This document provides information and guidance about writing performance appraisals, specifically for underperforming employees. It discusses being honest but balanced in feedback, focusing on both strengths and weaknesses, and creating an improvement plan. The key points are to sandwich negative comments, explain problem areas and set clear goals for improvement over a set period. Several methods for performance appraisal are also outlined, including ranking, rating scales, checklists and critical incidents. The overall message is that with an honest review and improvement plan, an underperforming employee can become high performing.

1. Performance appraisal sample comments
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I. Contents of getting performance appraisal sample comments
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Frank stared through me at the blank whiteboard behind me in the conference room as I
delivered the performance review. I could tell he wasn’t engaged with what I was saying and
didn’t really comprehend my comments. He kept insisting that I was mistaken, that his
performance was better than his co-workers, and that I just didn’t know what I was talking about.
Writing and delivering an employee performance evaluation for an under-performer is a difficult
task for any manager. The key to writing any performance review is to be honest and provide
balance in your comments, striving to focus on areas of strength and improvement. A low
performance employee may not understand where they are lacking or understand how to
improve. In the performance review process, it’s important to explain specifically the problem
areas and put together a plan to address these concerns.
Be Honest & Candid With Your Feedback
First, be honest and candid with your feedback – but not to the point that your feedback feels like
it is “piling on” or that it appears you have a personal problem with the employee. The purpose
of the performance review is to evaluate several areas of the employee and being very honest,
open, and candid with the employee is the best way to handle it. When I have an under-
performer on my team, I always let my boss or a neutral third party read the performance
evaluation to ensure I am saying things the right way.

2. Sandwich your negative comments so the employee doesn’t feel crushed by the weight of a
negative review. For example, here’s one way to identify a problem with an employee showing
up late to work:
Jack is consistently late to work. He has a problem showing up on time and when he does
arrive, he takes 30 minutes getting coffee and talking to his co-workers before getting to his desk
to work. Jack must improve his attendance or disciplinary action will be taken.
For Jack’s attendance problem, the review comment might look like this:
When Jack is engaged in his work, he can be a very effective member of our team.
Unfortunately, there is too often a time when Jack is late to work and not fully engaged until an
hour into the workday. Over the next 3 months, we’d like Jack to focus on his attendance, be on
time each day and ready to work at 8:00, and be the effective team member we require.
As you can see, we make a positive comment about Jack being an effective member of the team.
We discuss what the problem is – Jack is often late and then when he gets here, he doesn’t start
work until an hour into the workday. Finally, we address what Jack needs to do to comply with
the rules.
Sandwiching your comments provides the employee the model of what they should be doing,
what they’re doing wrong, and how to improve his performance.
Focus on Areas of Strength and Weakness
Each employee has areas of strengths and weaknesses. If the employee has no strengths, the
annual performance time is not the time to bring this to light – he should be let go for both of
your sakes before the annual review. In the annual performance evaluation, you are provided an
opportunity to review the strengths and weaknesses the employee has to offer. If you don’t focus
on both of these areas, you’re short changing an opportunity for your employee.
It’s a fad in management techniques to try to improve your employee’s weaknesses to match
their strengths, but in actual practice, who can be that perfect? If you’re the type of person that
hates numbers, focusing too much energy on an employee’s weakness in the area of accounting
is probably a mistake – unless the employee is an accountant! As a manager, you want to help an
employee work on their areas of weakness to improve those to the range of ‘functional’ while
building up their strengths to the level of ‘excellence.’ Do not get these two mixed up!
When you put together a plan for improvement, spend your energy on helping the employee
reach excellence with their strengths and improve their weaknesses to a level where they aren’t a
detriment to your team.

