What are employee self-evaluations?

Employee self-evaluations are powerful tools for growth. Managers benefit from conducting evaluations because the paperwork neatly compiles the employee’s most important projects and accomplishments. This frees supervisors from the task of looking up past projects, emails and spreadsheets to recall what each individual worked on throughout the year.

For the employees, a self-evaluation presents a powerful opportunity to take ownership of their job. This is a mindful project that allows each individual to carefully review their goals and accomplishments to see how these align. It’s helpful for employees at every level to approach their employment mindfully, considering both how they’re performing currently and where they hope to be in the future.

Read more:How to Conduct an Employee Evaluation

Best practices for self-evaluations

Self-evaluations are just one part of the employee evaluation process. For the best results, combine self-evaluations with other types of assessments. A self-evaluation may overlook some of an employee’s weak points, but these are easily addressed through peer evaluations or the manager’s assessment.

Self-evaluations work best when everyone involved takes some type of ownership over the total assessment. Managers should maintain ownership over their employee’s assigned tasks, deadlines and expectations. Though the employee owns their work and performance, the manager must still take an active part in reviewing the results.

Make sure your self-evaluation process is as successful as possible by covering these three key considerations:

1. Ask mindful questions

Employee self-evaluations are guided by a series of pre-determined questions. These queries outline what you expect from the employee’s completed evaluation. Some things that you may ask for include:

• Accomplishments:Ask the employee to list their major accomplishments over the last year. Depending on the department, you might make this more specific, asking salespeople for a list of the new clients they’ve established or requesting a list of marketing campaigns from your marketing assistant.
• Goal-setting: Request a list of goals for the coming year. If you used a similar evaluation the previous year, you can give each employee a copy of the last year’s evaluation and ask them to assess how successful they were at meeting the goals they set the previous year.
• Career path:Request an overview of where the employee would like their career to lead.Find out what promotions or projects are they most interested in and what would they consider the pinnacle of their career.
• Communication:Have your employee evaluate their communication style. This information can help you build better teams in the future, pairing employees with similar styles who will have the best chance at collaborating well.

Consider your questions carefully and make sure you’re including thoughtful starters that will prompt employees to evaluate the areas that are most important to the success of your company.

Read more: Employee Evaluation Form

2. Use a manageable timeline

Use these tips to manage your time commitment to employee self-evaluations:

• Alert your employees to upcoming evaluations as early as possible. Give them at least a week to review the questions that you’ve provided and complete their self-evaluations. Set a clear deadline for the self-evaluations that will give supervisors time to thoroughly review each evaluation before meeting with the employee. Schedule a convenient meeting time to discuss the evaluation.
• Scheduling a meeting to review the evaluation will help individuals plan for this important discussion. Giving ample time to each step of the process will help ensure that you receive thoughtful documents that include all the necessary details.
• Ask for a job description as part of the evaluation.Some employees cover a broad range of duties within your company. During the evaluation process, you may find that the scope of an individual’s job has grown beyond the original job posting so they are worthy of a promotion, new title, or salary adjustment.

3. Review evaluations individually

Take the time to review each self-evaluation individually with the employee. It’s important for individuals to know that these evaluations are carefully reviewed. During the meeting, provide the employee with your own evaluation of their performance. You might also collect evaluations from peers to provide a well-rounded view of their performance.

As you’re going over the self-evaluation, you can discuss important matters pertaining to the individual’s employment, such as:

• Promotions
• Raises
• New responsibilities
• Transfers to other departments
• Goal-setting
• Opportunities for further education

Employee self-evaluation FAQs

Here are a few frequently asked questions about employee self-evaluations:

Do employee self-evaluations work?

Employee self-evaluations help people to think carefully about their performance. The act of completing the evaluation is a valuable practice in mindfulness and self-assessment. Employees who don’t complete the assessment thoroughly or on time might miss out on this benefit, but the manager will still learn something important about how and when the employee chooses to work on this assignment.

The more consideration and attention an employee gives to self-evaluation, the more useful it will be. Keep prior assessments and refer back to these as needed to encourage development and reward employees for meeting their goals.

What is the importance of an employee self-assessment?

An employee self-assessment is a helpful tool for annual employee evaluations. It is important because it gives the employee ownership over a part of the evaluation and ensures that the discussion is well balanced.

Employees can use self-assessments to communicate their willingness to improve if their supervisor recommends it and their interest in learning certain skills. Both employees and employers can use employee self-assessments to work toward goals.