Performance
7
min read
Holistic performance reviews are integral for any organization that seeks to create a high performance culture. However, the nature of performance appraisals has undergone significant transformation with a focus on 360 feedback and review.
One of the key pillars for the same is employee self assessment and self appraisal. Through the course of this article, we will share with you why self assessment is important and how you, as a manager, can help your employees get it right to facilitate maximum impact.
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Decoding the meaning and importance of self assessment
As the name suggests, employee self assessment or self reflection is the practice or process where employees reflect on and assess their performance over a period of time to identify accomplishments, development areas and other performance aspects
The aim of self assessment is to get the employees’ view of their performance and add the information and data to manager and peer feedback. This can enable organizations to get a holistic understanding of the employee performance and gauge the overall contribution, some of which might be invisible from a macro view. Here are a few reasons why employee self assessment as a tool for performance review makes sense for growing organization:
- Understand employee’s side of the performance story on what has been their greatest contribution, blockers, development areas, etc.
- Gauge aspirations of the employees to align OKRs and engagement plans to facilitate high levels of performance
- Enable employees to reflect on their contribution as well as challenges faced by them to get an understanding of where they stand in the overall organizational vision
- Help managers gauge employee strengths and identify accomplishments that may not be overtly visible
- Empower managers to bridge the gap between their perception of the employee performance and the self reflection of the employee
When is the ideal time for employee self assessment?
With the rise of continuous performance management and regular review and appraisal, your self assessment process should follow a similar approach.
Instead of pushing employees to assess and reflect on their performance at the end of the year, you should encourage them to conduct regular self assessment
On one hand, regular and continuous performance linked self appraisal by employees will ensure that no part of their performance goes unnoticed. On the other hand, it will constantly give them a chance to reflect on their performance and improve on the development areas on the go, instead of waiting for the year end. Invariably, they will embark on the path of development and improvement at an accelerated pace.
Here, if you leverage employee pulse surveys which are short and frequent in nature, you can ensure consistent and continuous self reflection from employees. With as frequent as one question a day, you can encourage your employees to build a culture of performance-oriented self assessment.
Download ready to use customizable Self Evaluation Template and make writing self appraisals easier
How can employees get self assessment right
With self assessment and reflection being a fairly new practice to performance management, many organizations and employees struggle with getting it right.
While some believe that employees might see it as a chance to explain their bad performance, others believe that it might end up biasing the manager’s perspective.
However, when done right, employee self assessment can be an extremely powerful tool to facilitate a high performance culture. Here are a few tips to get your employees conduct performance self assessment the right way:
1. Be open and honest
Encourage your employees to be open and honest. Employees must not see self assessment as a place for self aggrandizing in the hope of a better rating, rather an honest assessment of one’s performance.
For self evaluation to be effective, your employees need to reflect on their performance without the worry of being penalized for identifying areas of development and improvement
It is important to not see self assessment as the sole foundation for promotions and appraisals, but rather as a journey towards growth.
2. Reflect on the OKRs
Next, persuade your employees to reflect on their OKR performance. The idea is not only to assess what has been achieved with OKR grading. It should also include reflections from OKRs about the possible enablers and blockers to further refine them for the next performance period. The employee must be guided to reflect on what helped achieve the OKRs and what other support is required as well as what he or she would personally like to work towards.
Download: Free OKR grading template
3. Incorporate feedback from managers and peers
Third, when self assessing for performance review, employees must incorporate feedback from their conversations with managers and peers. If your organization has a culture of regular 1:1s, this will be very easy for your workforce. The idea here is to motivate your employees to reflect on what feedback they have been able to gauge and whether or not according to them their performance is a reflection of the same. 360 degree feedback can also be a helpful tool for employees to understand all aspects of their performance.
Factors like what did the manager praise about their performance or what did a coworker thank them for are very important for self assessment.
