How To Do a Performance Review, With Examples and Templates

Performance reviews can be intimidating for workers, but they’re not always a walk in the park for managers either.

Giving positive feedback feels nice, but your team can’t grow without addressing potential areas of improvement—and not everyone handles constructive feedback, well, constructively.  

Performance reviews tell employees what to work on and help supervisors make hard decisions. In this article, we’ll explain how to conduct effective performance reviews and provide some samples to help you plan your process.

We even provide a helpful template to use.

How to plan a performance review

A great performance appraisal isn’t too harsh or too glowing. Follow these steps when planning to hold performance reviews.  

1. Identify the right individuals to participate

You might not have working relationships with every employee in your company—or even understand what they do.

With that in mind, review people you’ve worked with directly. You should also have a deep understanding of their responsibilities. If a review goes beyond performance (such as misconduct or policy violations), make sure a Human Resources (HR) manager is in the room.

Only direct managers or supervisors who work closely with employees should review them. It’s important that those reviewing understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employee.

2. Set goals and objectives for the review

Decide your company’s goals and how the review process can help you reach them. Some possible objectives include:

• Improving productivity. Which employees need training, resources, or coaching to meet their potential?
• Giving raises. Which employees deserve higher pay?
• Improving company culture and employee engagement. How can you improve employee morale and camaraderie?
• Filling open leadership positions. Which employees are ready for a promotion?

Create a schedule to give your team time to prepare for a review. How often you conduct reviews is up to you or your company policy. You might conduct them yearly, biannually, quarterly, or more often.

3. Create a list of questions and concerns to address during the review

Outline the criteria you’ll be grading. Your criteria will depend on your goals. For example, if you’re looking for people to fill executive openings, you’ll value different qualities than if you’re looking to increase company productivity.

Your list should match your company’s unique needs and principles. Some criteria to address how well an employee is performing in their current position are:

• Position requirements. Does the employee have the right competencies and attitude?
• Productivity. Does the employee exhibit productivity commensurate with their pay range?
• Consistency. Does the employee consistently do quality work?
• Communication and teamwork. Does the employee work well with others and contribute to team projects?

Consider these criteria to measure whether an employee should be a candidate for promotion:

• Leadership. Does the employee lead effectively?
• Initiative. Does the employee take charge or need extra instructions?
• Problem-solving. Does the employee use creativity and structured processes to solve issues?
• Decision-making. Does the employee make smart decisions in line with the company’s values?
• Impact. What impact does the employee make on their department and the company?

Some criteria to help judge an employee’s dependability include:

• Punctuality. Is the employee always on time? Do they meet deadlines?
• Ethics. Can you trust the employee to do the right thing?
• Attendance. Is the employee available to work when needed?

A numerical rubric (number rating) can help you make more accurate and fair evaluations.

• Outstanding. The employee meets and transcends all expectations consistently. (4 points)‍
• Acceptable. The employee meets expectations most of the time. (3 points)‍
• Needs work. The employee sometimes meets expectations. (2 points)‍
• Unacceptable. The employee rarely meets expectations. (1 point)

Apply your rubric to every criterion on your employee evaluation. This is how that might look:

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You should also create a rubric for the entire performance review. Let’s say your review has four categories in total, and each category has three sections (like the example above).

That means an employee could score 48 points (4 x 3 x 4).

• Outstanding. 40 to 48 points
• Acceptable. 30 to 39 points
• Needs work. 20 to 29 points
• Unacceptable. < 20 points

How to conduct a performance review

Now that you’ve done all your planning, we’ll show you how to conduct a performance review.

1. Prepare and train review participants

Review schedules are important. They give employees time to prepare mentally for a review. They also give you time to observe them.

To develop effective improvement strategies, you need to understand why employees do what they do. What habits and behaviors drive their performance?

Here’s an example: A developer on your team isn’t meeting deadlines consistently. You observe that they have trouble communicating when they need help, so they try to push through and fall behind schedule.

You recommend short, regular check-ins between the developer and their supervisor to review project status and brainstorm ways to meet deadlines.

Performance reviews need to be honest but not harsh or excessively positive. An effective review identifies how an employee can get better without deflating them. It also praises the employee without overinflating their ego.

One way to do this is by squeezing one critical comment between two positive ones. This is called the compliment sandwich.

Positive comment. You have great focus and consistently do quality work.

Constructive criticism. However, you sometimes have trouble communicating when you’re overextended, which leads to the projects you’re working on falling behind schedule.

Positive comment. You’re always willing to put in extra time to help projects get back on track.

If you’re not sincere, this technique can come off as patronizing. Genuine positive comments can help minimize the stings of critical ones. In addition, be careful that the important message of the constructive section is clearly understood, not overwhelmed by the two positive pieces.

2. Gather data and information about the individuals being reviewed

To give a fair review, observe and document an employee’s performance for the entire review period. Otherwise, you might let recent performance skew your judgment.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to start onboarding a new sales director. Salesperson A has had exemplary performance all year but has struggled this past week. Salesperson B has had a lackluster performance all year but has had a great week.

