14 Questions for Your Next Performance Review

Employee Evaluation of Managers

Employee reviews of managers provide invaluable insights into leadership effectiveness. By giving employees the chance to submit feedback on their managers you provide rich context for their managers and open the door to identifying risk in your leadership structure.

Key areas to consider include:

• How well are you supported by your manager in your current role? How an employee perceives a manager’s supportiveness in their current role can shed light on the manager’s leadership and people management skills.
• How would you rate your manager’s involvement in helping shape your career? Employees rating the frequency and effectiveness of career-centered conversations portrays a manager’s investment in employee growth.

With their relationship with their manager accounting for 70% of the difference in employee engagement scores, understanding their effectiveness is hugely important. Skip level meetings throughout the year will help but not asking during a review cycle is a missed opportunity.

Employee Self-Evaluations

Self-assessments provide employees an opportunity to reflect on their performance, marking their agreements or disagreements with the manager’s evaluation. 

Key areas that questions should address include:

• What’s your perception of your overall performance? How an employee rates their performance can highlight their self-perception and confidence in their role.
• How would you rate your ability to meet job requirements? Understanding an employee’s self-assessment of whether they meet their job requirements can offer insights into their perceived role understanding and competence.
• How would you rate your display of company values?  The degree to which they believe they embody company values can speak volumes about their cultural alignment. 
• How engaged do you feel at work? It’s essential to understand how employees view their engagement at work. 

Again allowing the distinction between overall performance and match to job requirements allows an employee to provide context for why the business required them to do something different than their prescribed role. When this happens it presents the opportunity to recognize strong performance while still identifying areas for improvement.

The only engagement question that really matters is self-reported. Any low engagement reported should be addressed. If there is a big difference from what the manager reported then you may need to involve others. This represents both risk and opportunity. We know that engaged employees are more productive so when given the opportunity to address low engagement we need to act. 

This is also information for your recruiting strategy. If someone remains unengaged or you are unable to meet their desired role progression, you will want to make sure you have plans in place.