A performance review is a key of 360 degree feedback systems and can be the difference between a happy employee and one who is just going through the motions.
Think of peer review as a thermometer that measures employees' performance, skills, abilities, or attitudes by their fellow co-workers.
This blog post will look at how peer reviews can make your employees better, best practices for conducting performance reviews, along with some examples and useful phrases to make your next peer review more effective.
❓ What Are Peer Review Feedback Examples?
Peer review feedback is part of an employee's development and performance process and an essential component of 360 feedback.
A peer review at work is when co-workers evaluate each other's performance. Managers create peer review forms that allow everyone to grade peers anonymously. Usually, this helps people give honest opinions about their co-workers in the office.
Peer reviews analyze co-workers' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and improvements – using skill evaluation to measure metrics such as employees' communication skills, interpersonal skills, alignment with company culture, attitude towards learning feedback, and openness to feedback culture.
Also, it is worth mentioning that the success of the best peer review examples relies heavily on their effectiveness and reception (being well-received and openness to feedback).
📈 How Can Feedback From Peers Improve Performance At Work?
A peer review is a simple yet effective method for getting honest feedback from co-workers.
Peer reviews:
- give insights into your strengths,
- help you understand your weaknesses, and
- create growth plans.
For example, a remote co-worker could mention an employee's constant sighing on calls or meetings and how it dampens their morale. This opens your eyes to certain undesirable habits or tendencies you have at the workplace, provides solutions to improve, and encourages you to continue with the fantastic behaviors you have.
It's essential to get it right when conducting performance reviews. It's one of the keys to unlocking high employee engagement.
Peer reviews help an organization in the following ways:
- 🎯 Can be used as a goal-setting opportunity.
- 🔎 Helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual employees, teams, and the company as a whole.
- 🌱 Helps employees and team members develop personally and professionally.
- 📈 Gives feedback to employees on their current performance and offers solutions on how they can work to meet the company's expectations and contribute to its growth.
With this in mind, we'll share 20 of the most useful performance review phrases you can use during your next round of employee reviews.
- "You are always suggesting new ideas in meetings and during projects. Well done!"
- "You constantly show initiative by developing new ways of thinking to improve projects and overall company success."
- "You effectively communicate with colleagues, customers, vendors, supervisors, and partners."
- "I admire how you uphold organizational standards for inclusion, diversity, and ethics."
- "I appreciate how you remain calm under pressure and greet customers with a smile."
- "You are an excellent communicator, and you are adept at discussing difficult issues effectively and straight to the point."
- "You show great leadership signs by owning up to mistakes and errors, fixing them, and communicating with others (quickly) when you're unable to meet a deadline."
- "Your copy-editing skills are excellent. You always ensure that all articles published by the content marketing team are thoroughly edited and proofed, which is very important here at (COMPANY).
- "You've improved XX by XYZ%, and you've streamlined the work process by doing XYZ."
- "You are constantly open to learning and ask for more training when you don't understand XYZ processes."
- "You accept coaching when things aren't clear and apply what you learned to improve XYZ ability."
- "You're an effective team player, as demonstrated by your willingness to help out and contribute as required."
- "You know how to collaborate with your team and cross-functionally to find solutions to problems."
- "I can always count on you to give our customers the best customer experience, and I appreciate the way you go over and beyond for them."
- "I appreciate that you never make your team members feel belittled even when they ask the simplest questions. You're always willing to help, and you're exceptional at mentoring when people need advice."
All of the above are best peer review examples. But, what happens when you want to give negative performance reviews? If handled rightly, negative peer reviews can improve an employee's performance.
Some examples of effective negative performance review phrases to use include:
- "You seem to focus more on what can't be done instead of offering solutions. I would like to see you develop an open mindset and work alongside your teammates on brainstorming solutions."
- "I noticed you have a hard time communicating effectively with your co-workers and maintaining a professional relationship. Let's discuss more about your personality and how we can work to help you communicate with the team in your unique way?"
- "You seem to be quiet during team meetings and hardly contribute. Is something going on? Maybe we can figure out solutions for whatever you're facing and come up with solutions on how it could be better handled in the future?"
- "I noticed you aren't meeting your targets. Let's get on a call in two days to go over your cold email strategy."
- "I noticed you didn't meet deadlines for the last two months. Let's hop on a call on how your team members and I can assist you."
📝 How Do You Write A Peer Review?
The following steps would help you learn how to write a peer review for your co-workers:
1. Think about their work
Before writing your peer review, think about your colleagues' contribution to the workplace. Then, to get you started, ask yourself the following questions?
