What is a 90-day review template for managers?

A 90-day review can be used as the final step in a new employee’s onboarding process. Your company may already implement check-ins at the 30 and 60-day marks, but these aren’t usually centered around reviewing performance. However, 90-day reviews should focus on performance and provide employees with a brief yet comprehensive evaluation of how they’re doing. During this review, employees should also be given an opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, and offer suggestions for personal improvement.

A 90-day review template for managers provides standardized performance benchmarks that apply to all (or most) employees. A template can help you streamline the review process to save time without sacrificing efficiency.

Why should managers conduct 90-day performance reviews?

The benefits of conducting 90-day performance reviews include:

• Verifying the employee is a good culture add for your company: Most companies have a 90-day probation period to ensure the employee is qualified and is a good culture add for your business. This performance review is a valuable opportunity to verify this.
• Provide valuable feedback to employees: The first three months or so of employment involves adapting and transitioning for the new employee. Now is an excellent time to provide feedback on what the employee is doing well and constructive criticism on what they could do better. Be sure to offer actionable tips along with your constructive criticism.
• Gain valuable insight from employees: This is a good time to ask your new employee if they have any feedback for you. Are there processes they believe could be improved upon? Is there anything the company is doing well or could do better on?
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your onboarding process: Your onboarding process should be designed to fully integrate new employees within about three months. If employees regularly feel they aren’t ready to work independently after this period, you may want to rethink your onboarding.

What should be included in a 90-day review?

A few things you may want to include in your 90-day review are:

• A comprehensive printed report of about one to two pages that the employee can reference (a template for this is included below)
• Information on an employee’s general performance
• Check in on any professional development and training that has been completed so far
• Suggestions or plans for professional development and training moving forward
• A verbal discussion of an employee’s future and professional goals within the company
• A verbal discussion of how the employee viewed their onboarding process
• A verbal discussion on how well the company is meeting the employee’s expectations
• Details on expectations moving forward (including how long before another review will be completed)

You may also want to discuss how the employee feels about their team in terms of helpfulness and challenges. For example, you can ask who the most helpful team member was to the new employee and whether they’ve experienced difficulties with anyone since their arrival. This information can be used in the mentioned employee’s annual performance review.

Although you can develop a 90-day review for your company from scratch, you may find it more convenient to use a 90-day review template like the one below. Using a template can help streamline and standardize the review process so it’s most effective.

90-day review template example

This 90-day performance review provides a written record of the employee’s first 90 days of employment. Managers are encouraged to be accurate and candid in their evaluation, as it will become a part of the employee’s permanent employment record.

Identifying information

Employee Name:
Employee ID:
Job Title:
Department:
Supervisor’s Name:
Review Period:
Date of Performance Review:

Performance rating scale

N/A: Performance factor isn’t relevant to this position
1: Performance has been unsatisfactory, and no job expectations have been met
2: Meets some expectations, but not all
3: Consistently meets job expectations
4: Routinely exceeds job expectations
5: Always exceeds job expectations

Performance factors reviewed

A 90-day review can be used as the final step in your company’s onboarding process. Using a 90-day review template can help standardize and streamline the review process to save time without sacrificing efficiency.

FAQ about 90-day reviews

What should managers avoid saying during an employee review?

Managers should avoid saying anything that doesn’t align with the results employees have shown. This goes both ways. You’ll want to avoid overrating new employees because this doesn’t allow them to hear the constructive criticism they need to move forward. But you also don’t want to underrate them, either, because employees deserve to hear where they’re doing well.

It’s also important to avoid saying anything that could be viewed as discriminatory. The topics of race, religion, disability, age, gender and related topics should never be brought up during 90-day performance reviews (or during any other review).

Do managers need to review employees every 90 days?

As common practice, 90-day performance reviews are important for both the employee and the company. This is especially true if your company is one of the many who have a 90-day probation period.

How long should a meeting about a 90-day performance review take?

The length of your meeting with the employee regarding their 90-day performance review can vary significantly. For example, an entry-level position may require less discussion than a managerial one. Consider the topics you’d like to verbally discuss and the points made in your written review. Then, ensure you’ve allotted an appropriate amount of time for that discussion.

Does the 90-day performance review meeting have to take place at exactly 90 days of employment?

You should aim to have this specific performance review as close to 90 days of employment as possible. However, it isn’t crucial that the meeting take place exactly at the 90-day mark. Having the meeting a few days earlier or later is okay, but you won’t want to push it off more than a week. Pushing the performance review meeting off for too long can make the employee feel undervalued.

90-Day Review Templates for PDF & Word

Use these 90-day review templates to provide employees with a standardized, comprehensive performance assessment.

*Indeed provides these examples as a courtesy to users of this site. Please note that we are not your HR or legal adviser, and none of these documents reflect current labor or employment regulations.