Employee Review Time

[RCD_Technology_Solutions]

Good Morning.

Wondering if anyone has a good Employee Review template / form.

When I worked for large companies they had impressive looking forms to give a decent review.

Sadly my reviews are a chat about how the employee is doing and what we can do to improve...

Thanks in advance
Bob

 

[Diggs]

Careful what you wish for. There are many review forms and templates on the web. In my corporate days, ours were three pages long blank and expected to be 5-7 pages when filled out properly. I had 34 of these to do and would start at Thanksgiving to have them ready to present in January. It was absolutely one of the worse parts of my job and one of the reasons I left.

 

[HCHTech]

Thinking back to my corporate days, I was lucky that the process wasn't regimented. The system I found that worked was to have a folder for every employee I was responsible for (paper then, but lots of ways to make it digital now). Then, during the year, when anything of note happened for one of those employees - good or bad - a printout or note of that event went in the file. At the end of the year, it helped me remember those events and allowed me to weigh the good vs. the bad overall. Without that, you tend to only remember the big stuff which unfairly skews the review. My reviewees were always surprised when I remembered some of the stuff - positive or negative. We would have a conversation about both the good stuff and the bad, and that conversation also let you gauge how the employee grew from the experience (or not, as was sometimes the case). Overall, it worked really well. That doesn't help with THIS year's reviews, but maybe for future ones.

 

[Diggs]

Mine was the electronic version of @HCHTech . For every employee I had a folder on the network that had each years successive review, notes during the year(s), pictures of them from birthdays and parties, documented incidents, commendations, etc. Makes bringing together the reviews somewhat easier.

 

[Your PCMD]

Oh thats easy.

Did you make money from them doing their job? Good review!

Did you lose money from them not doing their job? Your fired!

 

[HCHTech]

Oh thats easy.

Did you make money from them doing their job? Good review!

Did you lose money from them not doing their job? Your fired!

It's never easy - and I never really enjoyed the process. If you made money but they poisoned the office morale with their toxic personality, that wasn't a good result. If you lost money but it was because one of the big clients they handled went out of business, not really their fault, now is it? Just sayin'

 

[EccentricWkshp]

I don't have a template to share but I've used the big forms in the past but it was basics mentioned above - everyone has a file that gets built throughout the year. Every time an employee and I talked about something performance related, it went into the file. They always knew how they were doing and didn't have to wait for surprises at the review. Basically, there was no new information in the formal review because we had discussed it previously at the time of occurrence. Many of the items were insignificant to them but when put together, showed a complete picture of the employee - positive or negative.

Don't think you need a form for an effective review. Approach it as a conversation where you are summarizing and discussing the employees actions (and character/demeanor) over the review period. The form is simply a tool to document the review discussion to be included in the file. Also, we always explained signing the document doesn't indicate consent of the contents, it acknowledges discussion of the content.

 

[fencepost]

Then, during the year, when anything of note happened for one of those employees - good or bad - a printout or note of that event went in the file.

Employees should also be maintaining their own copy of a folder like this, because it's just as easy to forget what you as an employee have done during the course of a year, and the things that managers remember as important may not match what the employee remembers as important.