Need an Employee Evaluation Form?
We’ve got a free Annual Employee Review Form template for you that you can easily clone and customize.
Of course it’s set up for e-sign and paperless use, so this is also good for remote workers. e-Sign of the employee evaluation can be legally important to document receipt that the evaluation took place, and the review of positive, successful employees could be legally referenced as demonstration of consistency and support for dismissal in the event a fired employee took legal action. In short, if you need to terminate an employee, you’ll want to have a paper trail (paperless and auditable trail of events).
Potential Complications: Give some thought to these issues…
- Subjective & inconsistent evaluations. If you don’t have objective sales metrics (say, # of units sold, # of helpdesk tickets closed, average customer rating, etc – we can help you get all these, by the way), then one runs the risk of subjective ratings. Popular and charismatic employees may unfairly outrank introverted or less popular workers.
- Negative perception by workers that could have a detrimental effect on performance and motivation. Some workers are overly confident, others overly fearful. Steps such as gentle praise to the fearful, and careful corrective coaching to the overly confident may help steer perception in advance of formal reviews. Also, simply showing workers the review form in advance (easy, with our online system) can alleviate fears by de-mystifying the review process.
- Legal concerns if applied subjectively or unevenly. Employee performance reviews can help reduce legal risk to your company when used correctly, as a means to justify dismissal of grossly ineffective staff beyond the range of retraining. Performance reviews shared with workers without hard metrics for success could open the door to accusations of unfair treatment along the vector of a protected class such as race, gender, sexual preference, etc.
Note these are just a few issues – entire books have been written on performance reviews, and for more info we recommend the “further reading” at the bottom. Assuming you just want a great form, to apply it evenly and fairly and want it quickly customized to your business – here you go.
TIP: If you want this setup in minutes, you can instantly clone this employee evaluation form into your SwiftCloud account then modify as needed.
Just click on Templates >> HR and click the clone button. If you want to copy our form to use with old-school paper, you have our permission (see terms at the bottom – for your personal use, not re-publication on websites).
It also helps grow your company to have standardized systems. You or the owner will at some time want to sell it or retire and pass it to heirs or even staff, and having a consistent paper(less) trail is definitely best practices and smart business.
Employee review forms are also useful for benchmarking and keeping accurate records of your team. You can reference metrics in congratulating and rewarding key staff on important dates such as holidays, and refer to the forms when evaluating your training and onboarding systems.
You’ll want to customize this a bit based on your company culture, the metrics on which you judge that worker, and outcomes you’re seeking to drive for your business.
TIP: These forms can be adapted for peer review, 360 review from above and below, multiple managers – whoever matters.
Employee evaluation forms are used to formally review workers (and even vendors or contractors). They should generally contain:
- Employee Name, title or position, ID if applicable
- Simple, clear ratings tied to clear metrics if possible such as sales revenue, customer satisfaction score, number of weeks without incident, etc.
- Praise for what’s being done well (text) for most workers
- Adjustments for what can be done better moving forward (text)
Typical Ratings:
- Job Knowledge
- Work quality
- Attendance, Punctuality
- Initiative toward business outcomes
- Communication & reception to coaching
- Attitude and service excellence
TIP: More is not better. A focus on the few things that matter most.
Employee Review Styles
SwiftCloud is a complete paperless office system and can be used for any kind of docs – sales contracts, waivers, RFPs, job applications, legal docs, HR docs, you name it.
We have the following shortcodes which you can easily embed into any doc, and can use for both customer / client review forms as well as employee review forms.
NOTE: Below are just some of the rating styles – of course you can add any number of textboxes, long description boxes, etc.
Also you have a few settings – size, label, etc that are pretty self-explanatory.
Employee Review Rating – Slide Style
This shortcode will yield this…
How is the worker currently doing on this metric?
