Performance Review Questions to Ask Employees

20 Performance Questions You Need To Be Asking

A performance review is one of the most important times for both managers and employees, its key in helping employees improve themselves and for managers to see what they can do to help them achieve their goals.

Oftentimes Managers tend to have a template for this purpose but it could be doing more harm than good, instead they should be focusing on the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. A well rounded team should be able to bolster each other’s strengths and cover their weaknesses.

Here at Vitay we help process nearly 50,000 candidate experiences and have found a few questions that could be of help :

Starting off the conversation

Review times could be stressful, we suggest managers start with some personalised questions that can help set the pace for the meeting. Use their feedback to make the appropriate inquiries.

1. Is there anything you want to talk about before we start? 
2. What are some concerns you’d like to address in this review? 
3. Do you feel like your personal goals align with the company’s? If not, why?
4. How do you like to get feedback? Are there things we can do to improve that process?

Questions for their current role:

1. What do you like about your current role and what would you like to change to make it better?
2. What tasks do you enjoy the most? 
3. What are some things you enjoy about working at this company?
4. How do you feel you contribute to the company with your current role?

These questions are designed to understand what an employee likes or dislikes about thier current job and gives managers valuable feedback on things that they can change or improve. Anything from assigning them to different tasks that they would be better suited to learning about shortcomings in their roles.

Questions for the next quarter:

Once you have understood how they are coping with their current role, you should be looking into how you can understand what they will be doing in the next quarter. 

1. What professional growth opportunities would you like to explore in order to get there?
2. What are your most important goals for the next quarter?
3. What type of career growth is most important to you?
4. What do you want your next position at this company to be? How would your responsibilities change?

Questions to assess the quality of work

Having an honest talk about deadlines and deliverables often helps you see things that could be holding people back. It might be simple as they don’t know who to ask for help or might just not know they could be reaching out when they are stuck .

1. What goals/deliverables were you least proud of? Why? How will you do those differently in the future?
2. What 2-3 things will you focus on in the next quarter to help you grow and develop?
3. What can I do to help you better meet your goals?
4. If you get stuck on a deliverable, how do you handle that? 

Closing questions

Once you’ve had a good understanding of their performance its always good to close the review with some encouragement, ensure you praise their achievements and help them understand how they can deal with their shortcomings. 

1. Rate the following in order of importance to you: recognition, additional responsibility, lead your own team, and networking.
2. What would you do differently if you were a manager?
3. What are a few things I can do better to manage you better?
4. We found out that _____ was something you should be focusing on, let me know if you need any help in helping you improve.