- What are their strengths?
- What are their weaknesses?
- How can they improve?
- What are their latest accomplishments?
- What do I like or appreciate about them?
- What do I wish they did less?
- What do I want them to do more?
- What's their contribution to the team?
2. Be mindful of your colleague's feelings
While it's okay to give constructive feedback and share your honest thoughts on a peer review, you should communicate your opinions professionally without being rude or insulting. Also, instead of constantly reiterating their weaknesses, let their strengths shine and think of solutions that could motivate them to do better. Giving condescending opinions about a co-worker on a peer review is a No-no.
3. Explain in detail
While your goal, when given a peer review form, is to focus solely on a particular area of your co-worker's performance, it won't help them in the long run. For example, don't mention a specific project they worked on. Instead, discuss how they operate daily and their attitudes to work. Do they have excellent communication skills? Are they great at communicating with people? How do they approach brainstorming sessions or when asked to handle complex tasks?
A comprehensive review helps your manager identify their areas of improvement and helps your colleague understand how others view their overall performance at work.
4. Write clearly
Summarize what you've noticed about your co-worker's performance. Mention areas of improvement you've noticed and highlight areas you hope you see their work on in the future. Don't beat around the bush with your answers during peer reviews. Ensure your answers are clear, concise, and easy to understand.
🚫 The Dos and Don'ts of Giving Constructive Peer Review Feedback
Dos of Giving Constructive Peer Review Feedback
Peer reviews are an easy and efficient way to ensure that you're staying in a job you enjoy, improving your work quality, and keeping up-to-date with emerging skill sets. They can also give insights into employees' skills, morale, personality, and productivity. Here are some best practices for conducting effective peer reviews in the workplace:
Peer reviews are premised on complete anonymity; hence, the reviewer must be guaranteed such. Doing this eradicates the chances of retaliatory actions from the employee being reviewed. Plus, it gives the reviewer the confidence to provide honest opinions.
Teach your employees to recognize its importance. If a performance review is new to an organization, position it as a vital employee development tool to boost employee engagement and motivation. Rather than positioning it as a monitoring tool, help your people see it as an opportunity to recognize their skills, qualities, and achievements.
Brainstorm with them on how to be the best at their jobs. Don't forget to celebrate the launch as well!
Choose the "peers" wisely. To ensure getting quality feedback from your employees, establish certain guidelines such as qualifications or requirements from the reviewer. For example, a reasonable requirement may be to evaluate if the reviewer has any direct experience with the peer being interviewed, thereby giving them a valid reason to participate and providing quality and honest feedback.
For example, a sales representative might not be an excellent fit for a performance appraisal of an employer branding specialist's skills or attitude towards company culture.
If you're using Zavvy, you can either have reviewees choose their peers themselves - or have managers do it for them.
Create peer review forms that are relevant to the department or job. For example, peer review forms for sales representatives, customer support specialists, or receptionists should focus on soft skills. In contrast, a Cybersecurity engineer or software developer might focus on technical skills. Don't forget to leave blank spaces on your peer review forms to allow the reviewers to add important yet overlooked topics.
This means that you'll need some kind of sheet that outlines your peer's competencies.
Empower managers to track results and take action. Use tools that allow employees and managers to give and receive feedback without stress. Additionally, empowering managers to monitor results gives them the latest insights into employee performance and motivation; and allows them to implement changes where necessary.
Get buy-in from all stakeholders. The peer review process in the workplace is bigger than the employees and their fellow co-workers. It affects the entire organization. Managers and the company's leadership must embrace this system and be the first users and advocates for peer reviews. Also, ensure that all employees feel 100% empowered to participate in peer review feedback irrespective of their levels or positions.
Communicate your expectations. Reiterate that you want honest appraisals that are fair and completely unbiased. Remind them to take their time and evaluate each question carefully before answering them.
Convert it into a coaching session. Employees shouldn't be judged based on what's written about them. Rather than interrogating your colleagues, managers should act as coaches and discuss issues highlighted conversationally.
Create a balance between highlighting your colleague's strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement.
Don'ts of Giving Constructive Peer Review Feedback
DO NOT make peer reviews a basis for rewards or promotions, and ensure employees communicate this. For example, suppose employees feel that their promotion or pay raises are dependent on peer review feedback. In that case, they might spend more time cultivating (unauthentic) relationships rather than doing their jobs.
DO NOT use condescending language when evaluating your colleague's performance. For example, don't use words like, "I don't believe my colleague can function effectively in this job," or "Irrespective of what others have said, I find his attitude to work unconvincing." Peer reviews are an evaluation tool and not an emotional tool for expressing misgivings.
