Why are self-evaluation examples and tips important?

Self-evaluation examples and tips matter because they can help employers provide a safe platform for a productive and honest conversation with their employees. An effective self-evaluation process gives employees a chance to discuss topics they might otherwise find difficult to bring up. For employers, self-evaluations from employees can be an essential source of staff feedback, allowing for growth and improved productivity. Here are some of the ways that employee self-evaluations can help employers:

Assess whether to renew an employee’s contract

An employee’s self-evaluation can help employers assess an employee’s value to their company. Performance reviews showcase an employee’s skills, abilities, willingness to take on additional responsibilities, and areas for improvement. Employers might also use self-evaluations to help them decide if an employee deserves a promotion, salary raise, or contract renewal.

Remind them of an employee’s contributions to the team and their effect on the broader business

As an employer, you’re typically dealing with the overall aspects of your company. Self-evaluations can help you stay on top of individual staff members’ reports and progress so you can monitor the effectiveness of your employees’ contributions without making direct observations. A self-evaluation also creates a written record of your employees’ accomplishments so they’re easy to access and evaluate when you need them.

Plan out future objectives and goals, whether for individuals or the team

Self-evaluations can help you decide on your department’s or company’s projects, goals, and responsibilities. As opportunities for reflection, self-evaluations encourage employees to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your employee’s responses, you might adjust their goals to help them grow while meeting company objectives.

Provide motivation to employees

When an employee knows they have to perform a self-evaluation, their motivation to fulfil or exceed expectations may increase. Evaluations encourage employees to take ownership over their work by asking them to reflect on their abilities. When employees know that their work contributes to real outcomes within their company, they may feel more motivated to achieve their goals.

Tips for self-evaluation for employees

Some employees may need more guidance than others when completing successful self-evaluations. Providing clear expectations can help employees understand their employer’s standards and write meaningful responses. Here are some tips employers can offer their employees to help them write effective self-evaluations:

Highlight the STAR technique

You can teach employees to use the STAR technique when writing their self-evaluations. The STAR method helps employees structure their response like a story by describing a scenario, conflict, and resolution. Here’s what STAR stands for and how each part communicates a story:

• Situation: This method starts with explaining the context of the situation. The employee describes the scenario so the audience understands the central conflict or challenge they faced.
• Task: Next, the employee describes the task or goal they set out to accomplish within the context of the scenario. They might explain their role and how it relates to the conflict or goal.
• Action: The employee tells the employer what steps they took to overcome the conflict and accomplish the goal. Often, this is the most in-depth part of the response because the employee can demonstrate the skills they used to solve the problem.
• Results: Finally, the employee explains the outcome of their actions. If possible, have them quantify their results or give specific examples that show the positive results of their efforts.

By structuring their responses with this method, employees can share a concise, well-organized story that describes a relevant scenario and showcases their abilities and successes. This can also make it easier for employers to see how employees identify, set, and work toward their goals.

Analyze staff job descriptions

Some employees might be new to writing self-evaluations, and others may misunderstand which experiences they need to evaluate. To give nervous employees a starting point and a base to build from, point them toward their job descriptions. They can select tasks, activities, successes, and struggles related to their roles and filter through them to find the ones that are most relevant to them. For example, they may have surpassed their sales target in one month, succeeded at dealing with a tricky customer, or gained a new skill. They can also identify areas for improvement based on the tasks the job description outlines.

Suggest employees interested in a promotion study the job description of the role for which they plan to apply. When they focus their self-evaluation on the description in the job listing, it can help employers assess if the employee is qualified for the role. If they’re not qualified, the self-evaluation process can serve as a learning tool, allowing them to see where the gaps are in their skills and knowledge.

