The Best 11 Performance Review Templates: Evaluate and Grow Your People

Performance reviews can make or break employee motivation. With the right questions, you set yourself up to build a highly motivated team aligned with the business goals. Poorly run, however, a performance review is a major turnoff that has your employees go from polishing the project presentations to marking themselves available for work on LinkedIn profile.

Whether you manage a growing team or an international workforce, well-designed performance review templates turn feedback into clarity, action, and growth. The right formats streamline conversations, reduce bias, and align goals across levels—while saving managers hours per cycle.

With our free performance review templates, you set yourself up for solid employee performance reviews that everyone on the team anticipates. Browse to find the one you need, and feel free to adapt it to your company's unique profile. All templates are downloadable and ready for you to use and create meaningful employee feedback and two-way conversations.

Annual performance review template

Annual appraisals are comprehensive evaluations that happen once a year, providing a holistic view of an employee's accomplishments, challenges, and growth over the entire year.

The advantage of annual performance reviews is that they offer a cumulative reflection, allowing employees and managers to assess yearly progress and set clear objectives for the upcoming year.

We designed this annual review template to simplify and unify the evaluation process across an organization. Using this template will ensure consistency and reduce manual work. This template encourages introspection on:

1. Skills, work quality and productivity
2. Overall performance
3. Achievements
4. Challenges faced
5. Areas of enhancement
6. Goal setting for the future

We included an optional rating scale with three levels: exceeds expectations, meets expectations, and below expectations). Feel free to remove, or adjust it according to your organization's performance management system.

To foster in-depth and actionable and helpful feedback, our template includes detailed examples, and multiple tips for managers to ensure the review process is a dialogue and not judgement day.

This annual performance review template will facilitate more constructive, actionable, and supportive reviews to promote employee development.

Mid-year performance review template

Mid-year performance reviews are formal performance check-ins halfway through the year. Their purpose is to evaluate an employee’s progress toward their annual goals. However, this review type is less about final judgment and more about course correction, encouragement, and realignment.

With this template, you can turn employee reviews into productive, motivating conversations, not just status updates. It gives managers and employees a clear framework for:

1. Reviewing progress toward annual goals
2. Celebrating wins and identifying improvement areas
3. Realigning priorities for the next six months, and ensuring individual goals align with larger team and company objectives
4. Documenting feedback, updated goals, and development plans

Competency-based performance review template

In a competency-based performance appraisal process, the focus is on helping employees develop the behaviors they need to be successful in their jobs. Therefore, you'd evaluate job performance with a focus on competencies (relevant for the role).

Our competency-based performance review template takes a focused and in-depth approach to evaluating an employee's proficiency across various skills and competencies.

Its well-structured sections offer opportunities to assess key areas such as technical competencies, communication, teamwork, strategic planning, etc. The emphasis on specific examples ensures the feedback is tangible and actionable, while rating systems add a quantitative aspect to the review.

We also included detailed instructions for reviewers. The template ensures the review process is constructive and beneficial for the employee and the manager.

Since we know that defining and leveling competencies is a complex task, we have compiled a competency framework template with 140+ individual contributor competencies leveled from basic to expert mastery. Use this resource to pave the way for comprehensive, growth-oriented reviews.

End-of-probation review template

As the probation period ends, typically six months after the hire date, a new hire should understand whether they passed the probation review or not.

Our template is designed to thoroughly assess a new hire's performance and decide their future in the organization. The focus is on creating a well-rounded understanding of the employee's experiences during the probationary period and setting the stage for their further journey within the organization. It covers key themes such as:

1. Role alignment
2. Key achievements and contributions
3. Areas where performance did/did not not meet expectations
4. Potential for growth
5. Action items post-review and follow-up (for new hires successful in their probation review)

A manager would fill in this review before meeting the new hire and communicating their final decision.

To help you make the most out of probation meetings, we also created a complementary resource, a bundle of three meeting agendas covering three possible outcomes of a probationary period:

1. Successful candidates
2. Unsuccessful candidates to be terminated
3. Candidates that require an extension to the probation review before a final decision.

Employee self-evaluation template

Employee self-evaluations have grown into an invaluable tool for evaluating performance and helping employees become more self-aware. They can also give managers an idea of how conscious each employee is about their behaviors and the difference between how each person perceives themselves vs. how others see them.

Our template includes step-by-step instructions, tips, and examples to guide users, encouraging measurable, thoughtful responses to highlight achievements and identify growth opportunities. It collects qualitative and quantitative input with open and rating questions, using the following scale:

• Very poor
• Poor
• Average
• Good
• Excellent

The template covered key themes such as:

1. Performance objectives
2. Role fulfillment
3. Key achievements
4. Goals for the next period

Peer review template

Unlike manager-led reviews, peer reviews capture real, day-to-day interactions, helping individuals grow in their roles and improving team collaboration.

