Performance reviews and employee evaluations are important tools for business growth, employee motivation, and talent retention. In this article, we’ll show you how to build a performance management system that is smooth, transparent, and easily accessible by Connecteam users. With the tools we offer, this process encourages open communication between managers and employees and seamlessly ties in record-keeping for HR requirements.
🏗️ Step 1: Create the form
The first thing you want to do is create your form. Lucky for you, we offer an ‘Employee Evaluation Form’ template that’ll make your life easier and save you tons of time! You can use the template as it is, or you can customize it to fit your company’s needs.
⚙️ Step 2: Customize the form’s settings
The beauty of this form is found in the use of Share Options and Manager Fields. Once a manager submits the performance evaluation they can ensure the entry gets to the right people, and then further action can be taken with the use of Manager Fields.
With the use of Share Options, have the evaluation sent to the employee and other relevant personnel, such as the HR department or upper management. If the employee is doing poorly and their performance review needs to be read by the head of the department, this is a great tool to immediately notify the relevant stakeholders.
To share the form with your employee, go to the form's Settings and navigate to the Share Options tab. Select the option "Entry will be shared according to user's selection from a list" and add the employee to the list. To prepare ahead of time for all of your employees' evaluations, add all your employees at once to the list to choose from.
If every entry needs to get shared automatically with other personnel, such as the HR department or upper management, select the option "Share every entry automatically with the following [specific users]". Both share options can be used simultaneously.
Using Manager Fields, create fields for further action to loop in the evaluated employee and other relevant departments. To do so, go to the form's Settings and navigate to the Manager fields tab. For example:
Create a signature field for the employee to sign that they have read their evaluation.
Create a text field for the employee to comment on the evaluation.
Create a person manager field to tag and notify the HR specialist.
Create a status field for the HR department to ensure the form is added as a record to the employee’s personal file. The HR specialist can first mark it as 'Working on it' and when they have completed the task they can change it to 'Done'.
Remember to restrict the HR columns so that only specific users can edit these columns:
The complete process would look as follows: The manager fills out the evaluation and shares it with the employee. The employee goes through the evaluation and adds their signature acknowledging they read it, and adds any comments if they see fit. The manager then tags the HR specialist to notify them that the evaluation has been completed. Now the HR specialist who was tagged needs to file the evaluation in the employee's personal file. Once the task is completed, they change the task status to 'Done'. Take a look below at the manager fields we created and how the complete process looks.
📣 Step 3: Publish the form and share it with your team
Now that you’ve published the form, you want to make sure your fellow managers are aware it exists so that they know to start using it. You can do this using Updates or in a Team Chat - create the message and add the form as a shortcut. Make sure you’re sharing it only with select users or with a Managers' smart group so that your employees can't access it!
✍️ Step 4: Fill out and submit the form
Fill out the form either from the mobile app or from the user view if you’re on the admin dashboard. Upon submitting the form, share it with your employee. The employee can access the form by going into the 'Shared with you' folder in their Profile tab and can react to the evaluation. You can also tag the HR specialist, they'll get notified and then can proceed to file the form entry in the employee's personal file.
While this guide demonstrates how managers can evaluate employees, the same can be done for employees to evaluate themselves before a periodic review. Create a form for the employee to fill out, and set it up to have it shared automatically with their direct manager. During the meeting, the manager and employee can look over the entry together and, with the user of manager fields, the manager can add comments and mark the meeting as completed.
💻 Step 5: Review the evaluations
Once you have done your part, check if the others have done theirs. Go to the Form Entries page to view the form and the manager field columns to check if your employee has acknowledged the evaluation and if the HR department has completed their tasks.
To collect more information, go to the form’s summary page to view insights and statistics. This page can give you a good indication of your team’s overall performance, for example by checking how managers rated their performance on a scale of 1 to 5 stars or if there are trends in the comments, such as noticeable gaps in professional knowledge that may indicate your employees need to get trained on a certain topic.
💡 Tip: Filter by the employee name, department name, or other form fields or user profile fields to narrow in on exactly the insights you need.
🗓️ Step 6: Create a reminder to fill out future performance reviews
Create a task for you and your management staff called ‘Fill Out Employee Performance Review’ using recurring Quick Tasks. You can set up the task to repeat on a monthly, quarterly, semi-yearly, or yearly basis. This way, not only are you reminded to fill it out, you’ll get it submitted on time.
Summary
In this article, we covered how to create a performance management process from start to finish, in a way that loops in the employee and relevant stakeholders. This process ensures everyone is aware and involved, all while using Connecteam as an all-in-one solution.
✳️ The purpose of this article is to boost your creativity on what can be done using Connecteam as an all-in-one solution. It is important for us to say that depending on your company size, event complexity, and more, not every step may be relevant to you.
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