The employee self appraisal or self evaluations are an important section of a performance appraisal. It provides insight on the employee’s perspective on their performance. Not only does it provide insight on how the employee feels that they are doing, these comments provide opportunities to ask follow-up questions to have a real conversation. What happens when the employee is completely out of touch with how they are performing or their future at the organization? Read on to find out conversation prompts for your face to face performance appraisal and how to provide feedback on employee self assessment comments – good AND bad.
Your organization may already have a standardized interview template with a section for employees to add their own feedback. It may be as complex as a full SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis the employee must complete or as simple as a title with “comments” and a blank section.
In my experience, there are two major ways that an employer will format their performance appraisal to include employee self assessments:
A graded section where both the employee and the Manager will separately grade performance on a scale with a small comments section. Or, a fully free comment section with guided questions to have the employee evaluate different areas of their performance. Both types will be discussed below in the nuances of the conversations required for meaningful face to face feedback for self assessment comments.
Setting the Stage for Self Assessment Comments.
To provide feedback on employee self appraisal comments, you must ensure that you are getting self appraisal content to work with. Let employees know that you will primarily be focusing your face to face performance review on the self assessment section. They need to put some thought beyond one sentence answers or leaving it blank.
To ensure that the below examples of how to have conversation and provide feedback on employee self appraisal comments – you will need to ensure you have something to work with.
When you distribute the performance appraisal:
- Be sure to highlight the importance of the self evaluation section of the performance appraisal. Clearly state this in the email where the performance appraisal is attached.
- Remind staff that the employee self appraisal comments will form most of the face to face in follow-up reminder emails when the due date is coming up.
- Invite staff to ask for clarification if they are unsure. Provide examples to them of what you would like to see.
Just remember, if you are a new manager on a team or this is the first time you have held your staff to this standard, the first review may have some ‘canned’ answers that may not be well thought through or are impersonal. These may look like word for word copies of a google search for “examples of self assessment answers”. As people get used to your expectations for quality responses, as confirmed by your face to face meeting with them, there will be an improvement. The responses will be increasingly meaningful and actionable in their answers as the years go on (especially if their salary or bonus is tied to this review).
The Preparation for Providing Feedback on Employee Self Assessment Comments
There is going to be two types of feedback that will be provided by leadership in a performance appraisal: prepared, and follow-up questions and answer/feedback based on the conversation that the face to face.
Your job as a leader is to take the employee comments and provide thoughtful constructive feedback. You need to say more than, “keep up the good work” – especially to your highest performing employees. By taking the time to provide meaningful feedback, you will have the added benefit of keeping up their engagement.
Read more here on detailed performance review phrases that you can give to your high performing staff. The list contains 52 positive and negative phrases to write on their performance review. The old adage, “no one is perfect” should be applied to the performance review of even a high performer.
Bringing it all together – get your thoughts organized
Prepare for your face to face performance review by jotting down feedback on the employee self appraisal comments in the Management comment section.
Step 1: First impressions
Start with your first over all impressions of the employee before your thoughts get muddied by what the employee wrote.
Consult your file. You know, the file. I keep track of the great things employees have done and issues or observations that I have had over the year (or their last review if you are not that diligent).
This does not take a long time – and I have 50+ direct reports- so you can find the time to do this too. My process is simple: a protected word document on my computer that I can quickly bullet point something. It’s 30 seconds every once in awhile that will save you so much time when it comes to writing up feedback on employee self appraisal comments. This file does not live in their employee records like this official performance review will. These are just cheat notes for the annual review.
I have experienced very positive responses when I will bring up something that the employee did 6 months ago that seemed insignificant to them. It demonstrates that you notice and appreciate what your employees add to the team. Typically with performance appraisals, people can recall the last few months or a big project that consumed a notable part of their year. They may forget when they took some time to show a colleague how to share their screen for a Zoom meeting.
Think about it, if you can discuss how you noticed they mentored a new employee when they worked with them on X smaller project, it will go a long way toward them helping future new employees – because their efforts are noticed and appreciated.
The constructive feedback aspect of the performance review can come from the issues or observations where you felt that the employee could have performed stronger. If the style of your performance review is an open ended comments section, start putting in your remarks now.
Using your cheat sheet and general impressions of the employee, if there is a graded scale section complete your answers now. Start working through it now before looking at the employee’s answers. You can always adjust later when you see the employee’s rationale for their grade if it does not jive with yours.
Step 2: Getting the employee perspective
Read through the employees feedback. First impression, does it suck? Did they put anything other than the bare minimum in? Put in my loathed “see above response”?
Guess what? Those responses are something to work with!
For instance, for lack of answers: this employee needs to start paying attention to detail, instructions provided to their leader, work on self reflection to develop goals… Less can be more in the case of constructive feedback.
