Self-appraisal: Benefits, How to Write, Tips + 27 Comments

The performance review process is an integral part of professional development. The managers and the employee has to be actively involved in the process to make it successful.

The performance Appraisal process is often seen as an annual activity, which is not a very effective way to do the review. This kind of performance review process often limits the ‘recency’ effect, which makes it not effective enough to make the right impact.

Performance review meetings, using a performance management system, are crucial for employees’ career development and their understanding of job performance. Even though it’s seen as an appraisal meeting, the traditional performance appraisal process lacks the element of two-way communication, and that’s why we should bring self-appraisal into the picture.

What is Self-appraisal?

The self-appraisal is the process of self-reflection where employees get to assess their performance and comment on their achievements and express their productivity-related views.

Self-appraisals often talk about essential problem-solving skills, required training for new skills, strengths and weaknesses or areas of improvement. The self-evaluation process is also a way to make employees feel more involved and take one more step towards two-way communication.

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What are the Benefits of Self-appraisal?

The self-appraisals have multiple benefits for both the employees and the managers, and collectively, it contributes to the organisation’s productivity. Explained below are some of the major benefits of the self-review process, making it essential for it to be included in performance management.

Career Growth

Self-assessment is a very improvement in understanding what employees want as a part of their career development plan. For career growth, employees should talk about performance improvement. For employees, as a part of the self-evaluation, it will be more helpful if you talk about your future preferences instead of just identifying your present weakness.

As mentioned above, performance reviews can be a great way for managers to take a look at what job responsibilities and achievements employees talk about. It showcases the area of interest in your own performance review. The self-performance review, done right, can be used to express ambition and a growth mindset.

Motivation

Self-performance reviews can be very motivating as it gives the employees power and they act as an active participant in the process. The self-appraisal comments allow employees to talk about their work in the past year or quarter. As an employee get to act as an active participant, it is also an excellent tool for employee engagement.

When it comes to performance, management’s response should be inspiring, and self-appraisals are the sure way to do that. It tells employees that their opinion is important and that being valued is a great motivating factor.

Identify Motivated Employees

Effective self-appraisal is a great tool that helps managers to identify motivated employees in the company. It is not just being self-critical or showing that they do their job expectations.

A self-performance review can also be used to ask for additional employee training. It gives deeper insights into many positive points regarding career growth or motivation to do better at their work.

Communication

The motive of the performance review is to provide constructive feedback. But to make the appraisal meaningful, it has to be two-way communication. When the management responds to the employee’s performance review, it completes the cycle of communication.

It often happens that the employee’s perspectives of their own performance and of the manager’s perspective are different. When the appraisals are rarely done, such as only once or twice a year, the managers often suffer from the recency bias. That means whether it is good or bad, they remember only the recent events and form their opinion.

This gap in the views can lead to resentment among the employees and sometimes even become unintentionally unfair to employees. On the other hand, when employees are given a chance to reflect on their own performance, it gives management an opportunity to glance at the performance from the employees’ perspective and bring both the manager and the employee on the same page.

Better Professional Relationship

The self-assessment process can play a significant role in building a healthy employer-employee relationship. The frequent self-appraisal practices can be seen as a continuous conversation between the managers and employees in the form of expectations and feedback. The self-appraisals also help make some difficult conversations easy as the self-appraisal process offers a better view of what employees think.

The self-appraisal process makes people feel respected for their views and opinions. Whether in a personal or professional relationship, making people feel respected is essential. The self-appraisal process makes it easier for organizations to show their respect for employees and build better professional relationships through the medium of performance management.

Sense of Responsibility

The self-evaluations are means to give employees a greater sense of responsibility towards their job description and their performance goal. When an employee himself reflects on the work process, they get work processes they get a sense of responsibility.

Most employees get a better understanding of their contribution to the productivity and the projects in the company. It is also an opportunity for them to understand whether their colleagues also contribute their fair share or not.

This way, self-appraisals are not just for managers to get a deeper understanding towards employee contribution. Self-appraisal can be an eye-opener for employees and helps them view performance reviews in a different light.

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How to do a Self-performance Appraisal?

The process of self-appraisal may not take long, but it can be confusing, and employees may have a hard time deciding on how to do their self-appraisal. So here we bring you a few tips to make this process easier and avoid making the same blunders that most employees do.