As mentioned above, DO NOT make it personal. Try to avoid using "I" such as "I don't like..." or "I'm not comfortable with..." when giving constructive feedback. Tie your comments to the goal of the peer review and not your personal references.
DO NOT critique every tiny detail about your colleague's performance. For example, a colleague's approach to handling a difficult task may be to take some time away from everyone or work and come up with answers than yours. Understand and appreciate that everyone has different working styles, and it makes up their personalities and who they are.
DO NOT discuss your peer review feedback with other colleagues. It's like breaking a sacred trust. Since peer reviews are hinged upon anonymity, respect your colleague's confidentiality and allow your manager to handle the issues mentioned in your feedback.
Employee Peer Review Templates For Annual Performance Reviews
While there are different ways to create a peer review template, we recommend using Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Not only are they easier to use, but they are free too. With these two online document creation tools, you can say goodbye to purchasing expensive peer review templates or downloading special software.
📜 A Template You Can Use
Here is our free Google Forms template you can give colleagues to send each other meaningful feedback.
- 🌱 Make it as easy as possible for people to give each other meaningful feedback
- 🧩 It's 100% customizable so you can truly make it your own
➡️ Get your free peer review feedback form here
💻 How to Give Peer Review Feedback to Remote Teams
Research shows that employees working from home deal with the fear of missing out; hence, leading to constant feelings of isolation and loneliness. Based on this, there's a massive chance that remote employees aren't "seen" by their managers even if they are great at their jobs.
Therefore, managers must be intentional about frequently checking in with their remote workers, giving employee feedback in remote teams, and publicly recognizing their contributions. Failing to give timely and effective employee feedback or a total lack of one can lead to poor performance and an increase in disengaged employees.
How do you give peer review feedback in remote teams?
DO:
Be clear. Communicate the purpose of your peer review feedback with your remote team and highlight specific examples of their areas of improvement, the changes noticed, strategies mapped for improving, and resources to help.
Be prompt. Establishing and communicating timelines for performance reviews is essential. Remote managers and leaders must share feedback with their team members as soon as possible. For example, if you can't catch your team member immediately due to time differences or work schedule, send them a message via email or Slack and mention that you'd like to schedule a time soon to discuss feedback with them.
Choose your employee feedback method wisely. It's okay to share positive feedback with the entire team via Slack, Microsoft Teams, or other communication channels your team uses. However, we recommend using a one-on-one video call for sharing negative feedback.
Set goals. If the peer review feedback with your remote team is positive, consider documenting the steps to encourage more good behaviors at work and serve as a reference. For negative feedback, create a detailed strategy for fixing the issues or improving for the future.
Have an open mindset. Suppose you're managing a team of in-office, hybrid, and remote employers. In that case, there's the likelihood of leaning more towards helping and frequently communicating with your in-office employees because you can see them. This is where to check for any biases you might unconsciously have against your remote teams. Ensure you're frequently delivering feedback to your remote employees, irrespective of role or location.
Be empathetic but professional. The foremost thing to always remember is that your employers are human. Therefore, try to uncover any non-professional variables contributing to their decline in work. For example, you might be surprised to discover that a new remote employee is struggling because they aren't fully integrated with your company's culture and remote processes.
Show empathy, especially when COVID has made workers adjust to the latest working conditions or with parents juggling between work, taking care of their kids (who are also at home), and parenthood in general. Finally, if your remote employee declines to share personal information with you, do not badger them. Instead, respect their wishes and boundaries.
When giving peer review feedback to remote teams,
DO NOT:
Be judgmental. Be open-minded and discuss with them to uncover personal markers that might be affecting their work performance. As mentioned above, employees are human first. There might be certain factors leading to disengagement or poor work performance that managers might not know.
Turn it into a contest. Peer review feedback isn't boasting about being right or winning. Its essence is to uncover and fix underlying issues that might hinder a team's and the company's overall growth and reinforce the importance of favorable work behaviors.
Speak only. Encourage your remote team members to ask questions, share feedback about what is being discussed, and brainstorm alongside them on action plans for improvement for the future. Be vulnerable with them; show them that it's okay to slip once in a while and provide a safe forum for them to speak and be heard.
Insult an employee or have a tense conversation via asynchronous communication. If you feel that an employee doesn't understand your feedback, schedule a 1:1 video call to clear any conflict or misunderstandings.
