Power Words for Performance Reviews
Some employees often disagree with their employer's assessment of their job performance. Those disagreements may be valid if a company's performance reviews are vague. Reviews that are full of generalities don't address employees' specific successes and failures, and that gives an employee leverage to question a review's accuracy. Power words reduce such problems; they are descriptive words that specify how employees measure up to their boss' expectations, as well as express how an employees can better their performances.
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Action Words
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Managers and others who write performance reviews mean well when they use words like "good" and "excellent" to describe an employee's performance. The online job site HCareers notes that those words are positive, but they don't provide constructive feedback. Action words, such as "monitors," are more powerful because they indicate what is good or bad about an employee's performance. For example, a review that says an employee monitors his sales well indicates to the employee that his boss likes the way he tracks his sales, and that he should continue the practice. Other meaningful action words are "communicates," "directs" and "manages."
Examples
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The words "for example" are also powerful words for performance reviews, because they overcome the vagueness that often plagues employee evaluations. It's especially important to provide examples when employees are criticized for their performances. Good employees want to do the best job they can. Reviews that don't provide examples of how their performance fell short can leave them wondering how to improve their work. Therefore, reviews should include specific incidents that demonstrate good and bad performance, so workers understand what their employers want from them.
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Personal Issues
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Words such as "I feel" and "I believe" should be avoided for performance reviews. Such words make employees' evaluations too subjective, and they suggest that workers are responsible for knowing what their bosses think and feel. There are times when personal issues need to be addressed, especially if an employee's behavior is causing problems in the workplace. In such cases, stick to comments that address behavior in relation to job performance. Use descriptive words, such as "disrupted" and "interrupted" to convey how a person's behavior impacted the performance of a task.
Considerations
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Employers who want to reinforce good work and diminish poor performance are missing an opportunity to accomplish those things when they don't use meaningful words in performance reviews. Employees often don't have frequent contact with their bosses throughout the workday. Therefore, they generally use evaluations to gauge where they stand with their employers. Vague wording in performance reviews won't give them a realistic picture of their progress in the workplace. Employees' misconceptions about their performances can stall progress throughout a company.
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References
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