Read: Top 50 1:1 meeting questions for great managers
4. Identify challenges and opportunities
Finally, as a part of performance review self assessment, employees need to reflect on the challenges and opportunities, both internal and external. Internally, they need to assess their attributes, skill sets and aspirations and align them with the expectations to gauge their level of performance. Similarly, external factors like resources, team support and their impact on performance needs to be documented.
Best practices to write employee self assessment
When you share these above mentioned tips with your team members, they are bound to ask questions about the best practices for writing or filling up self assessment surveys in the most effective way. We have you covered for that as well. Here are a few quick tips to help your employees write effective self assessment:
- Be focused and get to the point of reflecting on your performance quickly
- Do not shy away from appreciating or praising yourself, be an advocate for yourself
- Illustrate your USP as a part of your team i.e. be specific about what sets you apart
- Clearly highlight your contribution — towards a project, to overall team work, etc.
- Use figures and data wherever possible
- Highlight the impact of your work, it could be in the form of more sales, stronger pipeline, etc. depending on your role
- Reflect on your OKRs to see what you were able to achieve and what you couldn’t, document the reasons
- Clearly mention your development areas, it will help your managers see that you are open to suggestions
Read: How to go from performance management to employee development
Employee self assessment questions and templates
If you look at these best practices closely, you will realize that the key to writing effective self assessment also lies in the questions that you ask.
Simply asking an open ended question like reflecting on your performance will seldom yield any substantial responses, mainly because your team members will struggle with starting their answers
Therefore, we have compiled a list of questions and potential answer prompts/ templates to help you make self assessment a part of your performance review process effectively.
Top 10 self appraisal questions
- What are the key responsibilities you have taken up in the past <performance period>?
- How would you describe your performance in the said period?
- What have been your greatest accomplishments?
- What are the top 3 skills that have helped you excel professionally?
- What are a few skills that you would like to work on in the next 3-6 months?
- Have your goals changed over the past <performance period>? If yes, how?
- Have you been able to achieve your set goals?
- How do you plan to achieve your goals for the next <performance period>?
- What are some development areas that you have identified for yourself in the past <performance period>?
- How would achieving your goals impact your professional journey as well as the organization?
Also read: 150+ useful performance review phrases to start using today
Top 10 employee self assessment answer prompts
- I have been able to increase sales by x%
- I have maintained a response time of 24 hours for all stakeholders
- I helped and supported the efforts of an external team to help them reach their targets
- I appraise my team members of my targets and updates on a weekly basis
- I exceeded my target by y%
- I believe I would benefit from <improvement area>
- In the coming months, I would like to focus more on <skills> to ensure <impact>
- I would like to do more of <development area>
- I believe refining my <development area> will help me leverage my <strength> better
- I wish to achieve <goal> and would work towards <development area> for the same
Role of managers in facilitating effective employee self assessment
Ensuring impact with self assessment is not only dependent on your team members. There are several ways in which managers of an organization can help build a culture of effective self evaluation.
Create an open culture where employee self reflection does not become the sole tool to penalize or promote employees, see it as an extended glimpse of performance
- Encourage your team members to reflect on their performance without the fear of it being used against them
- Provide constant and regular feedback to enable employees to reflect on their performance in real time
- Use the right tools to make employee self assessment a common practice across the organization
- Do not comment on the self assessment for any employee as it being correct or incorrect
- Create a dialogue around the self evaluation to understand the employee better and deliberate on each point, don’t assume
Wrapping up
As we come to an end, it is clear that employee self assessments are an integral part of performance reviews and if conducted in the right manner have the potential to drive a high performing culture. However, we understand that administering and facilitating participation for self assessment can be daunting, especially for a growing organization.
Fortunately, custom pulse surveys by SuperBeings with automated sending and reminders, along with NLP based sentiment analysis can take care of the same for you. If interested, book a free demo today to learn more.
Suggested Reading
100+ most useful self appraisal comments you must know
How to use custom pulse surveys to enhance employee experience
