What is an employee self-review?

A self-evaluation for employees is similar to an evaluation a manager might complete, but the questions are directed toward employees. They’re asked to rate and evaluate themselves in various areas.

The evaluation form might include numerical ratings and open-ended questions where employees can include a description of their performance and evidence to support what they say about themselves.

Why should you conduct self-reviews?

A self-review is an opportunity for an employee to reflect on their work, discuss their professional development and share their goals with their manager or supervisor. It gives their manager a chance to see their perspective on how work is going, including their current job satisfaction, goals and accomplishments they’re proud of.

It also gives employees an opportunity to promote themselves. When an employee reviews themselves, they can share what they’ve been working on and make a case for themselves for raises or promotions they feel they deserve. They might mention new goals or a direction they want to take at work that you didn’t know about. It can open conversations about cross-training opportunities, promotions and career paths.

Self-evaluations can sometimes uncover discrepancies between what the employee feels they do and how the manager interprets those actions. Some employees might downplay their accomplishments and need encouragement from their managers to brag about themselves.

Others might overinflate what they do for the company, and the manager may not be able to see the results the employee is describing. Either way, it should open a conversation between the employee and the manager.

Self-assessment process

You can adjust the self-evaluation process to fit your needs, but it typically follows a similar pattern. The process includes:

1. Self-evaluation preparation

Create your employee self-evaluation forms based on what you want to assess. Customize the forms to fit your company. It’s also a good idea to customize the evaluations for different departments or positions since the responsibilities and expectations can vary.

2. Prepare your employees

Before employees complete a self-review, managers and members of human resources should encourage employees to ask themselves:

• What project am I the proudest of and why?
• In which ways did I display teamwork in the office?
• Which goals did I meet or exceed this year?
• How did I represent the culture of the organization?
• What skills do I want more experience in?
• How can my boss help me succeed? What training can they offer to do this?
• What do I love about my job?
• How do I see myself growing within the company?
• What area of my work would I like more feedback on?
• Did I take any prior feedback and improve my work?

When employees have some guidance on what they should address in their self-review, it’ll lead to a more well-rounded review that’s easier to discuss together. Discuss the expectations for the answers and the timeline for completing the evaluation.

Related: How to Conduct an Employee Evaluation

3. Conduct the self-evaluations

Distribute the self-evaluation forms to everyone at once, or break it down by department if you want to spread out the evaluations. Give employees a deadline for completing the assessment to ensure you have enough time to review it before meeting with the employees.

4. Schedule meetings with employees

The final step is reviewing the evaluations with employees. If you’re doing your evaluations of employees at the same time, schedule one meeting to review both. This gives you the chance to discuss discrepancies in your evaluations, discuss problem areas and talk about goals for the future.

You might also use this meeting to talk about a raise for the employee. Give yourself at least an hour with each employee to allow for adequate discussion.

Developing employee self-evaluations

Creating your self-evaluation forms depends largely on what’s important to your company or to the position. Many self-evaluation questions apply to any position, but others are job-specific. Here are some tips to help you develop self-evaluations:

• Use templates: Using a self-evaluation template as your guide can help you speed up the process. Keep the questions that fit your needs, and add more questions as necessary.
• Consider your focus: What areas do you want to focus on with your evaluations? Strengths, weaknesses and accomplishments are common components, but you might want to focus on something specific, such as aligning with your company values or promoting teamwork. Include questions related to the areas you want or need to evaluate.
• Review job descriptions: If you’re customizing the evaluations to specific roles, review the related job descriptions to refresh yourself on the key responsibilities. Use these to develop assessment questions.
• Decide on a format: Evaluations can include open-ended questions, rating scales or both. Decide how you want employees to assess themselves before developing the form. Rating scales let you quantify the data, but open-ended questions offer more details on how the employee feels.

Tips for giving feedback on self-reviews

When an employee reviews themselves, they should share how they feel about their role, what work they’re proud of and how they want to grow with the company. As a manager, providing feedback on these reviews is important since the employee is open and vulnerable with you about their performance and goals. Here are ways you can provide the best feedback to your employees:

Listen closely

During a self-review, an employee shares everything they’ve been working on and the goals they’ve reached. Start this conversation by letting them know you’re listening to everything they’re saying. By doing this, employees will feel more comfortable sharing how you can help them achieve their goals and what you can do to improve as their supervisor.

Keep a positive attitude

Part of a self-review may include reflections on how you can improve as a manager. Constructive feedback can help you better understand your team and know when you need to adjust your management style for certain employees. Maintain a positive attitude and be open to this feedback.

Give praise

Although you may know how great your employee is, praising their accomplishments as they share them during your review meeting shows you’re listening and that you’re proud of the work they’re doing. You don’t have to wait until it’s your turn to share the review you’ve prepared to let an employee know how valuable they are.

Discuss trends

If your company has used self-reviews before, you may have years of data from employees. Look for any trends that appear for a team member, such as an employee who has consistently mentioned that they want you to consider them for promotion. Incorporate these trends into your discussion of the review.

Ask how you can help

In their self-review, an employee may include what you can do as their manager to help them in their day-to-day tasks or to reach their work goals. If they don’t include this, ask them how you can help. Find out what you can do to make them happy and successful at work.

Set expectations for the next year

Employees who are passionate about their job often thrive from having expectations openly communicated during a review process. They want to know what to work toward and focus on between this time and the next performance evaluation. Base your expectations and new goals on what an employee has said during their self-review.

Related: How to Create a Performance Improvement Plan

Self-review FAQs

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about self-reviews:

What should you look for in employee self-evaluation comments?

Look for thoughtful, detailed answers to the questions on the self employee evaluation. Employees should provide specific examples as evidence of what they say about themselves. Compare what they say to what you see in their performance to look for honesty in the employee’s self-evaluation.

Does a self-review help with accountability?

Self-reviews ask employees to take ownership over evaluating their own performance. To complete the review honestly, they need to take accountability for what they’ve done over the previous evaluation period, whether positive or negative. Employee self-assessments encourage your employees to reflect on their performance, which might make them realize they need to take more responsibility or improve in certain areas.

How often should you conduct employee self-evaluations?

The timing of an employee self-evaluation varies based on your needs but should align with your normal employee review process. If you currently conduct those reviews quarterly, semiannually or annually, run your self-evaluation for employees on the same schedule. If you wait too long, you don’t know if the feedback you give your employee helps. However, if you conduct the evaluations monthly, it’ll likely be too time-consuming to manage properly.