If they have put some thought in to it – great! Read through, see if anything jumps out at you.
Did they provide feedback that expanded on your own thoughts and provide constructive feedback or are they way off base with their performance on the team? There is evidence that even the least competent employees have the ability to self assess accurately, they may just not write it down because their raise may depend on a positive performance review.
For the final preparation, step 3, you are going to complete your feedback on the employee self assessment in two different categories: when you agree with the employee and when you do not agree with the employee’s self appraisal comments.
Step 3: Feedback on Employee self appraisal comments – Agree
When you are agreeing with feedback, it is important to let the employee know that you agree with a statement and then expand on it. You are permitted to summarize or read word for word what they said when you sit down with them, and then expand. Sometimes the employee forgets what they wrote several weeks ago so reading it out-loud can serve as a reminder for both of you so you can be on the same page.
To document your agreement with part of the self evaluation, here are some ways that you can expand on an employee appraisal statement that you agree with:
- Commenting on how this aligns with one of the companies values
- Provide an example of how you saw that they exhibited the trait that they commented on that is in addition to the one they provided
- Elaborate on how their appraisal comment is important for a strong team environment
- How this is furthers their self-development and career prospects
- How their achievements are due to their time management or prioritizing abilities.
Step 3 (continued): Feedback on Employee self appraisal comments – Disagree
When you are disagreeing with the feedback, it is important to give them concrete examples of why you do not agree, or put it on the employee to provide examples. For instance, an example as to why they believe they are a great team player.
There are three aspects to providing feedback that you do not agree with an employee’s self appraisal. Think of this as the EAT model:
E stands for employee self appraisal feedback and soliciting or clarifying examples
A is for providing alternate reality, where you let the employee know that you disagree
T stands for ‘truth time’ where you discuss the impact of not meeting your expectations
Expansion or Example of their self assessment
To start the difficult conversation, much like when you agree with an employees statement, you are going to start by repeating back to the employee what they wrote. Ask for them to explain this statement with an example or to elaborate on what they wrote.
Hint: They will likely have a hard time answering this was a strong example. Just wait it out for them to come up with something. Do not fill in the blank for them.
Alternate reality.
Let them know that you do not share the same opinion as the employee. Provide examples where you have seen alternate behavior that what they state they are excelling at.
The reason that concrete examples are necessary is that some people are not self aware. Put it on them to expand on their statement.
Read more here on how to give employees feedback that lack self awareness. Only fifteen percent of employees are actually self aware – this is a conversation that you will have to become skilled at as a leader.
Truth time
There needs to be a negative impact statement for what their lack of meeting expectations is causing. Comment how their action does not promote X activity in the workplace, such as:
- Creativity/process improvement contribution
- Problem solving/dependency
- Productivity/task completion
- Communication
- Collaboration/teamwork
- Organizing/prioritizing
- Leadership
To bring it all together in the EAT model, “You said in your performance appraisal that you excelled at teamwork. I’m concerned that I have seen you display negative behavior towards your coworkers when you gossip about them. This activity does not contribute to a positive team environment.”
Your overall goal when providing constructive criticism is that the employee should understand why they did not meet your expectations. You should collaborate on an action plan.
It’s goal time!
It’s my goal to have everyone on my team to have some sort of direction that they want their career or professional development to head in. Remember, not everyone shares this intensity, so the goals very much have to be the employees own – but they do need to have some sort of progression plan to a new or improved skill development.
I do my best work outside of my comfort zone so I always have some stretch goals, but most people are not like that. Recognize for most people that stepping outside a comfort zone is well, uncomfortable.
Review what the employee wrote down for their goals out lout with the employee. Do they seem satisfied with those goals? I would always suggest encouraging them to add one more for them based on your above discussions with the employee.
Does your company offer courses? Could they work towards a designation that would benefit them? Do they have an aptitude towards a skills they are not aware of and should develop further? Say so!
Feedback Action Plan
Goals do not matter if you do not write them down and assign a due date. Remember that time you said that you were going to lose 10 pounds without a course of action and a date in mind? Yup, that went well, huh?
The employee is going to write down their goal, say how they are going to get there and what a successful goal outcome looks like. SMART goals anyone? They are also going to put down a realistic completion date on it.
I would recommend a few goals the person is going to achieve in a staggered amount of time. Not all of them should be due by the next performance appraisal because the momentum to achieve those goals that this performance review achieves will be lost.
Here’s where it gets fun, that action plan from last year for the employee? It gets discussed too! Before finalizing the goals going forward, look at the ones from the previous performance appraisal. Did they achieve them? If no, why not? If they are still relevant, they carry on to next year too with an updated due date.
Providing feedback on employee self assessment comments that matter requires a plan and is worth your time investment as a manager to get it right. Make it worthwhile by giving the staff member a new target and providing guidance on potential missteps they may be inadvertently making.