Employee Performance Review Templates

Employee Performance Reviews (EPRs) are an important part of the employment lifecycle and help track onboarding, training, key performance indicators, and career development. However, they are often a neglected part of the business process as focus shifts to company sales targets, customer service, production, and finance. 

We’re here today to make a case for ERPs being essential for driving business objectives forward. Employees who are well trained and understand where they are going and how to get there are more successful than those who are stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what to do. 

Join us as we guide you through the key performance reviews needed to achieve employee satisfaction and the performance review templates necessary to have fruitful discussions that will help you realise business objectives.

Why are performance reviews an important employee lifecycle tool?

The performance review process is initiated on the very first day when your employee walks through the doors. How? Through the onboarding process. As you move through the steps of familiarizing your employee with the company culture, values, performance expectations, processes, and training requirements, you are assessing their ability to adapt to the information and produce results. 

As the employee progresses, the onboarding process overlaps with day-to-day performance and development activities and leads to the successful implementation of company goals or improvement initiatives. During this time, the employee can be promoted, change roles, or exit the company, in which case offboarding data becomes vital to understanding why they’re leaving. 

What we’ve explained here can be clearly visualized in this diagram, which represents the employee lifecycle.

During each phase of the employee lifecycle it is the review process (including standardized templates) that allow you to give timely feedback, engage in performance management, and recognize your employees for their contribution to the company goals. 

The downside of not having performance reviews

The consequences of not engaging in an evaluation process with staff members throughout the employee lifecycle become apparent when culture goes out the window, customers are unhappy, sales fall, and you have a nightmare staff churn rate. It’s like rot that sets in slowly but surely.

First, there are only small signs of trouble, but left unchecked, it soon grows out of control.  But the good news is that this is reversible, and you can do this by implementing a series of reviews at each phase of the employee lifecycle as outlined below.

Onboarding phase

This is a crucial starting point for a great employee-employer relationship. You have the opportunity to draw a person into your culture, communicate your company values, and discover much more about them as individuals than you could throughout the interview process. 

The communication during this initial phase should be clear and well-structured, giving the employee all the information they need to settle into the company, their team, and their new role. A competency review template will help you through this process. 

Competency review template

A competency review is a structured assessment process designed to evaluate a new employee’s skills, knowledge, and competencies against the requirements for their role. The primary objective of this review is to identify gaps and put development initiatives in place for the first 30, 60, and 90 days of employment. 

To start with, all review templates (regardless of the purpose) should meet the following requirements:

• Specific: Clearly define what you want to achieve by going through the process and what you will do with any information you gather. 
• Measurable: Ensure the template has a section that will document quantifiable criteria for evaluation, and tracking progress at key milestones.
• Achievable: Attach tasks to realistic timelines, taking into consideration the given resources and constraints. 
• Relevant: Align actionable steps with the broader company objectives and priorities.
• Time-bound: Establish a clear deadline for each task or desired outcome. 

Free downloads are available for use if you’re looking for a simple good performance review template. Documents like the one above can be paired with competitively priced employee engagement apps like, Alfy Matching and Linky Directory from BuddiesHR (a Slack integration), providing a way to facilitate a comprehensive onboarding process. 

Training phase

The initial training phase (up to 90 days after joining the company) is about getting your employee ready to operate autonomously in their role. The majority of the focus during this phase will be on corrective action, in the form of on-the-job training, mentorship, formal workplace learnings, and self-improvement. 

Self-assessment review template

A self-assessment review can be completed at the end of 30, 60 and 90 days of employment and provides an opportunity for self evaluation by the employee and to gather constructive feedback. 

Importance of gathering data for performance reviews

The importance of gathering data (even when assessing one's own performance) cannot be understated. However, subjective assessments such as this one can fall short in the data department. There is a way to change that. By adding employee engagement apps such as Clappy Kudos, your staff members will have tangible evidence of their progress in incorporating company values into their work. 

By giving each other Kudos and tagging company values to the mention, employees acknowledge each other’s efforts to be culture-positive. This data serves as evidence for employee development. 

Monthly review template

A Monthly Review is a structured evaluation conducted at the end of each month. The review helps individuals and teams stay aligned with their goals, track productivity, and make data-driven adjustments to optimize performance. Direct reports are given positive feedback, balanced with specific examples of development gaps. 

A number of free performance review examples are available, such as the ones listed below:

1. Pumble
2. Clockify
3. Plaky

Monitoring phase 

The monitoring phase defines the period after onboarding and training has passed (30-90 days). The assumption during this phase is that the employee has comfortably settled into company culture, their team, their role and is taking ownership of all tasks and assignments.

This phase, along with the ‘develop’ and ‘recognize’ phases, will continue in a cycle for the duration of employment. The monthly review should continue as a practice for giving meaningful feedback and discussing gaps in job performance.

This phase can be greatly enriched and supported by purchasing an app like Pulsy Survey, which will allow you to run polls and surveys and proactively engage with employees. This is also useful for picking up on employee dissatisfaction with processes, employment practices, management styles and other areas of concern. 

Peer review template

Along with the monthly job performance review templates and data collected from an app like Pulsy Survey, peer reviews are an excellent way of gathering tangible evidence during a review period. Team members can give valuable insights, but it is advised that honest feedback should be encouraged in the interest of transparency and team wellbeing. 

If you don’t want to send out an official peer review template to team members, another way of collecting information is the Clappy Kudos app. When staff are organically encouraged to acknowledge progress and culture-positive behavior, or even excellent customer service or work performance, this serves as a peer assessment of sorts.

Professional development is all about your ability to build good relationships and work in a team, and if that feedback is missing, it speaks for itself. 