3. Craft an Improvement Plan for the Under Performing Employee
It’s too often that I consult with a team where the manager has an under performing team but no
plan for improvement. Usually, she has a bunch of excuses for why her team isn’t producing, but
doesn’t see the problem is with her. Almost all of the high performing teams I work with are not
a team of ivy league MBAs, but instead a group of imperfect humans who understand that they
are not perfect, compensate for each others’ weaknesses, and capitalize on the strengths of the
team. In the performance review, you will identify a number of areas that the employee is weak
in, a number of areas they are strong in, and finally, help the employee create a plan for
improvement – for both the strengths and the weaknesses.
The employee must be involved with the planning process to achieve the most potential. If the
employee has buy-in – feels ownership of the plan – she will work harder to achieve the goals
than if she was simply handed an improvement plan.
The plan should identify at least three strengths and three weaknesses the employee should work
on over the next year (or other time period in between reviews). The plan should identify 5
things the employee will do to improve that area. For example, if an employee is strong in
customer service, these might be the five items he will do to improve customer service (to make
it even stronger!):
 Attend a customer service excellence class.
 Train 4 team members on how to handle difficult customers.
 Mentor one team member on improving his customer service.
 Examine and edit the telephone call recording review procedures to focus more on
customer needs.
 Join the customer surveying team to help design follow up questionnaires.
If, on the other hand, the employee was weak in customer service and wanted to improve, here
are 5 things he might do over the next year:
 Attend a customer service training class.
 Work with a more experienced customer service mentor on the team.
 Review calls with my supervisor once per week for improvement suggestions.
 Participate in outbound customer service surveying calls.
 Sit as a call reviewer with team leads to listen to how they perform on the phone.
The improvement plan must be well thought out and agreed to by both you and the employee.
Some of the goals should be measured, e.g. attending a customer service training class – it can
be measured – did the employee attend or not?

4. After reviewing the evaluation with Frank, he did eventually see the problems I focused on and
understand how he had performed in the previous year. We worked together on a performance
improvement plan and today he is one of the highest performers on that team.
Though writing a performance review for an under performing employee can be difficult, seeing
the employee improve to become a valued member of the team is worth the time invested.
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III. Performance appraisal methods
1.Ranking Method
The ranking system requires the rater to rank his
subordinates on overall performance. This consists in
simply putting a man in a rank order. Under this method,
the ranking of an employee in a work group is done
against that of another employee. The relative position of
each employee is tested in terms of his numerical rank. It
may also be done by ranking a person on his job
performance against another member of the competitive
group.
Advantages of Ranking Method
i. Employees are ranked according to their performance
levels.
ii. It is easier to rank the best and the worst employee.
Limitations of Ranking Method
i. The “whole man” is compared with another “whole man”
in this method. In practice, it is very difficult to compare
individuals possessing various individual traits.
ii. This method speaks only of the position where an
employee stands in his group. It does not test anything
about how much better or how much worse an employee
is when compared to another employee.
iii. When a large number of employees are working, ranking
of individuals become a difficult issue.
iv. There is no systematic procedure for ranking individuals
in the organization. The ranking system does not eliminate
the possibility of snap judgements.
2. Rating Scale

5. Rating scales consists of several numerical scales
representing job related performance criterions such as
dependability, initiative, output, attendance, attitude etc.
Each scales ranges from excellent to poor. The total
numerical scores are computed and final conclusions are
derived. Advantages – Adaptability, easy to use, low cost,
every type of job can be evaluated, large number of
employees covered, no formal training required.
Disadvantages – Rater’s biases
3. Checklist method
Under this method, checklist of statements of traits of
employee in the form of Yes or No based questions is
prepared. Here the rater only does the reporting or
checking and HR department does the actual evaluation.
Advantages – economy, ease of administration, limited
training required, standardization. Disadvantages – Raters
biases, use of improper weighs by HR, does not allow
rater to give relative ratings
4. Critical Incidents Method

6. The approach is focused on certain critical behaviors of
employee that makes all the difference in the
performance. Supervisors as and when they occur record
such incidents. Advantages – Evaluations are based on
actual job behaviors, ratings are supported by
descriptions, feedback is easy, reduces recency biases,
chances of subordinate improvement are high.
Disadvantages – Negative incidents can be prioritized,
forgetting incidents, overly close supervision; feedback
may be too much and may appear to be punishment.
5. Essay Method
In this method the rater writes down the employee
description in detail within a number of broad categories
like, overall impression of performance, promoteability
of employee, existing capabilities and qualifications of
performing jobs, strengths and weaknesses and training
needs of the employee. Advantage – It is extremely
useful in filing information gaps about the employees
that often occur in a better-structured checklist.
Disadvantages – It its highly dependent upon the writing
skills of rater and most of them are not good writers.
They may get confused success depends on the memory
power of raters.
6. Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
statements of effective and ineffective behaviors
determine the points. They are said to be
behaviorally anchored. The rater is supposed to
say, which behavior describes the employee
performance. Advantages – helps overcome rating
errors. Disadvantages – Suffers from distortions
inherent in most rating techniques.

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