Tips on Writing an Effective Employee Review

Writing an employee review is often dreaded by business owners. Employee reviews can seem like they're meant to make employees demoralized or ashamed of their work in order to make them work harder, when really they're meant to give constructive criticism and compliment areas where there's been a job well done. The main goal of an employee review is to help us identify strengths and weaknesses in order to address education and training, so make sure it isn't a perceived as a negative process by the employee.

The review should focus on the employee's performance in their job. This means each employee's review will be different. An effective review is made up of three sections.

The first section should pertain to the employee's job performance in general. This includes absenteeism, tardiness, ability to work well with others, ability to take direction, and abiding by company policies. Keep the employee manual at hand when you're evaluating general performance so you have something to reference about company policies.

The second section should be composed of a list of responsibilities specific to that employee. You can also state the job description that they're held to. Summarize the employee's performance at each item on the list. Try to be positive and offer solutions. Don't focus on everything the employee did wrong. Offer ways the problem could have been avoided like more training or better education on the topic. Always reread what you have written. In order to be more objective, walk away from it for a few days and read it again. Do this to be sure you're not judging because of good or bad feelings.

The last section should identify areas needing improvement. Create a plan of action and a timeline of when goals should be achieved. When doing the review make sure you set aside enough time to discuss this section. You need to tell the employee what action you are going to take in order to assist with these goals; for example, provide the employee with further training.