Our structured and comprehensive peer review template allows you to collect structured, insightful feedback while saving time and effort. Our template includes:

1. Structured questions covering collaboration, communication, accountability, leadership, technical skills, and problem-solving
2. A clear rating scale to ensure consistency in evaluations—with explanation for what each rating stands for to ensure consistent evaluations across reviewers
3. Guidelines for reviewers to provide constructive and professional feedback
4. Optional HR sections for summarizing key themes and next steps

9-box grid spreadsheet template

The 9-box grid is a visual representation of employees' performance and potential, based on a set of predefined criteria. It uses a 3x3 matrix that divides employees into nine categories, based on their performance and potential.

The horizontal axis represents an employee's performance, while the vertical axis represents an employee's potential.

The nine categories are:

1. High potential - High performer
2. High potential - Average performer
3. High potential - Low performer
4. Average potential - High performer
5. Average potential - Average performer
6. Average potential - Low performer
7. Low potential - High performer
8. Low potential - Average performer
9. Low potential - Low performer

This template comes with 2 versions:

• Simple 9-box assessment: Evaluate employees based on two key questions: "Assess this employee's potential" and "Assess this employee's performance," both on a 1-3 rating scale
• Advanced 9-box assessment: Use different rating scales for performance, which are then converted to a 3-point system for the 9-box grid

Regardless of the version you choose (simple or advanced), once you've assessed employee potential and performance, the 9-box grid will automatically populate with your employees' names.

Performance calibration template

Performance calibrations help even out ratings and reduce evaluator bias, to get as fair a picture as possible. In a performance review calibration, managers get together to discuss ratings and find consensus. 

But doing performance calibration manually means handling an avalanche of data and countless meetings to navigate.

Preparation and a structured framework for collecting and calibrating performance data are key as a solid foundation for a successful calibration meeting.

Our user-friendly, automated performance calibration spreadsheet is designed to simplify data input, instantly transforming your data into a comprehensible graph. It provides immediate access to vital statistics across departments, saving you valuable time and offering key insights at a glance.

Bonus: Performance improvement plan template

You've evaluated employee performance. What happens with those falling short on expectations? A performance improvement plan offers a structured framework for constructive dialogue between managers and team members who do not meet predetermined work performance standards.

This PIP template is a supportive tool to enhance employee performance and align workers with organizational goals. It includes instructions to guide managers and employees when filling in and implementing the plan.

Note: Tailor this free PIP template to adhere to local labor laws and organizational policies. We advise consulting with your HR team or legal experts to ensure compliance and effectiveness in applying this plan.

Bonus: Goal tracking template

For many organizations, goal setting and attainment are critical for performance evaluations.

This goal tracker template is a free, intuitive, multi-sheet resource for Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. The template uses automation and color coding to help organizations, departments, teams, and individuals track and easily visualize their progress toward their objectives and key results (OKRs).

Using this template will give stakeholders in your organization visibility over approaching deadlines, targets, expectations, and relevant or linked projects. It empowers your teams to set, track, and achieve specific goals. This improves workplace efficiency and enhances organizational productivity and strategic alignment.

How to choose the right performance review template for your team

Choosing the right template ensures your performance reviews fit your structure, roles, growth strategy, and company culture, so feedback is meaningful and actionable.

The best template depends on your team size, how people work, your management style, and how often you evaluate performance. Use the table below as a simple decision guide.

Drive performance and growth with Deel

Spreadsheets and online forms will never be as efficient as a fully integrated review system that can automate your performance cycle.

Deel Engage is a talent management solution that massively enhances the performance management process by providing tools for:

1. Setting performance goals at individual, team, department, and organizational levels
2. Defining role-based expectations and competency models serving as benchmarks for performance evaluations
3. Collecting and analyzing feedback from multiple sources (peers, managers, and self-evaluations)
4. Automating performance review workflows (automatically adding employees according to criteria such as hire date or belonging to specific departments or groups)
5. Anonymizing feedback collection (if needed)
6. Calibrating performance scores
7. Streamlining notifications and reminders for all participants
8. Identifying skill gaps and areas for improvement
9. Creating training programs that address performance gaps with a wide range of learning resources

Deel Engage ensures that performance reviews are fair, consistent, and aligned with organizational goals. Use it to support employee development and business success. Schedule a call with our consultants to see how your can automate your performance processes.