Develop phase 

Once an employee has shown competence in their role and is actively receiving good performance ratings, it may be a good time to begin discussions around employee growth. A monthly review will give you plenty of information to work with, along with self-assessments, peer reviews, and data gathered from employee engagement apps. 

Implementing a quarterly performance review from this point onwards may be enough to discuss ongoing performance with the employee. This review can also serve as a professional development review. 

Quarterly performance review template

A Quarterly Performance Review Template should include key performance objectives and measurable goals to assess an employee’s progress. It should provide a section for strengths and achievements, highlighting contributions made during the quarter. A constructive criticism section from both the employee and manager ensures open communication and alignment on expectations. 

Project review template

During the development phase a unique opportunity arises to give your employee specific projects to work on. This serves as a way of enhancing their skills, as well as rewarding them for the efforts they are putting in. Projects can be aligned to their current roles or future promotional opportunities. 

Automation of progress reports is becoming the ideal way to gather data for projects and monthly and quarterly reviews. With a reasonably priced Slack integration app (Stany Standup) you'll be able to send recurring surveys to your employees using ready-to-go templates with automated reminders. 

With Stany Standup, you can immediately:

• Identify roadblocks and help employees overcome them.
• Strengthen team collaboration and communication.
• Increase focus on priorities and goals.

Recognize phase

The Recognition Phase of the employee lifecycle is a crucial stage that typically coincides with the annual performance review, where employees are acknowledged for their contributions, achievements, team collaborations, and overall impact within the organization. 

This phase reinforces employee engagement and motivation by providing meaningful employee feedback, rewards, promotions, or performance-based incentives. It also serves as an opportunity to celebrate successes, reinforce company values, and strengthen the connection between employees and the organization. 

Annual performance review template

A good annual performance review template should include the following key elements to ensure it is comprehensive and effective:

• Employee information: Basic details such as employee’s name, job title, department,  and the review period to provide context. 
• Goal achievement: A section to assess the progress made on specific goals set at the beginning of the year, highlighting successes and areas where targets were not met. 
• Core competency section: This section consolidates all the information gathered through the year. Parameters such as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and leadership are discussed. 
• Strengths and accomplishments: A space to recognize the employee’s contributions, highlighting the reaching of milestones and exceptional work throughout the year.
• Employee Self-Assessment: The consolidation of monthly or quarterly self-assessments and a discussion on how the employee has improved from review to review. 
• Future goals and objectives: Clear, measurable goals are set for the next review period, aligning with individual growth and company objectives.
• Overall performance rating: A rating system based on key performance indicators to summarize the employee’s performance. 
• Signatures and acknowledgement: A space for both the employee and the reviewer to sign and acknowledge the review was discussed and agreed upon. 

Offboarding

This section brings us to the last phase of an employee lifecycle - when an individual leaves the company. Offboarding is a unique opportunity to collect valuable insights that can help your company improve employee retention, workplace culture, and operational processes.

Since departing employees feel more open to providing constructive criticism, offboarding data can also help to reduce turnover. This is especially important during periods of high staff churn where you can pick up on trends. 

The template you use should collect the following key information:

• Insights into the employee’s experiences, reasons for leaving, and improvement suggestions.
• Details about workflow challenges, inefficiencies, and gaps that need to be addressed.
• Honest perspectives on workplace morale, culture, and leadership effectiveness.
• Documentation of outstanding projects and best practices for a smooth transition.
• Collection of forwarding information for the processing of payroll and other benefits.

Rules of engagement for performance reviews

Performance reviews are important meetings that are designed to structure communications about company goals and the employees' part in achieving these goals. For this reason, they should be conducted in a professional way. Use these tips to get the best out of your performance reviews:

• Use standardised templates that can be adapted to suit different roles and levels in the organization.
• Be consistent in the use of templates for all employees. 
• Provide a clear outline of all performance reviews conducted in the company and the templates that will be used. Also provides an understanding of how employee engagement apps, HR platforms and other ERP will be used to collect data for performance evaluation. 
• Use clear and specific language based on data you’ve collected. Try to steer clear of giving personal opinions unless asked to do so. 
• Focus discussions on actionable steps that can be taken for improvement, and only give constructive criticism if necessary to help the employee understand where their gaps are. 
• Keep all discussions confidential.

A case for adding employee engagement apps to your review process

Working through the employee lifecycle with only templates and formal meetings can feel very stuffy, and it may not be entirely possible to have face-to-face meetings (as in the case of remote workers). This is where Slack integrated apps, like those designed by BuddiesHR provide a fun element to the process. 

By introducing the apps in an organic, fun and interesting way, you can gather information, keep employees connected, and organically work through your human resources processes. The staff will feel like they’re appreciated, listened to, and understood, while you’ll entrench culture values, and gather data for great performance discussions. 

Take a look at how incorporating Clappy Kudos into your performance process can work for your company. 

With Clappy you can create leaderboards as a great way to create healthy competition and motivate your team members to better performance. By automating appreciation, rewards, and reminders to tag values to performance recognition, you don’t have to keep tabs on everything and do it yourself - the whole team can help. 

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Conclusion

Performance reviews are a vital part of the employee lifecycle, ensuring that individuals receive the guidance, feedback, and recognition needed to succeed in their roles. When conducted consistently and effectively, these reviews foster professional growth, strengthen company culture, and contribute to long-term business success. 

By using structured templates, employee engagement tools, and data-driven insights, your company can create a fair and transparent evaluation process that benefits all parties. However, performance reviews should not be treated as mere formalities—they should be meaningful conversations that drive continuous improvement and alignment with company objectives. 

When done right, they enhance job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and ultimately lead to a more engaged and high-performing workforce.