The Do’s and Don’ts of Performance Review Comments

Performance reviews benefit both employers and employees, but how you conduct them largely determines their success. Performance reviews can either push employees away from your company or propel them to reach new milestones.

Most employees expect their employers to give them performance reviews annually. An ideal review should help the employees identify areas of improvement while observing employee-manager relations and spot the growth opportunities available.

To offer inspiring and constructive performance review comments, consider these do’s and don’ts.

Do’s of performance review comments

• Define the company’s expectations and objectives. Every company should set goals at the beginning of the year. This way, your employees know what to work towards. Then, as you write performance review comments, measure the employees’ performance against the company’s objectives.
• Include the employees’ company-specific competencies alongside their accomplishments in line with their role in the organization. Also, evaluate their soft skills like communication, problem-solving, punctuality, reliability, the accuracy of work, teamwork, etc.
• Give your employees regular feedback. For example, if you give them quarterly feedback, they will not be blindsided by what you say in the annual performance review comments. Regular feedback allows them to keep improving their work.
• Inspire your team to set individual goals. Once they understand the company’s objectives, your employees can identify what to accomplish and learn to meet your expectations.
• Prepare well before time. Solid feedback requires you to know what every employee has been doing for the past period and their work’s quality. To be well prepared, you should note where they have excelled, their accomplishments, and where to improve. Doing this makes it easy to write their performance review comments.
• Ask other employees for feedback. Thorough performance review comments should include the feedback from the employees who work with a specific employee. Their feedback gives you a better view of the employee’s performance.

Dont’s of performance review comments

• Don’t criticize or blame the employees. Instead, focus on what they did well and where improvements can be made and avoid using personal pronouns like I, me, or my. Give constructive feedback that will motivate the employees to work harder and ensure you give them specific examples of behaviors that need improvement.
• Don’t give feedback that facts cannot back up. For instance, if you say that the employee should improve their time management skills, ensure to mention that instance where they missed a deadline.
• Avoid unprofessional language like ‘way to go’ and use professional and descriptive language like ‘the employee demonstrated an expert understanding of something.’ If your feedback is negative, use terms like ‘the employee’s competence was not satisfactory’ instead of ‘the employee doesn’t know how to do his job.’
• Avoid general terms like poor or good, subjective terms like polite, enthusiastic, or rude, and extreme words like never or always.

Conclusion

Every manager should help their employees grow. Your performance review comments are your chance to give your employees a gentle push to motivate them to grow. However, knowing what to do and what not to do during the review will help you provide constructive feedback and empower your team to keep advancing.