How to Write Evaluations of Goals

Many companies have adopted goal setting and evaluations as part of the annual review process. In many of these situations, workers perform self-evaluations of their goals and the progress made toward achieving them. In these situations, employees rate the performance of themselves in how effective they were at achieving goals as well as setting effective and meaningful goals. This process can help employees better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their work habits. Writing a goal evaluation can be stressful, but doing it well can improve your job security.

Instructions

1. Write down the goals you set for yourself at the end of last year's review process. Goals vary widely with the type of job you do, but, for example, you might have goals such as improving sales for a certain account, meeting project deadlines, improving the response time for orders or increasing customer satisfaction. The goals should reflect what you wanted to achieve during the year.

2. List your accomplishments in relation to the goals you set. If your goal was a number of sales, list how many sales you made. If your goal was to meet deadlines, list the number of deadlines you met and the number that you didn't meet. It's helpful to give extenuating circumstances that may have prevented you from achieving some of your goals. Accentuate the positive aspects of your performance, but back this up with specific examples of what happened during the year such as big sales, reduced warranty cost statements, customer surveys or employer feedback.

3. Continue by listing examples of activities that supported your progress toward achieving your goals, even if you didn't meet them. Sometimes goals are not achieved, but the employee does exceedingly good work that resulted in the company becoming more profitable.

4. Create a draft of the goal evaluation. Make your points quickly and don't pad the review with extra words that don't address your goals or performance while attempting to achieve the goals. Back up your claims by indicating the listed specific examples.

5. Set the draft aside for a day or two. Print out the evaluation and read it carefully. Use a pen to make notes for any writing mistakes. Add notes if you remember other achievements you made during the year. Often when an evaluation is allowed to sit for a day or two, you can think of additional examples of your achievements.

6. Incorporate any edits and notes into your evaluation and submit it to human resources or your manager.

Tips & Warnings

• Maintain a list of goals that you update during the year. It should feature your work highlights so you can refer to it at review time.

• Negative comments on your review about coworkers and their work habits, even if they affect your goals, can reflect badly on you. It will appear you were unable to deal with the situation on your own.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Workplace Harrassment Information