Performance Appraisals and Phrases For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Today’s performance appraisals have undergone major changes that have led to a wide range of positive and productive outcomes for employees, managers, and their companies. These changes start with continuous feedback that is based on managers meeting regularly with their employees throughout a given evaluation period, typically on a scheduled basis as frequently as once a week. These sessions focus on performance, goal progress and attainment, coaching and development, new initiatives, and any other topics, questions, or points of interest that may arise. While these sessions include a discussion of performance and progress, there is equal focus on coaching related to employee growth, upskilling, and career development, as the entire process now focuses on feedforward as well as feedback.

A related change is the movement away from annual appraisals and toward more frequent appraisals, typically on a quarterly or biannual basis. The entire process is now more open, transparent, forward-focused, and premised on two-way communication at every step. This leads to performance appraisal sessions that are void of the surprises, angst, stress, and distress that typified annual appraisals and limited contact and communication during the evaluation period. The entire appraisal process is now structured to provide constructive feedback and feedforward that include plans, strategies, and support to improve performance and productivity, enhance learning and growth, strengthen career development, and build employee motivation, satisfaction, and commitment, all in alignment with the goals and mission of the company.

The checklists and tips below will help you carry out today’s performance appraisal process successfully, effectively, and productively, especially in terms of providing continuous feedback, preparing for performance appraisal sessions, conducting employee appraisals, avoiding common mistakes and pitfalls, and following up with employees after the appraisal sessions.

Effective words and terms to use in performance appraisals

Here are some of the most effective words and terms you can use in discussing and providing feedback and feedforward as part of continuous feedback as well as in carrying out quarterly or biannual performance appraisals:

• Attitude: agility, attendance, commitment, dedication, dependability, energy, engagement, flexibility, health and safety, initiative, loyalty, reliability, and volunteering
• Communication and interpersonal skills: collaboration, cooperation, customer service, empathy, listening, negotiation, persuasion, teamwork, telephone skills, welcoming, and written and verbal skills
• Creative thinking: brainstorming, embracing change, generating new ideas, innovation, open-mindedness, originality, problem solving, and thinking outside the box
• Ethics: diversity, fairness, health and wellness, honesty, inclusion integrity, judgment, professionalism, and sustainability
• Job knowledge and expertise: applying expertise, computer literacy, embracing technology, knowledge base, mentoring, proficiencies, researching, sharing knowledge, and supporting technology
• Leadership: accessibility, coaching, communicating, conflict management, decision making, delegating, developing, empathy, feedback and feedforward, listening, modeling, motivating, proactive, recognition, responsiveness, teambuilding, and training
• Planning, administration, and organization: adhering to schedules, adjusting to change, controlling costs, creating plans, goal attainment, goal setting, management skills, meeting deadlines, and prioritizing
• Quality and quantity of work: accuracy, accomplishment, achieving results, detail-mindedness, focus, meeting goals, multitasking, productivity, setting priorities, thoroughness, time management, and working remotely
• Self-development and growth: adding value, advancement, career development, development goals, education, enhancing expertise, learning, pursuit of knowledge, strengths, and upskilling

Preparing for the appraisal session

When conducting performance appraisals, one of the key steps in establishing a productive dialogue is for you to be well prepared. Here’s a checklist that will help you set the stage for meaningful, motivational, and impactful feedback and feedforward sessions with your employees:

