The latest HR research shows that forward-thinking companies are moving away from top-down, annual performance reviews.
An annual job review just isn’t enough to give employees meaningful feedback. Moreover, organizations like Microsoft, Adobe, and Deloitte found that traditional performance ranking processes often led to bias — and that tying raises and dismissals to performance conversations shifted the focus away from development. (1)
This thinking is echoed by teams. According to a recent Leapsome study, a full one-third of employees are not satisfied with their company’s review process, especially if they only get an annual job review. Team members are asking for more regular, more effective ways of reviewing performance — and modern, people-first organizations need to listen. (2)
So how can we enable our leaders to run more flexible, frequent evaluation processes — and write performance reviews for employees based on their individual strengths, goals, and needs?
This guide will cover exactly what a great evaluation looks like — and give you clear steps on how to build a performance review process that gives teams the feedback they need to thrive. You can use it as a primer for your own review processes, or share it with managers and teams who need guidance and structure to write performance appraisals.
1. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 2023
2. Leapsome Workforce Trends Report, 2023
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An employee performance review — also known as a performance evaluation or appraisal — is a structured assessment, in which managers provide feedback to individual employees on their work and contributions over a certain time period.
During performance reviews, managers generally:
It’s important to understand the range of evaluation types — annual vs quarterly performance reviews will cover different things, and formal assessments take a very different approach to informal feedback.
Here are the main differences.
These are your traditional, formal yearly reviews at work. They assess employee performance over the full year and often determine promotions, compensation changes, and development plans.
These let managers give more timely input on performance at the end of each three-month period. They’re opportunities to recognize hard work, improvements, and development over the quarter, and a chance for early course-correcting if employees are off track.
An informal performance review is a discussion between an employee and their manager that doesn’t follow a strict performance review structure. In an informal review, the manager will discuss with the employee how they are doing in their role, provide general feedback, and maybe even set goals — but it is not a comprehensive evaluation of performance over a set period.
In contrast, a formal review is a structured, pre-scheduled meeting where the manager documents and evaluates the employee’s performance over a set period, often using pre-set criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs).
However, the difference between formal and informal reviews isn’t always clear cut. More and more companies are looking to make even structured review processes more flexible, informal, and continuous. Recent research on performance management trends shows that IBM now runs simpler, more frequent reviews, while Netflix eliminated bureaucratic, paperwork-led performance evaluations and introduced people-centered appraisals.
Regular performance check-ins can make development and improvement conversations flow naturally, all year round.
When run effectively, modern performance reviews:
The purpose of performance reviews is shifting away from a focus on pre-defined rankings and compensation decisions. Now, the overarching goal is to open up dialogues that center on understanding employee experiences to support growth and development. That’s why it’s important for managers to provide well-rounded feedback on performance, including reinforcing as well as constructive comments.
Companies need to see reviews as a key part of their overarching employee engagement model that contributes to employee satisfaction and well-being.
Here’s how Claude Silver, leading Chief People Officer/Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia, sees it:
“We are in the middle of a revolution where we talk about such things as top-line growth, KPIs, and performance reviews in the same breath as psychological safety, mental/emotional health, wellness programs and so much more.
Let’s remember we are all motivated by similar things — growth, time, feeling safe, money, autonomy, achievement…”
The revolution can’t come soon enough. Performance reviews still have a poor reputation among managers, employees, and people ops leaders. According to Gallup, only 14% of employees strongly agree that their appraisals motivate them to improve. Most complaints boil down to managers writing reviews without empathy or consideration for their report’s job description. In fact, only about 29% of employees feel the feedback they receive in reviews is accurate and fair.
Textio language research found that women and BIPOC individuals are even more likely to receive low-quality and unactionable feedback than their white male counterparts.
Best practice employee reviews require empathy as well as a genuine desire to help employees grow and develop in their careers. Reviews shouldn’t focus on punishing lower-performing employees and rewarding high-achievers. The best performance review process is one that meets every team member where they’re at and provides growth-centered individual goals and feedback.
A well-designed performance appraisal form helps with employee retention, motivation, and morale.
Good reviews:
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This playbook aims to help managers write productive employee reviews that are transparent, fair, and growth-focused. People ops/HR professionals can also use this playbook to guide their people (especially first-time managers) on delivering great feedback via performance reviews.
A culture that supports growth and development shows employees how feedback can help them improve. Companies that support employee growth will take time to understand their people’s career goals and provide development and training resources to help them achieve those goals.
A transparent environment helps employees trust that performance reviews will be used for their development, and not for punishment. It encourages reports to engage in the review process.