👍 Advantages of Feedback Culture and Workplace Peer Review
Managers can use peer reviews to measure the strengths and weaknesses of the employees they manage. It gives them a complete picture of the employee being reviewed, thereby developing a learning and development program that includes the specific skills that each employee needs to improve.
Peer reviews are also an excellent way for managers and organizations to discover hidden talents that would have been missed in a traditional performance appraisal process. You can use the insights from employee feedback to build teams, create a competency model, craft a succession plan, or even influence job decisions.
Finally, when done rightly, peer appraisals and feedback encourage a culture of feedback and recognition; and boost collaboration amongst teams.
👎 Disadvantages of Feedback Culture and Workplace Peer Review
Employees, irrespective of their work locations, are prone to forming cliques at work. As such, there's a high chance of leaving biased peer reviews about the employees they consider as friends. Introverted team members might also be concerned that peer review feedback may favour famous employees than those who aren't but competent.
Additionally, employees might also worry about receiving demoralizing feedback from colleagues who hold a grudge against them. This can eventually lead to total disconnection from work and negatively impact their mental health.
📊 What Should You Do With Your Peer Review Results?
To ensure you get the best results, address any flaws in your peer review system and establish a foundation for continuous feedback. The following strategies should be implemented after collating your peer review results.
Implement performance development plans
Performance improvement plans (PIPs) keep employees accountable and help identify performance issues. They also include goals to improve or boost an employee's performance, with deadlines for implementation.
During performance reviews, the evaluated skills depend on a competency model (at Zavvy, we call them 'Role cards'), and the development plans created by managers are also the result of this comparison between needed skills (competency model) and actual skills (evaluated).
Providing your employees with SMART goals (which should be included in your skills matrix) gives them a clear idea of what needs to be done.
Plus, set timelines help them achieve the change they want without feeling that any tasks are beyond reach or too difficult to accomplish. Meanwhile, regular meetings with their manager to discuss progress give managers an easy way to keep things moving smoothly.
Implement learning and development programs
It's one thing to ask for peer review feedback, and it's a different ballgame to offer the proper support. Don't leave your employees wondering what comes next. Instead, roll out learning and development programs to improve their skills and put them on the right career path.
Make learning accessible for everyone and work with employees to determine the best learning strategy for them by creating a one-size-fits-one learning and development strategy that aligns with their unique learning styles — all of which contribute to your company's overall growth and build a strong learning culture.
Encourage managers to schedule 1:1 feedback with employees
A Gallup study revealed that employees are five times more likely to strongly agree that feedback was meaningful and three times more likely to strongly agree that they're motivated to do great work when managers provide weekly feedback (compared to annual performance reviews).
To inspire employees to give their all, encourage your managers to schedule a one-on-one follow-up with their direct reports after completing the performance review to address any questions or concerns employees might have. Keep in mind that the major takeaway here is to conduct these feedback sessions regularly instead of waiting for annual performance reviews.
🔄 How to Implement a Strong Feedback Culture
If you haven't implemented a culture of feedback yet, there are some simple steps to get you on the track to create one. A great way to start is to create a safe space for people to give and receive feedback. Neurologist and educator Judy Willis emphasizes how positive emotions are the key to employee performance and reiterates the need for leaders to foster them to ensure employees learn from feedback.
To create safety and trust, managers
should encourage their team members to get to know each other as colleagues and individuals. Luckily, Zavvy's connection program strengthens team bonds by automatically connecting colleagues for casual meetups, meaningful conversations, or walking meetings.
Also, allowing employees to talk about their emotions contributes to great work culture and allows all stakeholders to handle feedback, including difficult ones.
If you are trying to foster a strong feedback culture, ensure you provide the proper feedback tools to facilitate this process easily. Providing the resources for your team members to give each other constructive criticism and receiving feedback is integral to fostering a stronger relationship between colleagues. Moreover, using the right technology involves integrating giving and receiving with your daily operations.
Use tools that make it easy for your employees to give and request feedback.
Finally, giving and receiving feedback must be learned and constantly practiced to support a strong feedback culture. Provide feedback training and resources for your employees and managers via annual workshops or learning and development programs to ensure your employees are aligned when giving feedback.
➡️ Takeaway:
When implemented and done right, peer reviews can offer insights that you might never have otherwise discovered and increase an employees' performance. However, it's important to note that peer reviews are a supplementary employee guidance system, and feedback shouldn't replace existing performance reviews.
Want to ensure a cycle of continuous development and grow your people?
➡️ Check out Zavvy's 360 feedback tool, with features that allow you to establish, configure, plan, engage and track your development framework. Or schedule a personalized demo today.