How to evaluate employee performance for review season
The key to evaluating your employee's performance is having measurable goals or objectives.
Ideally, this based on annual goals specific to the individual and their role.
However, I know these aren't always built out depending on the size of your organization, changes to your team, or someone being new to the team.
So we'll look at this from two angles:
Part 1: Creating goals based on their job description or roles and responsibilities.
Part 2: Evaluating performance against each goal.
If you already have specific, measurable goals or objectives for each individual already, skip to part two below.
Part 1: Creating goals based on their job description or roles and responsibilities.
I'd recommend creating between 3 to 5 different goals to measure their performance. Any more than 5 and it'll likely be overwhelming or too much for both of you to evaluate. Less than three isn't motivating enough for a full year of work.
To get started, pull their job description, or list out all of their responsibilities or projects for the year. Don't spend too much time getting into the details - you don't need a list of a hundred tasks, you'll probably want to aim for 15-30 at the most.
Then, bucket the responsibilities or projects into three to five buckets by theme. Each bucket will become a goal.
For example, one bucket for an account manager on your team may be: Client communication, which would include responsibilities like monthly check-in calls, quarterly business reviews, responding to client emails, and escalating issues. Then the goal would become something like “Strengthen client relationships by holding monthly check-ins with every assigned client and maintaining positive client feedback in quarterly reviews."
Tip: If you need extra help, put the job description or list of tasks into AI to have it categorize them into 3-5 buckets for you. Caution: ALWAYS check the work of AI and edit it as needed to apply to your specific situation.
You want the goals to be as specific, measurable, and objective as possible. This allows you both to stay aligned on both expectations and the results (i.e. how they're measured). You don't want to find out at the end of the year that one of you interpreted their responsibilities differently and they are surprised by their performance review.
Even if you only have to provide one overall rating to each employee, it's extremely helpful for you and them to have their performance broken down into these specific categories so you're on the same page. They can use this information to grow in the role, help them see their strengths or weaknesses more specifically, improve their performance next year, or see that this role may not be a good fit for them (and why).
Part 2: Evaluating performance against each goal.
At a high level, evaluating performance means measuring the individual's results against the expectations. The expectations are the measurable goals that are typically set at the beginning of the year (or in part 1 above).
The best way to evaluate performance is to have something objective to compare their results to.
Think of it like measuring a piece of furniture with a tape measure. If the goal, or expectation, was for a desk to be 3 ft wide, you still need to have an un-biased, objective tape measure that you can measure the desk with to see where it lands.
Most managers never create a measuring stick, let alone share it with the employee to be able to measure themselves throughout the year. So we're left guessing, judging, assuming, and not always seeing eye-to-eye.
The measuring stick, in this metaphor, is performance targets for each goal with specific examples.
Your company may provide specific levels or boxes to target, some common measurements are:
3 Point Scale: Exceeds expectations, meets expectations, does not meet expectations
5 Point Scale: Outstanding, exceeds expectations, meets expectations, needs improvement, unsatisfactory
To make this as effective as possible, you need to explain what each of these levels would look like for EACH goal you're measuring, at the beginning of the year so you and your employees are aligned on what they are aiming for and working towards. Of course, things will change throughout the year and we can't anticipate exactly what success will look like months in advance.
Without this guardrail for the measurement, it becomes extremely subjective. So, it could change based on their mood that day or how many other ratings they've given out already.
Personally, I prefer the 3-point scale to keep things simple for both you and the employee. When you add more layers, you'll need more time to set expectations and evaluate at each level and the extra nuances can cause more disagreements between you and your team members.
Do your best to make this specific, give examples, and focus on what is in the employee's control, not simply the results. For example, an employee can't necessarily control if a client decides to cancel their contract for external reasons. They can control how well they communicate with the client, how often they meet with them, maintaining deadlines and deliverables, etc.
For this example, we'll use the 3-point scale to keep things simple.
Goal: Strengthen client relationships by holding monthly check-ins with every assigned client and maintaining positive client feedback in quarterly reviews.
Exceeds expectations looks like: holds monthly check-ins with every client, always receives positive client feedback, and flags risks or opportunities before the client raises them.
Meets expectations looks like: holds monthly check-ins with at least 90% of clients, receives mostly positive client feedback, and escalates issues as they come up.
Does not meet expectations looks like: misses check-ins with several clients, receives mixed reviews from clients, or a client escalates multiple concerns before you do.
Having this measuring stick before you start evaluating performance will help save you so much time of trying to come up with justifications for your reasoning for each goal. It'll already be spelled out for both of you. Best practice is to map all three expectations levels out at the beginning of the year when you set the goals.
Then, evaluating performance comes down to comparing the individual's performance against the three levels, and assigning the one that it is closest to.
In your write-up and/or meeting, you can go into more detail about their actual results, what they did well, and anything missing to get to the next level.
Now let's bring it all together in an example. Here’s how a review for Jordan, a hypothetical account manager on your team, might read for the client communication goal:
Goal: Strengthen client relationships by holding monthly check-ins with every assigned client and responding to client requests within one business day.
Rating: Meets expectations
This year, you held monthly check-ins with 11 of your 12 clients, and clients consistently mentioned how responsive you are. When the Henderson account had a billing issue in March, you escalated it right away and kept the client updated until it was resolved. Clients have told me they appreciate how reliable and easy to reach you are.
To reach exceeds expectations, I’d like to see you get ahead of client concerns before they come up. Twice this year, a client raised an issue with a deliverable before we’d talked about it internally. Next year, use your check-ins to ask about upcoming priorities and anything that could get in the way, and bring those risks to me early so we can plan for them together.
Now Jordan knows exactly why they landed at meets expectations: the results are tied directly to the measures you agreed on at the start of the year. And they know exactly what it would take to get to the next level, which turns the rating into a plan rather than a judgment.
In the meeting, you can open the same way out loud: “You met the goal we set for client communication. Your check-ins and feedback were all positive. The clients appreciate how reliable and easy to reach you are." Then ask them a question to get their thoughts on their performance, "What are your biggest takeaways from your performance on this goal?"
When we have specific, measurable goals that we can simply and quickly measure, your performance evaluations will become a breeze. Both for you and your employees.
If you’re heading into review season without a plan for these conversations, join my free webinar on October 30th to get a simple system you can use right away.
Brittany Canaski is a highly-rated Leadership Coach, Trainer, and Founder of Hello Velocity where she builds confident leaders and high-performing teams. When she's not building her business, you can find her planning her next travel adventure with her husband, watching Formula 1 racing, or volunteering in her local community of Charlotte, NC.