Writing a performance review that’s transparent, fair, and growth-focused is a challenge — but it’s hugely important for employee morale, motivation, and engagement. Our playbook provides a framework that will help any leader rise to that challenge by making reviews meaningful.
Use these six key steps and learn how to write a performance review based on performance insights and employee-centered feedback.
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Start by integrating your employee’s job description into the performance review framework, to make sure you’re working from an accurate picture of their intended responsibilities. This helps to avoid incorrect or unfair assessments.
It also gets everyone on the same page, drives transparency, reduces employee stress, and increases morale.
Check past data like previous feedback and notes from 1:1 meetings to highlight where your report has improved, where they still need help, and where their performance is declining. This is not to punish them, but to follow their progress and provide support.
If this isn’t an employee’s first performance appraisal at your company, look at past reviews to gauge their overall performance, growth, and areas for improvement. Using a people management tool like Leapsome makes this step much easier. Also, documenting feedback is a great way to measure employee growth and performance for future reviews. Using a people enablement tool like Leapsome makes this step much easier, as you’ll have previous review reports, performance analytics, cross-team competency frameworks, and timelines at your fingertips.
Reflect on your reason for writing performance appraisals in the first place. Are you writing a performance review specifically to decide who to reward or promote — or to understand your employees’ holistic development and growth? Or is your goal to understand how each staff member contributes to your overall company objectives?
Understanding the aim of evaluations will help you stay focused on providing a valuable experience to your employees while uncovering the best ways to improve the company.
Once you’re clear on your motivations, help your employees understand the why behind their appraisal. Be clear that a key focus here is their development.
Development-centric reviews encourage a growth mindset and enable your people to take ownership of their careers. Instead of having staff members become frustrated with not meeting certain standards, motivate them by:
And before you start your performance review, you may also want to clarify the following with your employees for full transparency:
How can you phrase your performance reviews to convey feedback clearly and accurately?
💡 Read our playbook on how to give constructive feedback to learn more.
You can hand out documents or printed versions of performance reviews, but the most effective and time-saving method (which will also help you analyze results) is to use a performance management tool like Leapsome.
And if you’re carrying out your employee appraisal in person or via video conference, use your performance review document to guide your conversation. You can even send it out to your report in advance so they can take a closer look at their strengths and areas for improvement and prepare any relevant questions.
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A development-focused appraisal can guide your people in the right direction and show your commitment to their development. Some other benefits of an effective performance review include:
✨ Need more performance review help?
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Skills and qualities you should pay attention to during employee reviews include:
Giving a performance review that’s well-thought-out and actionable strengthens your team. Thoughtful, detailed feedback on employee performance provides a valuable opportunity not only to evaluate the past but to support each team member’s long-term potential.
Here are our top nine tips on how to give an employee review that builds trust, sparks development, and keeps your talent energized and engaged.
Performance reviews should be a dialogue as opposed to a lecture. That way, you can continuously clarify your understanding of issues, discuss improvement opportunities, and showcase your commitment to your report’s professional development. This creates a culture of transparency and trust and turns an otherwise intimidating process into a collaborative one.
Some questions that invite discussion include:
And remember: be empathetic when writing reviews. We’re all human and make mistakes.
Completing self-assessments ensures your reviews are collaborative rather than top-down. They can give you a better understanding of your reports’ perspective and help you empathize with them. Finally, they make your people feel more engaged, confident, and empowered within their roles.
Here are a few other ways to make sure employees are actively involved in their performance reviews:
🚀 Need help with performance reviews that involve multiple stakeholders?
Check out our playbook on how to run a 360° review that makes an impact. 😉
Good performance reviews help your people feel both supported and challenged. But in many organizations, evaluations are part of the criteria for salary and promotion assessments, which gives them an almost reproachful nature.
And since decoupling employee evaluation and compensation isn’t always realistic, it’s important to communicate their link and its effect on your people. This fosters transparency and psychological safety.
In your review, use your compensation plan as a guide to talk about any relevant salary raises, salary increments, professional growth opportunities, or layoffs.
Holding performance review meetings only once or twice a year creates unnecessary stress for your employees and blocks them from making continuous improvements.
We recommend conducting monthly or quarterly evaluations to build a dynamic feedback culture and mitigate issues before they become tricky to resolve. This way, you can better understand your people, boost engagement, and clarify individual and company goals.
Don’t save constructive feedback for the end of your appraisals. Talking about areas of growth right after highlighting strengths distracts employees from their wins. Instead, begin performance reviews by describing the issues that need to be addressed. Detail the situation and its impact, and present your perspective while listening to your team member’s side of the story.