• See yourself as a leader and a coach. By approaching these sessions with this type of mindset, you’ll be able to accurately and fully discuss and review your employees’ performance, while also collaborating with them in order to design and implement plans and strategies to upgrade their performance as well as their knowledge, skills, and proficiencies.
• Set positive expectations. If you expect performance appraisals to go smoothly, effectively, and productively, it’s far more likely that they will do so. And conversely, if you expect a difficult or stressful conversation, that’s quite likely to be the kind of session that you’ll encounter. By engaging in continuous feedback throughout the evaluation period, you’re likely to have built a solid working relationship with your employees while removing any surprises related to their performance, hence opening the door even wider to highly effective appraisal sessions—and that’s exactly what you should expect.
• Engage in continuous feedback. Through your ongoing feedback and feedforward with your employees throughout the evaluation period, you will be highly familiar with your employees as individuals, as well as with their areas of strengths, their progress in pursuit of their goals, and the areas in which further improvements are needed. Importantly, you will have discussed all of these topics with them during the evaluation period, and this means the appraisal sessions can further review and document the employees’ performance, while focusing a good deal of the conversation on performance improvement, employee growth, and career development.
• Know the system. Companies have different performance appraisal systems, and it’s important to have a clear understanding of the system that is in place in your company. You should be able to explain the process in its entirety to your employees, as their increased understanding will further enhance their engagement as well as their receptivity to the feedback and feedforward that you provide.
• Handle the logistics. Rather than unilaterally setting the day for the formal appraisal sessions, you should discuss the possible dates with your employees and either include their inputs in selecting the dates or even let them establish the dates. At the same time, once the dates are established, it will be important for you to clear your calendar at least 30 minutes before and after the scheduled times, avoid cancelling or rescheduling the meetings if possible, select an appropriate venue whether onsite or virtual, prevent any interruptions or distractions, and make sure that the session is private.
• Gather and review data from various sources. A key step in the preparation process is to make sure that you’ve accessed the full range of performance-related data for each of your employees. This means reviewing your notes from the discussions that were held as part of continuous feedback, taking a look at the completed evaluations from previous periods, specifically reviewing the progress that your employees have made on their goals related to performance and development, checking out the employees’ files for any performance information that may have been added during the period, and reviewing your employees’ self-evaluations and 360-degree feedback. In addition, today’s performance management software can provide excellent support in helping you track and appraise employee performance.
• Avoid the most common mistakes. As part of your preparations, it’s also important to recognize and prevent the most common mistakes that can occur in the appraisal process. This includes being aware of and taking active steps to avoid such errors as bias or stereotyping, the halo effect, the horns effect, the impact of recent events, the impact of your emotions, the central tendency, skewed ratings, bargaining, arguing, inattentive listening, and surprises.
• Complete the evaluation forms. Depending upon the kinds of forms that your company uses in this process, the best step it typically to start with written comments and phrases, and then select numerical ratings that align with what you’ve written.On an administrative note, you should provide the completed forms to your employees prior to the session in order to set the stage for open and focused conversations during the actual sessions. You can give the completed forms to your employees at any point from a couple of hours before the sessions all the way to a day or two before the sessions.
• Jointly plan the agenda for the meeting. It’s important to have an agenda in place before these meetings, and the best way to put one together is to do so in collaboration with your employees. With this approach, you’re further demonstrating your respect for the employees, increasing their involvement in the process, ascertaining that topics of interest to them will be included, and further highlighting the open two-way communications that underlie these appraisals.
• Identify the key takeaways. It’s also helpful for you to have a clear idea of the main points that you would like your employees to take with them following these sessions. In this regard, by the time these sessions end, some of the more compelling takeaways include an understanding of the specific areas in which they are performing well, an understanding of the areas in which performance improvement is needed, an understanding of the kinds of steps and actions to generate improvement, and the training and upskilling options to be pursued. It’s also important for your employees to leave these sessions with increased insight regarding the steps they should take in drafting their performance goals and development goals that will be discussed soon in goal-setting meetings that follow the performance appraisal sessions.

How to conduct a performance appraisal session

As you conduct performance appraisal sessions with your employees, here are some key steps that will help you increase the likelihood of having a positive and productive exchange:

• Open on an upbeat note. Start the discussion by offering friendly greetings, expressing appreciation, and maintaining a clearly positive outlook and orientation. If there has been a recent achievement or win by your employee, this is a good time to provide some extra recognition, as your opening comments will set the tone going forward.
• Lay out the framework. Before opening the discussion on employee performance, progress, and plans, take a minute to review the agenda that you jointly established with each employee. This is an opportunity to clarify and confirm the content, direction, and objectives of this discussion.
• Discuss performance and goal attainment. The discussion now turns to employee performance during the evaluation period. This includes such topics as attitude, quality and quantity of work, teamwork and cooperation, and engagement, along with competencies and proficiencies associated with their specific positions. This part of the discussion also focuses on the progress related to their performance goals and development goals. In addition, this is the time to share the overall findings that you generated from the 360-degree feedback. With all of this in place, the stage is set for you to explain, clarify, and discuss the various ratings that you provided in the review itself.
• Focus on development. After discussing your employees’ past performance and your ratings, you can then turn the discussion forward per your shared agenda and provide the employees with guidance, coaching, and encouragement to create and implement specific steps and strategies to build their performance, skills, and progress in any areas in which improvement is needed. These actions will help establish a framework for the forthcoming goal-setting meeting. While some companies include goal-setting as part of the performance appraisal sessions, many companies find it to be more productive, efficient, and focused to carry out goal-setting in separate sessions that follow performance appraisals. This approach removes possible distractions that may be associated with the feedback and feedforward that the employees just received, while also providing employees with time to think about their goals and incorporate some of the data that they received during the appraisal session. With this in mind, the setting of performance goals and development goals is noted as part of the follow-up steps listed below.
• Listen actively. As part of the two-way communication that is central to this process, it’s also important to listen actively and attentively to your employees. This not only sends a message of respect, engagement, and interest in them, their work, and their development, but it also clarifies the points that you and your employees are sharing regarding performance and plans going forward.
• Ask for questions. Before the discussion ends, it’s helpful to ask the employees if they have any questions. Their queries can focus on the appraisal itself, or they can focus on any other work-related matters that are important to them. Importantly, if they raise a question that you’re unable to answer, let them know that you will check it out and get back to them as soon as possible. By specifically including questions and answers, you’re raising the employees’ comfort level and understanding of issues that are important to them, while also eliminating nagging concerns that could be a source of distraction going forward.
• End the sessions positively. As you wrap up these sessions, there are a few key steps that will help maintain positive momentum. They include summarizing the discussion, clarifying and agreeing upon actions going forward, asking for any suggestions, jointly establishing follow-up dates for the goal-setting meeting, and having the employees sign hard copies of their evaluation. And, just as you started these sessions, you should end them with positive expectations.

