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How To Write

Employee Performance Appraisals

From Start To Finish

Special Report From: EasySmallBusinessHR.com

Performance appraisals are often seen as a tedious part of

managing employees. Most supervisors actually dread the once a

year "write" of passage; especially when they have several

employees to review.

Although employee reviews are often viewed as being as exciting

as getting a tooth extracted without medication, I think that most

supervisors would agree that the performance appraisal process is

an important employee management tool.

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As a supervisor, you know that it's crucial to be able to understand

the work that your employees perform throughout the year and to

be able to measure your employee's success.

So, how do you write a meaningful employee review that clearly

and thoroughly highlights your employees' performance and yet is

not too paper and time intensive; especially if you don't have an

employee evaluation template as your guide?

An ideal performance appraisal form has several elements:

Job Responsibilities, Job Success Factors, Company or

Organizational Success Factors, Goals, and Achievements.

Job Responsibilities

This part of the employee evaluation is very straight forward. It's

the part of the form that highlights your employee's current job

responsibilities.

Since job responsibilities change slightly over time; especially if

your employee is taking on more job responsibility, it is important

to summarize the work that your employee does on each evaluation

form.

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The best part of incorporating a job responsibilities section is that

it allows you to update your employee's job description on an

annual basis.

Job Success Factors

This is where you will highlight the competencies or attributes

needed for your employee to be successful in their role.

The following attributes are core attributes regardless of the type of

job:

Communication Skills

Team Player

Attention to Detail

Customer Service

Interpersonal Skills

This list is just a sampling of what might be considered core

attributes or success factors.

The Job Success Factors section can be as long or short as it needs

to be based on the competencies that are important to you as a

supervisor, or based on the goals and mission of your company.

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When writing a performance appraisal, it's important to include job

specific competencies along with core attributes or success factors.

Using the position of "Customer Service Representative as an

example, it would be important to be able to add a few core

competencies that are specific to this type of a role such as

"Understands the product and is able to clearly explain the benefits

to customers". Or, "Answers at least 100 calls a month".

Company/Organizational Success Factors

This is where you should list the competencies or attributes that are

important for success within the company overall. This might

include:

Understands the company's mission, vision and values

Respectful of co-workers both within and outside of their

departments

Works across departments to get results

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Goals

The goals section is the place to highlight your specific goals for

your employee as well as document shared goals, or your

employee's individual goals.

Achievements

The ability to grow within one's job is essential for job

satisfaction. It's important to celebrate and reinforce your

employee's strengths by highlighting several achievements

throughout the year no matter how small.

Give your employee an opportunity to share with you what they

view as major achievements as part of the employee performance

evaluation.

A strong performance review highlights Job Responsibilities, Job

Success Factors, Company or Organizational Success Factors,

Goals, and Achievements.

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Lastly, you should give your employee and opportunity to

contribute to their performance review.

The performance review should not be seen as a one sided

discussion. Your employee should be expected to offer their

viewpoints of their performance across the various success factors

or competencies.

You can create your own performance appraisal template using

these guidelines or take advantage of performance evaluation

software.

What is most important is that you don't neglect giving your

employees an opportunity to speak with you about your views of

their performance throughout the year.

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