviewed some of their most read pieces on perf reviews.
Here's what they have to say:. Correll bring some specific suggestions for less biased reviews:. Based on my personal experience, approach, and success, and cross-checking it with recommendations from experts publishing in HBR, here are a few principles worth considering for writing great performance reviews:. If you're a manager, challenge yourself to improve at least one aspect of how you do performance reviews, taking inspiration from this article.
There is very little excuse for managers to do poorly prepared, unfair or biased performance reviews - the upside is saving of some time, but the downsides are far more impactful. Let's change how we approach reviews and turn these stressful conversations to ones where trust is further strengthened, and people come out feeling motivated and determined to grow further.
Related to this topic, see the article How to spot and counter manager biases on performance reviews and watch my videos on performance reviews on YouTube. The post also comes with performance review templates and examples: Template and example for software engineers to write your self-review Template and example for engineering managers to write the reviews for your directs As with any topic that's around management: take it as inspiration and a source of new ideas, not a recipe to follow.
Principles for fair performance reviews Prerequisites for fair perf reviews: levels, competencies, expectations For a performance reviews to be fair, levels and expectations need to be well-defined.
A few good examples are these: Monzo's progression framework for a variety of disciplines, not just software engineering Rent the Runway's career ladder , shared by Camille Fournier , author of The Manager's Path Square's software engineering career ladder. See their blog post to put this framework in context. Buffer's engineering career framework For an idea of levels within companies, Levels.
Note that I find the comparison of levels within companies is still guesswork at best. Bad performance reviews A good chunk of my approach to perf reviews is driven by the bad reviews I've had. I made a list of the characteristics that were the bad thing about them: Zero specifics. The type of reviews where there are some fluffy sentences and zero substance.
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