Remember, for many people, constructive feedback still carries a negative — or even accusatory — connotation, instead of encouraging growth. So, if possible, get it out of the way first.
And always conclude your reviews on a positive note by showing your report you recognize and appreciate their contributions to the team and wider organization.
Feedback is only meaningful and actionable when followed by examples that outline the “what,” “when,” and “where” of the situation. Vague feedback is not only ineffective, but can also be perceived as judgmental and biased. As such, it’s more likely to make the recipient feel defensive instead of helping them improve.
So, mention examples of when the team member did something well and when they didn’t — and don’t forget to provide context. Saying, “I feel sometimes you invest too much time scheduling meetings on less important topics,” isn’t precise enough. Specify instances where this happened to make it clear that your feedback isn’t a personal attack.
⭐ Interested in reading more feedback and performance review examples? Our guide to 27 employee feedback examples & the right way to use them has got you covered.
Be aware that by conducting a review, you’re effectively judging someone. And judgments are vulnerable to biases because humans are innately biased. A biased review is an incorrect assessment of someone’s performance and helps no one.
To help reduce your bias, do a bias reduction exercise before writing a review to prime your cognitive system and stay alert.
💡 Check out our step-by-step playbook on how to avoid bias in performance reviews to learn more.
Avoid accusatory language, generalizations, and “you” statements when reflecting on your report’s assessment period. Instead, give specific examples of what did or didn’t go well.
And be mindful that no matter how accurate your comments are and how much context you provide, your assessment of another person’s work still reflects your opinion. So be honest about that fact and use sentences like “I feel that…” and “I think that…” to show empathy and open up a conversation.
Sharing areas for improvement without providing next steps and key takeaways will leave employees feeling lost and unmotivated. So, when sharing constructive feedback, always make actionable recommendations.
Constructive feedback is a way to foster trust, ownership, and collaboration between employees.
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After writing a review for an employee, you’ll need to schedule a meeting to ensure your feedback is received as it was intended and to create a joint action plan.
Schedule a time to go through the review. Communicate clearly, be empathetic, and let your report know you’re available to answer questions — during and after the development talk. If you feel it’s needed, remind them their work is not a reflection of their worth and can be improved.
You should also use this time to create a development plan for and with your employee to guide their growth. It’s a good idea to prepare for this talk by researching courses and other learning resources to recommend to your report. You can also use a tool like Leapsome to set up individualized learning paths — and take advantage of our learning marketplace with gold-standard employee development and legal compliance courses by Ethena and lawpilots.
Document reviews in a centralized place (like a people management tool). This way, writing future reviews, tracking progress, and creating a learning plan for your report will be much easier.
Don’t only share feedback during reviews. Continuous feedback makes you more than a manager, turning you into a coach for your reports. Also, when you give feedback on an ongoing basis, your constructive comments won’t catch employees by surprise.
💡“People want to know on an ongoing basis, ‘Am I doing right? Am I moving in the right direction? Do you think I am progressing?’ Nobody’s going to wait for an annual cycle to get that feedback.”
— Pierre Nanterme, former CEO of Accenture
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Leapsome’s review tools let organizations empower their managers to deliver meaningful employee evaluations that inspire their people. Automated feedback cycle reminders support your leaders in giving regular reviews. They’ll be able to easily access crucial context for each performance assessment, with integrated feedback records, role-based competency frameworks, past evaluations, meetings, goals, and learning tools.
Managers can then use expert-backed templates and AI-powered features to turn rough thoughts into nuanced, actionable review comments — and watch their employees thrive.
Take a look at the video below to see how you can empower managers to run great performance reviews.
🤝 Make your review process as unique as your people
With Leapsome, it only takes a few clicks to create customized reviews tailored to specific role and competency frameworks, performance insights, past feedback, and development goals.
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Employees should have a right to the confidentiality of their employee reviews. Results should be kept between the manager and the report; however, managers may want to discuss it with people ops/HR or their own manager if they have concerns. This may be necessary, but should be done respectfully.
Besides running biannual 360° performance reviews for all employees, we recommend that you support new hires with structured feedback during their probation period (e.g., at 2 and 5 months for a 6-month probation period).
Performance appraisal feedback can be anonymous, but allowing for non-anonymous feedback gives people the chance to follow up.
Having only one respondent can lead to poor judgment. For a more accurate measure of employee performance, we recommend a holistic approach where peers, managers, and customers/partners review the same person. Some companies don’t include external contributors.
Learn how Leapsome can automate, connect, and simplify your HR processes.
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