The 8 Best Employee Review Templates That Every Company Should Use

It is essential to conduct regular employee performance reviews with your team members to discuss their performance if you want to make sure that your company is on the right track.

However, employee performance review is not the only review type you can conduct with your people! There are so many different employee review templates available, and employee annual review template is just one of them. 

Reviews can be made in numerous different scenarios. For this article, we especially wanted to say “employee review” instead of “performance review” as we believe that there is more than employee performance in terms of the review process.

In this article, we will discuss the most highlighted employee review templates and review questions you can ask employees.  

How To Do An Employee Review?

Traditional employee reviews are made of typical and formal meetings that are held annually or twice a year.

They are the ones that you sit down with your employee and conduct a SWOT-like analysis by talking about their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities along with “hopefully” constructive feedback.  

Companies usually have one or two performance review templates that are filled out by each employee monthly or annually.

After the employees fill out these forms by making their own self-assessment, the manager also fills out this performance review template and the last part would be the signature of both sides.

While some companies are conducting this process within digital tools, some of them still prefer to use Word and Excel templates to manage the process.

In case you are one of those companies that use these templates in your performance review process, it might be useful to check our article about digital performance management. 

We strongly advise you to use online tools for your performance reviews. It is also important to make sure that this app that you are going to use is integrated with your company’s commonly used applications such as Gmail, Teams, and Slack.

In this way, the productivity of the review process will increase. In case your company uses Microsoft Teams, check out our article about performance appraisals in Microsoft Teams. 

The bad thing about the traditional employee review form is that they don’t support the continuous growth of employees as 3 months or a year is a very long period to conduct an employee review. Companies may notice the things that are going wrong after 2 or 3 months of time.

Also, some employees might require more frequent reviews than others but the traditional employee review system is coming from a “one size fits all” mentality that might fail some of the processes. 

Why Should We Have Different Employee Review Templates? 

Review templates are a great way to keep your company’s performance review process consistent, efficient, and effective.

They help you avoid the awkward conversations that can arise when you don’t have a structured approach to discussing employee performance.  

Having different employee evaluation examples to use in different situations will make everything go smoother.

Using the right template for the right occasion also helps you cover all the essential topics promptly, so your employees don’t feel like their review is being rushed or forgotten about.

You can stay organized when writing reviews, and save time by using employee review templates. These templates help you ensure consistency between reviews. 

You can choose from many employee review questions of Teamflect and automatically send them to your employees without a hassle.

Tracking and reviewing the answers to employee review templates is easier with the user-friendly interface of Teamflect.

If you are looking to conduct performance reviews inside Microsoft Teams, the best alternative for you is Teamflect!

Teamflect is an all-in-one performance management software that just so happens to come with the best employee review templates in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem.

Whether you are using one of Teamflect’s existing customizable employee review templates or creating your own employee review template, you will have the easiest time conducting and analyzing employee reviews.

Once you’ve picked your employee review template of choice, you can send the reviews out instantly or choose your own automation scenario and automate employee reviews at the interval of your choice.

Top 8 Employee Review Templates You Should Use

1. First 30-Day Employee Review Template

This is the template which is sent to the employees after their first month in the company. The first 30-day employee review template is quite important to make sure the new employee is well-onboarded.

It is important to get feedback from the new employees while they are still getting used to or adapting to the company.

If you think that there are different profiles among the newcomers, it makes sense to create different review templates so that you can make the most out of this review process. 

After the general questions, there must be some questions about the employee’s job and the people they work with. There might be some questions regarding the areas that could be improved.

The first 30-day employee review template can also be named as “onboarding review template”. Asking questions about the onboarding experience, in general, can also help you redesign your onboarding experience/processes for your newcomers. 

2. First 90-Day Employee Review Template

First 90-day employee review template is also critical and should definitely be used by companies. After the first 90 days in the company, your employee will be in a much different position/situation compared to their first 30 days.

In First 90-day review templates, it would be better to request a comparison of the first 30-day and first 90-day to see if their expectations have changed, to ask if they are happy with their position and to understand the growth areas in the future.

You can also ask the employee to request Peer Feedback as part of the First 90-day employee review template if you would like to get feedback from the team members that s/he is working with.

3. Company Exit Employee Review Template 

Usually, employee exit review template isn’t considered as important as the other templates. However, this review is quite important for company growth and to protect the human capital.

Companies usually see the employees who are about to leave their company as a loss, but they can still make use of these departures by getting employee feedback. 

If you can’t point out the reason people left your company, you might lose other employees in the future.

The employees who are about to leave the company may give more honest feedback as they don’t have anything to lose.

In these reviews, you can ask about their expectations, try to learn about their thoughts about job satisfaction, salary expectation, company culture, etc.

You may also ask their opinions about which how your company can be improved, their favorite tasks, their less-preferred tasks, etc. If you want some more advice on exit interviews, check out our article!  

