Preparing the evaluation interview as an employer

In an evaluation interview, you discuss an employee's performance, objectives and development over a certain period. Together you look back at someone's functioning and evaluate it.

The idea is not that it should be a one-sided conversation where only the manager gives feedback. For this reason, it was often seen as a 'judgment conversation' in recent years.

Fortunately, there is also an option to conduct the evaluation interview in a modern way.

Modernizing your evaluation interview goes beyond adding a self-evaluation. The goal is to have an open conversation focused on development, contributing to the growth of an individual team member and the entire team.

You do this by incorporating these elements:

An evaluation interview is not only about assessing performance, but also about giving and receiving feedback from both sides.

That's why employees also give feedback to their manager and the team via the 360-degree feedback method. Additionally, you gather feedback from colleagues, partners and others in the organization, collecting a broader perspective and making the conversation stronger and more valuable.

In addition, you not only discuss someone's performance, in the form of measurable achievements and meeting goals, but also themes such as job satisfaction, professional growth, and career opportunities.

💬 Examples of questions you can ask in an appraisal interview can be found here

In an evaluation interview, you don't just evaluate someone's performance and each other, but also discuss development.

You discuss:

• Goals for the upcoming period
• Competencies or professional skills someone can further develop, such as communication skills or knowledge of a software system
• Other opportunities for growth and development, but also obstacles

Ideally, you don't schedule evaluation interviews just once a year, but make them part of an ongoing conversation cycle. In other words: a continuous dialogue in which you exchange feedback multiple times a year.

• A (formal) performance or evaluation interview twice a year
• A (informal) 1-on-1 meeting every month where manager and employee check in with each other
• In every conversation, you discuss skills, competencies, and KPIs, but you also leave room for the broader conversation topics from point 2

💡 It helps to already include the skills, competencies, and KPIs you want to discuss in your feedback and development talks in job profiles (with Learned you can even automate this using AI).

The difference between a development interview, an evaluation interview and a performance review can sometimes be subtle, as the terms differ in various organizations and contexts.

Generally, you can distinguish them as follows:

During an evaluation interview, you assess someone's overall performance. This is usually done over a certain period, such as a year or half-year.

We use the terms performance and evaluation interview interchangeably; as synonyms for the same thing. The manager and employee look back at achievements, and discuss future goals, KPIs or targets, skills someone wants to improve, and what specific behaviors a team member can improve to achieve that.

The goal is to give each other 360-degree feedback and, based on that evaluation, discuss any rewards or development plans based on the assessment.

🌟 Looking for examples of a modern evaluation interview? Check out these 10 questions for an open, development-oriented evaluation interview

The goal of a development interview is to create a plan to improve team members' abilities and skills, and support their career development.

As the name makes clear, it is a conversation focused on professional development. Managers and employees discuss:

• Strengths
• Development needs
• Career goals and growth opportunities
• Training or education needs

In a performance review you evaluate a colleague's performance and progress. Usually a manager gives feedback on the concrete results or targets someone has achieved, and shares areas for improvement.

In a typical performance review you also set new objectives for the coming period.

The difference with a performance or evaluation interview is that a performance review is more one-way: traditionally, 360-degree feedback and ongoing dialogue are not included.

Want to get started with modernizing your HR conversation cycle? It can be smart to start with a new setup for evaluation interviews.

Here's how:

One of the most important changes is adding 360-degree feedback. This includes not only the opinion of the manager, but also that of colleagues and other stakeholders.

This creates a complete picture of your employees' performance. This allows the manager to make a more substantiated and balanced evaluation. Moreover, thanks to the input of other colleagues, new insights emerge for both the employee and the manager.

Furthermore, you can expand the conversation with various discussion topics. The difference with the traditional appraisal interview is that in a modern conversation, you not only assess someone's performance or functioning but also discuss other topics together.

At Learned, we use 5 themes as a guideline for a modern, transparent appraisal interview:

• job satisfaction
• performance
• development
• learning goals
• feedback on the organization

👉 Curious about the best questions to ask per theme? Download our template with 25+ sample questions for an appraisal interview

The conversation topics 'development' and 'learning goals' above already make it clear: in a modern evaluation interview you don't just evaluate past results, but also look ahead.

A second development is adding future-oriented questions. This makes the conversation more action-oriented and more motivating for employees to work on their development: after all, you still have control over your behavior and performance in the future.

If you want to measure the development and progress of employees over time, it is important to consistently revisit the same topics in evaluation interviews.

If you also want to focus on evaluating as objectively as possible, you measure someone's development based on:

• competencies (or soft skills)
• hard skills (or technical skills)

These are the same competencies and skills that are in the skills-based job profile, because by evaluating against them, you create a clear picture of what is expected in a particular role (or level) – for both employees and their managers.

💡 An evaluation interview should not be the only conversation between managers and employees, but rather be part of multiple – including informal – conversations in a continuous HR conversation cycle.

You can choose to measure an evaluation interview purely qualitatively.

But if your goal is to make evaluations objectively measurable, you can also assign a score to each of the points you evaluate in the conversation.

There are 3 steps you can take to make evaluations objectively measurable:

In a modern evaluation interview you also discuss someone's development – in the form of their mastery of the skills and competencies needed in a role (see point 4 above).

You measure the mastery of skills or competencies based on different levels.

And you can easily express your feedback on someone's skill or competency level in a score, for example qualitatively (insufficient, moderate, sufficient, good, very good) or with a number (from 0-5).

This way you can give a total rating at the end of the conversation – clearly showing how an employee performs against the goals and requirements from their job profile.

💡 To make your evaluation of skills and competencies as objective as possible, it helps to work with a system where levels are described in concrete behavior.

By tracking the score across multiple conversations, you get a clear picture of employees' development over time.

This way, evaluation interviews provide not only qualitative feedback, but also many quantitative insights that you can evaluate at the end of the year.

As soon as you attach a measurable score to the points you discuss in evaluation interviews, you collect a lot of data that you can use very well in HR.

The most important action to take based on evaluation data is to use measurements of someone's performance and development to justify fair remuneration.

Are you curious if your evaluation and remuneration process already has a sufficient basis for salary transparency? Then download the Salary Transparency Act Checklist and see where you stand!

In addition, you can use data from evaluation interviews for:

• comparing the performance of different team members, e.g. in a 9-grid
• determining development plans
• decisions about promotions and internal mobility
• identifying future managers: succession planning

🌟 Want to know more? Read more about the benefits of objective evaluation

Do you want to get started right away with modernizing the performance review?

💪 Start having valuable and future-oriented performance reviews too! Download our template for a modern performance review here