Who deserves the promotion? If you don’t have big-picture notes, you’ll likely give it to employee B.

Keep detailed files on all your employees and log their performance throughout the year. Include dates. Some things to keep track of include:

• Problem-solving instances
• Evidence of productivity and engagement
• Exceptional (or poor) time management
• Teamwork and contributions
• Adaptability during transition periods
• Interpersonal skills
• Work ethic

A 360 review or self-evaluation can give you a different perspective on an employee’s work performance. A 360 review involves getting feedback from everyone an employee interacts with. A self-assessment gives an employee a chance to review their performance.

At the beginning of each review period, communicate to your employees what your expectations are and go over the criteria and rubric you’ll be using in your evaluations.

3. Facilitate the review process

It’s time to meet with employees. They might be nervous, so remind them that the purpose of the review is to help them improve. Provide context for what you want to achieve.

If you’re reviewing a new employee, you could say, “Now that you’ve learned the basics of your position, we’d like you to work on more independent projects going forward.”

Focus on specific observations, not opinions or character traits. “You didn’t communicate well with the other members of your project team” is an opinion. “You didn’t let your team leader know your project was over budget” is a specific observation.

Mention the impact. For the above example, you could say, “Because of this, we had to delay the deployment of our product by two weeks without giving our clients prior notice.”

Give your employee a chance to talk too. Encourage them to share their point of view if they’re hesitant. They might know details you’re unaware of or have justifiable explanations for their actions.

4. Document the review results and plan the next steps

Document everything and follow up periodically. Include any improvement strategies you’ve put together. Save a copy of the review in your employee’s file. Then, take action.

This may mean getting the employee extra training, providing more resources, or mentoring them. At the next review, pull the employee’s file to see their progress. After a few cycles, you’ll see patterns. Some employees will constantly improve while others stagnate.

Performance review examples

A lot of companies like to have quarterly reviews and annual reviews. Quarterly reviews make sure employees are consistently meeting their potential, and annual reviews help companies make judgments about things like promotions and compensation.

There’s no standard evaluation that works for every company. Below, we outline a few sample performance review phrases and a performance review template. Using a rubric can help you conduct more precise and impartial reviews.

Performance-based review #1

Let’s dive into a straightforward performance review.

Employee name: David Hurst

Department: Marketing

Role: Market Research Analyst

Review period: 2021

Role accomplishments:

• David shared creative ideas, thorough research, and expertise that greatly contributed to the yearly field research study.
• David gave a well-organized speech that introduced previously unrealized target markets.
• David was an essential part of the design team that created research-backed landing pages for our social media ads.

Goal achievements:

• David achieved 80% of his goals for increasing brand awareness for the year.
• Yearly objectives are purposely set at a high bar to encourage employee growth. 80% is considered extremely high-performing.  

Areas for improvement:

• David has high quality-of-work standards but sometimes doesn’t communicate when he’ll need more time to finish a report properly. In the coming year, I’ll meet with David every week to go over the status of important projects.

Demonstration of company culture:

• David’s positive attitude and commitment to quality create a comfortable and productive work environment.
• David is a team player and always does his part in projects.
• David isn’t afraid to share hard truths with management if they’ll eventually benefit the company.

Self-reflection comments (stated by David):

• I share my ideas and knowledge freely with teams and management when I think they’ll benefit a project.
• I always double- and triple-check to make sure my research is precise, correct, and represented clearly.
• I sometimes forget to let supervisors know when factors cause me to run behind schedule.

Future goals:

• We’d like to see David take on more of a leadership role by taking the lead on a few projects.
• We’d like David to make an effort to keep everyone in the loop when there are any changes in project schedules.

Performance-based review #2

We provide an example excerpt of a performance review with a rubric system.

Employee name: Mark Laroi

Supervisor and reviewer: Betty Suarez (CTO)

Department: IT

Role: IT Director

Review period: Q4

Rubric:

• Exceptional: 4 points
• Satisfactory: 3
• Needs development: 2

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Total leadership: 12

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Total problem-solving: 9

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Total communication: 10

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Total adherence: 12

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Total performance: 43 (Exceptional)

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Total rubric:

• Exceptional: 40 to 48
• Satisfactory: 30-39
• Needs development: 20 to 29
• Unsatisfactory: ﹤20

Notes: Mark is an excellent representative of our company values. He’s worked diligently to earn the trust and respect of his direct reports, managers, and co-workers and is eager to help others improve.

Mark is a very hard worker but sometimes has difficulty delegating tasks to others. We’d like to see him entrust more duties to his direct reports so he can stay focused on management.

Performance review template

Use this employee performance review template as a starting point to design your own.

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Improve your performance review process with Upwork

Performance reviews may not always be fun, but they’re necessary to help your employees grow and improve. By conducting reviews based on specific observations and creating (and following through with) effective strategies, you’ll help your business achieve its goals and stay in line with its values.

If you’re looking to optimize your business’s performance but don’t know where to start, give performance managers on Upwork a try from our highly vetted talent pool of remote workers from all over the world.

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