4. Employee Review With 360-Degree Feedback Template

Unlike traditional performance reviews that involve only the employee and their supervisor, our employee review with 360-degree feedback template, incorporates feedback from supervisors, co-workers, and direct reports.

The conventional performance review process often limits the feedback loop to a two-person dynamic. Our 360-degree feedback template is an invaluable tool to eliminate this limitation.

In contrast to the standard review, the 360-degree approach opens up a dialogue that involves a diverse range of employees. This can provide a more accurate assessment of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses.

Furthermore, it creates opportunities for relationship-building between managers and direct reports.

By using this template, you can proactively identify areas that need improvement, nurture your employees’ strengths, and create a more comprehensive performance review process.

5. Manager Review Template

The most important figure that affects the commitment of an employee to the company is the management of the company.

Sometimes people leave their jobs because they are not satisfied with their manager, while an exceptionally good manager may make the employees stay in the company for many years.

For this reason, if qualified employees would like to be retained in the company, it is necessary to make sure that their managers are effective, care about the employees, and strive for their career development to solve their problems.

If this is not the situation, it would become quite easy for the employee to leave the company. 

Usually, employees are afraid to give feedback about during manager reviews because they think that they will break up when they hear this, so, if possible, reviews about the manager should be done anonymously (which is exceedingly difficult in teams that contain 3-4 people as the manager can guess the feedback providers) or in a way that the manager will never see.

In manager review templates, questions such as whether the manager helps with career development, whether s/he is supportive in solving the employee’s problems, if they are satisfied with their manager’s qualifications, how the manager treats their team, etc. can be asked. 

6. Project Closure Employee Review Template

Employees work on various projects throughout the year. These projects have an important place in determining the overall success of companies.

Although the teams vary according to the projects worked on, they consist of people in the same department.

In some cases, there may be people working with each other for the first time, and sometimes people who have worked together many times can be involved in the same project.

If employees are working with each other for the first time, the process of getting used to and having a good relationship with each other can be slow, and there may even be employees who don’t get along at all. 

Thanks to the project completion review, which can be carried out at the end of the projects or near the end of the project; you may ask employees in the team about the division of labor, their thoughts about the project, their thoughts about the teammates and their feedback about the project will play a significant role in the process of measuring the success of the project.

You can understand which employees can work more efficiently together in future projects, so keeping these people in the same team as much as possible in projects can be a point that can increase the success of the project. 

7. Employee Goal Review Template

Companies assign goals or tasks during the year, and it is important to track the progress of these goals regularly to make sure everyone is on the right track. Some companies prefer to assign goals or tasks from top to bottom.

Especially in those cases, it is much better and easier to track your goals and their progress within a digital tool like Teamflect. Teamflect offers effective solutions and features to provide you with an easy-to-use tool with an integration of Microsoft Teams.

If your company uses Teams, you can try Teamflect to move your business to the next level. 

Whether employees succeed or not, it is critical to collect feedback about their progress, their strengths and weaknesses during the project timeline, and their thoughts about the assigned goals (if they find it accessible or not).

With this way, managers can assign the goals more accurately when they know their employee’s capabilities and qualifications; and assigning these goals to the right person would directly affect the success of the project. 

Employee review templates should be suitable for both the manager and the employee to share their thoughts and the points for the process.

As for the structure, it doesn’t have to contain peer feedback or self-development parts in these reviews. Sometimes companies include employee’s goals in the annual or quarterly performance reviews, and they ask the thoughts and comments of the employee and the manager. 

8. Annual Employee Review Template

When it comes to annual performance reviews, it’s important to remember that the purpose of these evaluations is to help both employees and their managers improve the workplace.

The feedback provided by an employee’s manager can be used as a guide for future performance.  

Annual performance reviews are conducted once a year and give insight into the yearly performance of the employee.

If you are an employee, the annual performance review is a chance for you to receive feedback from your manager about your work and to set goals for the next year.

If you are a manager, it’s important that you provide specific feedback so that employees know how they can improve their performance in the future. 

Conclusion

Incorporating diverse employee review templates into your performance management process will improve the efficiency of your performance evaluations.

The employee review templates we provide, address varying aspects of the employee experience, including onboarding, project collaboration and, managerial effectiveness.

The flexibility provided by these employee review templates ensures that the review process aligns with the unique needs of both the employee and the organization.

Furthermore, incorporating different employee review templates such as 30 day review template and employee annual review template will help avoid the limitations of the traditional “one size fits all” approach.

When you use a different set of employee review templates you can create a more organized and insightful performance review process that benefits both employees and the organization as a whole.

The best way to use a employee reviews template is to simply give Teamflect a try! Better yet, why not have one of our incredible team members help you demo the best performance review software for Microsoft Teams?