Tell employees to be specific

Specificity helps employees express their successes using definitive examples or quantifiable figures. Ask employees to state figures, statistics, and specific results that support their claims and provide a precise outcome of their performance. For example, an employee can take a broad statement like “I used excellent communication skills” and make it more specific by indicating a result. To make this statement more specific, the employee could say: “I used excellent communication skills by introducing myself to each of my team members in person, which helped them get to know me and feel comfortable working with me.”

When possible, employees can use statistics to show their successes. For example, an employee can be specific by stating something like, “I surpassed my quarterly leads turnover quota by as much as 24%, and finished the year with over 80% successful turnovers, 12% more than the projected goal.” These measurable figures show the employee’s effectiveness by using precise numbers.

Define future steps and goals

Self-evaluations mostly depend on an employee’s ability to reflect on their best achievements within a given period. However, completing self-evaluations also can help an employee create future objectives and goals. Employers can have their employees conclude their write-ups by explaining how they can improve their results, increase company outputs, or optimize their weaknesses. These improvements might come through building professional habits, furthering education, or developing relevant skills.

To help employees monitor their progress toward goals, show them how to maintain a log of achievements throughout the year. For example, employees could write down any instance where they achieve a goal or exceed expectations in a journal. Then, come self-evaluation time, it may be easier for them to sort through their achievements. Having a written document can also help employees remember important accomplishments after a long period of time.

Link achievements to business goals

Self-evaluations are one form of employee valuation reports. It’s crucial that staff members use these evaluations to prove how their accomplishments and efforts helped the company move closer to its goals. Self-evaluations can also help employees applying for promotions and raises.

Here’s an example: “The Wavewood Group has shown resilience in improving client retention this year. By the end of the second quarter, I created and implemented an email win-back scheme, which led to over $80,000 in sales from customers considered lost. Another $50,000 came from present-day customers in the third quarter.”

Give staff ample time for self-review

Give your employees a date by which to turn in their self-evaluations and guidelines for the write-up long before you need it. If you want to get good results, allow employees time to reflect on the previous year, review their performances, and gather the relevant data and examples to cite. Employees may need more than a few days or even weeks to recall and verify details from the past year, especially if you’re asking for them to write about not only their strengths and successes but also their growth areas.

Self-evaluation examples

Here are some basic examples of self-evaluations. These can give you an idea of the type of content you could expect from your employees. While these samples may come from different industries, they show how the employees reflect on their successes, identify the actions taken to achieve their goals, and assess their weaknesses in their evaluations.

High school teacher

“This is my 10th year of teaching and my sixth year of teaching at Lake Senior High School. Last year, I introduced more detailed teaching aids into my classes to engage students and encourage their imagination. These included visual aids for the projector, audio recordings, and puppets that helped my students learn concepts by engaging them in different ways. These aids kept their attention and my classroom attendance increased by 50%. My students also performed better on tests, showing that the aids helped them retain more information than my students from previous years.

“However, I had some setbacks related to other goals. I actively struggled with classroom management, especially as the new teaching aids caused a lot of excitement. Classes became more animated, and it took significantly more effort to maintain control and progress through lessons without distractions. Fortunately, this issue did not have a major effect on the progress or growth of students. To solve this problem, I’m considering having a talk with the students and using less distracting teaching aids.”

Junior account manager

“Within a year of joining The Horizon Group as a junior account manager, I have achieved the expected performance level of new hires. During the recruitment process, I learned that new hires typically took three to four months to reach the desired monthly quotas. I met my targets throughout the year, exceeding the quota in six different months. I had a client retention rate of 74% in February, 76% in March, 82% in June, 69% in August, 70% in November, and 89% in December.

“My knowledge of customer engagement and marketing helped me succeed. Between November and December, I reached out to cold leads, gained interest, and secured business from 88% of inquiries. I remain committed to recapturing the business of the other 12%. Among my peers in the company, I have some of the best response times and communication skills. I’m also popular with our clients, with 80% of clients preferring me as their company contact. This has helped me boost my monthly numbers by retaining loyal clients. My goal for the next quarter is to take on more leadership within the company.”