Your assigned Assistant Director, Employee and Labor Relations is also available to assist you to prepare your conversations with staff about performance.
University Human Resources
Performance Resources for Managers
What is Required as a Manager?
- Have regular conversations throughout the year to review how well the employee is meeting performance expectations, or not, and review ways the outcome might have been enhanced.
- Complete an Annual Staff Performance Evaluation form for employees, including an assessment of the staff member’s accomplishment of goals and key responsibilities, new skills demonstrated during the year, and your assessment of the staff member’s mastery of the University’s core competencies.
- The core competencies are generally required of all Brown staff. When reviewing the core competencies as you prepare the evaluation, it’s helpful to include examples to support your assessment. Talk with your assigned Assistant Director, Employee and Labor Relations if you plan to assess an overall rating of “requires improvement” for any staff member. Evaluations with this rating require approval from University Human Resources in advance of submitting the evaluation to the employee, as well as a discussion with your Employee Relations representative to plan next steps to address performance issues.
Annual Evaluation Forms
Two versions of the Annual Staff Performance Evaluation form are available. Each form addresses all aspects of an employee’s performance, and should guide an open and honest conversation with your staff members about performance. You are required to use the same form for all ’similarly situated’ employees in you department, i.e., all staff at the same job grade, or all staff performing similar work, having the same job title or reporting to the same supervisor.
The Competency-Based form provides the opportunity to evaluate individual job skills and approaches to work, and comment on each. This approach to discussing performance may help clarify for staff members how their work compares to department standards, and identify specific areas where their contributions have met, exceeded, or not met standards.
The Narrative form provides the opportunity to review an individual’s performance more comprehensively, giving managers an opportunity to discuss performance on work projects and outcomes and referencing individual competencies without focusing on them individually.
Tips for Writing a Performance Evaluation
- Encourage and/or remind your employees to submit a self-appraisal. They should document positive occurrences such as completed projects, and developmental opportunities so that along with your observations, you will have a comprehensive look at the employee’s performance during the time period that your discussion covers.
- The employee should never hear about positive performance or performance in need of improvement for the first time at your formal performance discussion meeting, unless it is new information or insight. Effective managers discuss both positive performance and areas for improvement regularly, even daily or weekly. Aim to make the contents of the performance review discussion a re-emphasis of critical points.
- Avoid focusing on the most recent or memorable activities as the sole basis for the review. Recent events color your judgment of the employee’s performance. Instead, you are responsible to document positive occurrences such as completed projects, and negative occurrences such as a missed deadline, during the entire period of time that the performance review covers.
- Where appropriate, solicit feedback from colleagues who have worked closely with the employee. Start with informal discussions to obtain feedback information.
Tips For Performance Evaluation Discussion
Never go into a performance review without preparation. If you wing it, performance reviews fail. You will miss key opportunities for feedback and improvement and the employee will not feel encouraged about their successes.
In most cases, the discussion of the positive components of the employee’s performance should take up more time than that of the negative components. For your above average performing employees and your performing employees, positive feedback and discussion about how the employee can continue to grow their performance should comprise the majority of the discussion. The employee will find this rewarding and motivating.
Don’t neglect the areas that need improvement. Especially for an underperforming employee, speak directly and don’t mince words. If you are not direct, the employee will not understand the seriousness of the performance situation. Use examples from the whole time period covered by the performance review.
If your intention is genuinely to help the employee improve, and you have a positive relationship with the employee, the conversation is easier and more effective. The employee has to trust that you want to help them improve their performance. They need to hear you say that you have confidence in their ability to improve. This helps them believe that they have the ability and the support necessary to improve.
If you are doing all of the talking or the meeting becomes a lecture, the performance review is less effective. The employee will feel as if they were yelled at and treated unjustly. This is not how you want employees to feel as they leave their performance reviews.
You want an employee who is motivated and excited about his ability to continue to grow, develop, and contribute. Aim for performance review meetings in which the employee talks more than half of the time. You can encourage this conversation by asking questions such as these:
- What three things are you most proud of in your work?
- What are your three most challenging opportunities in your work?
- What do you need to overcome these opportunities from me or the department?
- What are you going to do to overcome these opportunities? (you should get a time commitment)
Performance Management Toolkit for Managers
This self-directed module provides tools, resources, tips, and best practices for preparing and communicating an effective performance evaluation with your team members.
Office Hours
If you are interested in scheduling a one-on-one consulting session with a member of the UHR Employee and Labor Relations office to ask questions about the performance appraisal process, including the training materials and resources, please email employeeandlaborrelations@brown.edu. A reply will be delivered within 24 hours of receipt.
Frequently Asked Questions
You will find Performance Partners listed on the roles tab, when you click into the Organization name on the Job Details in your profile.
Staff members will first see their own reviews in Workday once it has been approved by the Assistant Director of Employee and Labor Relations for your area. As their manager, you will simultaneously receive a Workday notification informing you that the evaluation has been approved and it is now visible to the employee for acknowledgement. After the staff member acknowledges the evaluation (with or without comments) and the review is finalized, you both are able to view the form in Workday on the Performance tab of the worker profile.
Staff who have completed the probationary period, but haven’t been employed for a full evaluation cycle, should still receive an annual performance evaluation; however, during the annual merit increase process, increases should be pro-rated to reflect the staff member’s limited employment period. Given their limited time in the department, staff who have not completed the probationary period should not receive an evaluation during the annual cycle. Employees hired between January 1st and April 1st and who are still in the probationary period, may be recommended to receive a pro-rated increase if their performance meets expectations.
When recommending a merit increase for a probationary employee, managers should enter “N/A” in the rating category of the merit increase spreadsheet. Approximately a month before the employee’s completion of the probationary period, managers will receive a probationary evaluation in their Workday inbox.
Annual performance evaluations will route to the manager of the primary position. Managers of the staff member’s additional position may be asked to provide feedback about performance to the primary position’s manager who can add this feedback to the review form.
For staff members who transferred into your department during the evaluational cycle, feedback from their prior manager should be incorporated, so that the annual evaluation reflects the staff member’s full year of work. The current manager will be responsible for determining the overall performance rating that best reflects the feedback provided.
Before you select the Submit button to route the evaluation to your Performance Partner, use the printer icon to generate a PDF version to share with your manager.
After approval by the Performance Partner, the evaluation is finalized and can’t be revised. To include agreed upon changes, the employee should acknowledge the form and write a comment to summarize the changes.