Have you heard Peter Drucker’s famous quote, "If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it?" It applies to every aspect of business, from development to marketing. In the HR department, you measure employee performance to help inspire them to improve and work better as a team.
As HR managers, it’s your job to keep track of employee progress and integration into the company culture. It’s also your responsibility to create employee evaluation forms for your team to conduct performance reviews and appraisals.
Wondering how to get started with employee evaluation? We’ve got you covered. This article will share everything you need to conduct an effective employee evaluation.
You’ll learn what an employee evaluation is, best practices for creating employee evaluations, plus a wide range of employee evaluation templates to get you started on the right foot every time.
An employee evaluation is a business communication tool for HR professionals. More specifically, it’s a category of tools for evaluating employees' work for a company or brand.
Employee evaluation types include performance reviews, performance appraisals, project evaluations, team reviews, and self-assessments.
The type of employee evaluation depends on how you need to evaluate employees. What are the evaluation parameters and criteria? How often do you need to do it, and at what capacity? What are higher-up managers looking for?
Conducting regular employee evaluations can support the HR department in helping employees improve their tasks and responsibilities.
In the HR department, there are plenty of tasks that are done repeatedly. Employee evaluations are the perfect example. But when you have a template to use as a base for every employee evaluation, you save time and effort for everyone on the team.
Your employee evaluation cycles will fit into any one of these categories:
Employee evaluations and performance reviews are periodic. Depending on how your company works, evaluations can be monthly, quarterly or yearly. Another system would be to follow the date of employment. This way, you’d have evaluations happening all year; this is a great idea if you want constant improvement.
All employees must undergo an employee evaluation after the probation period stated in their contracts. This practice is critical for the team and new employees to know if they’re a good fit for each other and the company.
Occasionally, you’ll need to conduct employee evaluations when the need arises. For example, if an employee is struggling or can’t seem to get up to speed, an evaluation can get to the bottom of the problem and give insight into how to fix it. This employee might need further training or a mentor to help them get back on track.
If employee evaluations and performance reports are documents you’ll often be using, you need a reusable template. Design it with all the vital sections to fill out during and after an evaluation.
Here are the sections you need to include when designing employee evaluation forms for your HR department team.
At the very top of the document layout, include spaces to write the employee details. Leave enough writing areas so the evaluator doesn’t space constraints. Keep this information in the left or right corner, so hand-filled evals are easily recognizable when filed.
Additionally, if using printed templates, consider stickers that include all the essential info for each employee and paste them in that area.
This section reflects the way your score system works. Visually, you can generate more interest in this area and use it as an overview of the evaluation. It’s the area managers and analysts will look at first when reviewing evaluations. Make the scoring visual with numbers, icons or happy and sad faces.
Don’t overcomplicate the data entry. Make it easy for everyone, including the evaluator, to fill in the information. Consider the usability of your employee evaluation form templates for the evaluators and analysts that will be using them regularly.
Provide an area for notes and observations gathered during the evaluation process. You can add prompts or leave them blank to be filled in at the evaluator's discretion.
For printed templates, add lines to help keep notes organized. In digital templates, add a text box with a placeholder saying “write here” or something similar.
Help the evaluator by adding bullet points as visual suggestions of where to write their action sentences. This will allow evaluators to quickly skim the content when reviewing a large number of completed evaluations.
At the bottom of the form, create a space where both the evaluator and employee will sign. Additionally, include a space for the manager to sign, if necessary.
Leave enough room if the forms are to be printed, signed by hand and stamped. Finally, include a space where you can write the date of the evaluation event.
Inside your Visme editor, the same one you already use for reports and proposals, you’ll find several templates for employee evaluations. We’ve selected the top 12 performance review and self-evaluation examples you can use immediately.
All Visme templates are fully customizable to match your brand, project or client’s guidelines. Inside the editor you have access to a broad library of design elements for every business occasion. Not to mention stock photos and videos to create performance reviews that inspire and engage your employees.
This simple performance review template uses stars for the rating system. A simple review like this is generally an overview of a larger document with performance-tracking analytics and a collection of written reviews. Use this template to provide a general overview of one employee’s performance.
Take advantage of Visme’s vast icon library to visualize important points in the review template. Bring attention to different areas with branded icons or illustrations. Design elements like icons and illustrations help with the visual flow of your layouts.
Temps are temporary workers who fill in for employees on sick leave or holidays. Employee evaluations are critical for knowing if the temp is completing all the expected work. This performance review template for temps like this one will come in handy for larger companies with high turnover.
Collaborate with your team when creating the template to review a temps’ performance. Make sure all topics are covered in the evaluation template and give access to your copy editor to double-check all brand messaging and voice. Share the finished design with the HR team to sign off on the layout of the questions and prompts in the evaluation.
Provide employees with self-evaluation forms so you can see what they think about their work performance. Their self-assessment and evaluator’s analysis paints the bigger picture of how well the employee performed during a specific period or project. Adding emoji faces to the options softens the self-evaluation process for the employee. If an employee is new to self-evaluation, show them some self-evaluation examples for inspiration.
Include a data visualization in the template for the employee to adjust according to their own judgement. Make it easy for them with percentage gauges and data widgets. Add a popup with instructions on how to edit the chart. Adding interactivity to a self-evaluation form can make it fun, but make sure it's easy and intuitive.