How to follow up after performance appraisal sessions

After you’ve conducted and completed performance appraisal sessions with your employees, there are some follow-up steps that help enhance employee performance, productivity, and engagement. They are primarily focused on continuing and implementing forward-focused actions that were addressed in the sessions.

These steps will help enhance your employees’ performance, engagement, motivation, and satisfaction, while also strengthening your overall working relationship with each member of your team:

• Jointly establish and/or update performance goals. One set of goals for you to jointly establish and/or update with your employees is focused on performance-related actions, behaviors, and desired measurable benefits, outcomes, and results. These are your employees’ performance goals, and they’re specific, achievable, measurable, and supported by action plans that include priorities, target dates, deadlines, and benchmarks. These goals focus on such topics as productivity, quality and quantity of work, teamwork, cooperation, communication, collaboration, engagement, and other performance-related actions that are central to success in their position, while also supporting the overall goals of the company.
• Jointly establish and/or update development goals. As part of the goal-setting session noted above, this is also the time to jointly establish and/or update the employees’ development goals. These goals focus on further enhancing your employees’ knowledge base, expertise, competencies, skills, and abilities. These goals can include classes, readings, conferences, courses, webinars, certifications, and licenses. Such goals not only lead to improvements in your employees’ current effectiveness and performance, they also establish a foundation that supports your employees’ potential advancement and career development, both of which are highly important to employees today.
• Maintain continuous feedback. As was the case prior to the evaluation sessions, it’s important to maintain your continuous feedback with each of your employees and meet with them as frequently as once a week to discuss the progress they are making toward their goals, provide them with additional coaching and guidance as needed, address any questions or issues that may have arisen, and continue to maintain open lines of two-way communication with them.
• Engage in informal contact. In addition to your continuous feedback and other meetings that you may have with your employees during a given evaluation period, it’s also helpful to have informal contact and communication with them. For employees who are working onsite, this can occur through casual chats in the hallway, in their work areas, or in any other common or convenient areas. For your remote employees, you can establish such contact by touching base with them via texting, email, cellphone, messaging apps, or virtual meetings. Whether onsite or remote, these conversations have no specific agenda, but can be used to provide on-the-spot recognition for excellent performance, feedback and feedforward related to a recent problematic performance incident, or simply to check in, say hello, catch up, provide some updates, answer questions, or provide an overview on how things are going.
• Implement a performance improvement plan (PIP). In some instances, you may have employees whose performance may continue to be subpar, in spite of the coaching, guidance, support, feedback, and feedforward that you have provided through continuous feedback and formal appraisals. If you have employees who continuously demonstrate questionable performance, and you have formally and specifically advised them of the issues and possible consequences, the next step is to provide them with a performance improvement plan (PIP). This written plan spells out the specific performance problems, the acceptable performance standards, the problematic impacts that are being generated by subpar performance, steps for the employees to take to bring performance back to acceptable levels, and the dates and deadlines associated with such improvements. The PIP also includes information regarding your follow-up actions and guidance, as well as the consequences if the employees do not upgrade their performance as indicated. These outcomes can include a transfer, reassignment, demotion, or termination, based on the specifics of the PIP and the situation itself. This form is signed by the individual employee and manager, and a copy is placed in the employee’s file.

‍