[swift_slider_range name="swift_slider_range" low="0" high="100" label="Current Score" labelsuffix="%" size="medium" required ]
Employee Review Rating – 0 to 10 Style Boxes
This shortcode will yield something like this…
[swift_rating_10 name="work_quality" label="Work Quality" required size="medium"]
Employee Review Rating – 1 to 5 Stars
[swift_rating_15 name="jobknowledgestars" required label="Job Knowledge Star Style"]
Employee Review Rating – Dropdown Style
[swift_dropdown name="ValuesVision" option_values="Cannot Comment, 1 Very Rarely, 2 Not Often, 3 Occasionally, 4 Often, 5 Almost Always or Always" required] Behaves in a matter with the company's mission, values, and vision
will give you a dropdown that looks like…
Employee Evaluation Best Practices
- When possible, it is best to focus on items within a worker’s control. For example, a sales professional can commit to
- KPIs, OKRs, KMMs… make the goal clear. Key Performance Indicators (Google’s internal system), Objectives & Key Results (Twitter’s label), Key Mission Metrics (our SwiftCloud internal system) are all ways to say the same thing: Have a crystal clear single most important goal for a worker to focus on. This might comprise multiple metrics into a single number, or have conditions. Examples might be (helpdesk support) tickets solved while keeping above 90% quality score, or (for marketing), total pipeline value (where some leads are worth $100 while others are only worth $10), or % of weeks without injury on a factory floor. Whatever you choose, when possible, it’s most helpful to have a single clear goal with ideally a real time dashboard.
This brings up a good point, which is that having clear metrics can give workers and staff a much faster insight into what’s working, and what’s not. Sales and executive coaching can make use of our “Temperature Taking & Coaching Form” on which we ask a coaching partner on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being best, how they feel about….
- Career & work matters – what happens at work specifically
- Personal finances & home life financial security. How their financial picture is outside of work, personal goals
- Personal & Spiritual – may include church, psychology – headspace
- Fitness, Physical State, Health.
- Family & Relationships.
TIP: Family & Relationships may include a rating by a spouse. If a husband thinks the marriage is a 9, but the wife thinks rates things as a 1, then the husband still has problems.
Once a number is chosen, the follow up question is:
Got that… what would it take to get you to a [X] (i.e. a 7 if they rate as a 5).
Whatever the person commits to must be actionable, measurable, and specific. “Losing weight” is not actionable; “getting my weight to 175 and body fat to 11%” is.
These concepts can be useful to gauge employee satisfaction and create a path toward greater personal achievement, which can definitely help retention and engagement.
Employee Evaluation Form FAQs:
When should I evaluate employees?
Annually is most common, though many companies also evaluate after a 90 day initial hire probationary period.
Are there any legal issues regarding employee evaluation forms?
The usual HR laws apply regarding discrimination, and even handed application of criteria.
Do I need employee evaluation forms?
Technically no, but practically yes, and legally it’s recommended.
What’s the difference between a performance review form and an employee evaluation form?
Semantics… which is to say, nothing. Whether you call it a job performance evaluation form or worker annual review form or success checkup or anything else is up to you.
How can using a worker evaluation form help grow my company or sell my company or retirement?
First, by creating repeatable, standardized processes you create an easier path toward merging of departments, which is common in business acquisition. As any company grows, more and more gets delegated, and having standard practices and forms helps with this.
Furthermore, employee evaluation forms can help as a growing company moves from generalist employees who have to be flexible and fill multiple roles to increasingly specialized. By rigorously identifying areas a given worker is successful at and likes doing, HR and leadership can get more insight into who to hire to complement this worker to balance the team, instead of hiring on gut instinct. For example if you have a worker who’s fast but less accurate, hiring another of the same may be less optimal than someone with greater attention to detail by nature, which might be slower but with fewer errors. Another example for sales teams is splitting of lead generation or “openers” vs. “closers” who are better at closing transactions, or complementing a sales ace who’s not great a paperwork.
NEXT STEP: Try SwiftCloud for $1 risk free and you can easily clone this and many other docs into your account from the free library of forms. Just click get started above and on the setup wizard click Templates >> HR to clone yourself a copy.
Disclaimer: We are not attorneys, and any advice herein is not a substitute for qualified legal counsel. Laws vary by jurisdiction, and we encourage you to be responsible and protect the legal interests of your business. Some forms in our templates library have been reviewed by licensed attorneys, however, they could be outdated, or inapplicable to your state or jurisdiction or individual situation, and we formally advise you to have any and all forms reviewed by independent legal counsel.
Further reading:
- Employee Evaluation Form Template
- Employee Coaching / Peer Coaching Form / Template
- Wikipedia Performance Appraisal entry, including potential complications