Building Your Performance Review

Getting Started Tips & Best Practices

Jessica Backholm avatar
Written by Jessica Backholm
Updated over a week ago

You have now decided which Performance Review is right for your Organization, now let's build it in HelloTeam!

Please keep in mind, these recommendations may not fit with your Leadership style or the Culture of your organization. It is best to always consider your job roles and who the evaluators are before choosing your review method.

Questions

In HelloTeam, we have a variety of different questions that you can choose from when customizing your Performance Review.

Want to learn more? Visit the articles below.

Ratings Scale

Rating’s scale, similar to a grading system, is a common way to construct Performance Reviews. This is done by the organization developing specific criteria including behaviors, traits, competencies or the company’s core values. Each criteria is assigned a certain numerical value, using a 1 - 10 point scale.

It is important that the scale of what each numerical value represents is visible to the employee while completing the Performance Review, setting proper expectations.

How can the Ratings Scale be beneficial?

  • Rating’s scale is often common when Performance Reviews are being launched for the purpose of Promotions, Merit Increases, etc.

How to create a Rating Scale that works for your organization:

Customize your wording.

  • It is extremely important that you articulate a rating scale that aligns with your organization’s brand and company goals. The more specific you are in defining response options and descriptions, the better and more consistent the evaluators will be in using the scale.

Be Transparent.

  • Make it clear how the organization defines success. Being transparent with the scale and questions beforehand, will help build trust and perceptions of fairness around how employees are being measured.

Feedback

When building a Performance Review, it is important to outline exactly what you are looking to retrieve from the results. When you are looking for Feedback towards Management or the Organization during a Performance Review, you will want to make sure you keep in the mind the following:

  • Keep it short.

  • Ask the right questions (Consider what is most important)

  • Ask for examples.

Goals

Performance Reviews are built to help specific objectives within the organization, an important one being Development. It is crucial that Employees understand an action plan, what they need to work on and the steps they need to take to be successful. If you ask us, the best way to do that is setting goals.

Setting performance goals is a shared responsibility between Manager and Employee. One way of doing so, is to address goal setting in the Performance Review process.

  • Allow employees to respond on what they would like their goals to be.

  • Ask employees of their progress towards their goals, which will lead to a discussion.

Did you know that you are able to view the Goals while completing a Performance Review?

  • Goals are populated on the right hand side of the Performance Review, so you are able to reference them as you are completing the review. This is especially helpful when an employee is completing a Self Evaluation or when Managers reviewing their employees.

Visit the article here to learn more about our recommend best practices when writing goals.


Before submitting your answers on a performance review, keep in mind the benefits that we just touched upon. These benefits do not mean much unless these results are honest and accurate. Want to learn more about how to complete a great performance review? Visit our article here, highlighting best practices when providing responses in a review.


The Performance Review is Complete, What’s Next?

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