Highlight Your Accomplishments

The goal of the self-appraisals is to give employees opportunities to talk about their achievements and contribution. Here you should emphasize your most profound accomplishment that made a significant impact on the company’s productivity.

Be specific when you are talking about your contribution, and it is best to present numbers. That gives a solid ground to your point. It is easy for your manager to understand the extent of the contribution and value you add to the business. The larger the impact, the more it’s worth the mention.

Be Objective

Self-appraisal isn’t just about talking about the achievements or the positives. You should be honest with the self-review and look at your shortcomings equally. Pay attention to your weaknesses, too, so you can improve on them and grow in your career. It can be a good idea to mention how you improved yourself professionally over time.

Maintain a Growth Mindset

The self-appraisals should be done as frequently as possible. At the same time, some companies do performance management activities only once or twice a year. In such cases, you may often find it difficult to remember and identify the work you should mention in the self-review.

You should keep a growth and learning mindset and record your learning and achievements. This way, it will be easier for you to find the things worth mentioning easily and develop the habit of looking for opportunities to learn and grow.

Ask for Training

Employees can also mention their learning goals and the technologies they aim to get good at handling. You have to review your overall performance in the self-appraisal as well as ask for the training you need.

It is also worth mentioning that you would love to be mentored by senior team members or by your managers. Take a moment of self-reflection on what you learnt, and as mentioned before and don’t miss to mention future learning goals.

When you show determination to learn and grow in your career, most managers feel enthusiastic about providing you with all the support that you need. The portrayal of your growth mindset can be highlighted in your performance evaluation.

Maintain Professional Tone

When you are writing your self-appraisal, it can be tempting to keep on praising yourself while blaming everybody else for everything that goes wrong. When performance management is done with the self-appraisal form, there is little to no space to go unprofessional. You should be conscious of your words.

While expressing how your teammate doesn’t do enough, lowers your productivity or makes your existence in the workplace difficult as a whole, is a wrong thing to mention. The same goes for the opposite. You should focus on getting a deeper understanding of your own performance rather than praising your colleague or manager.

The easier way to do the self-assessment right is to make a self-appraisal template and ensure that all your self-appraisal comments stick to it. This way, you can ensure that the self-assessment you submit maintains a professional tone and also manage to portray all the right things about your performance.

Quick Tips

A few quick tips to keep in mind while writing your self-appraisal comments to help you to be more effective in your self-appraisal.

• Find out what the self-appraisal is for such as promotion so you can represent your performance accordingly.
• Do not hesitate to present a list of your accomplishments. In self-appraisal comments, you can be objective and promote yourself.
• You are free to mention your performance even though you have not reached a target yet for that can help you to represent yourself better.
• Your self-appraisal comments can help you get the tools you need for improvement, that way you can approach with the mindset that ‘the self appraisal is an opportunity to communicate better.
• Make your self appraisal comments crisp and objective it will help you communicate that you are confident in what is being said.

27 Effective Self-Appraisal Comments

Now that you understand how to write a self appraisal here is a list of 27 effective self-appraisal comments that you can use for performance reviews. You can also use these self appraisal comments to highlight your accomplishments and areas of improvement.

1. I always focus on finding solutions rather than complaining about issues.
2. I am very conscious of my deadlines and always stick to my work schedule.
3. I am always looking for improvement in my skills as I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses.
4. I focus on our goals as a team and am always quick to help my team members whenever I can.
5. I have exceeded my targets and always contributed with a zeal to help my team members to be able to achieve their performance goals too.
6. I understand the need for improvement (name the areas of your weakness), and I am working on it. When I try to reflect on your performance review suggestions for improvement to me, I think formal training in the ( areas of improvement) can be very useful for improvement in my work.
7. I have always delivered the schedule of what is expected of my work.
8. I have worked on your advice and significantly improved my work.
9. I am always in pursuit to improve my quality and I would like to request training to use (name of software) for my team, so we can deliver better customer service in future.
10. I focus on goals that help to improve personally too along with personal growth.
11. Thanks for the opportunity for a self-appraisal I would like to mention that I did act on your performance review advice for me last quarter and I could say that you can observe significant changes in my performance.
12. I am a self-motivated person and always try to bring innovation and creativity to my work.
13. I am able to connect with people easily and appropriately to maintain healthy relationships at the workplace.
14. I have an understanding of the need for a strategy to achieve the goals and how to follow through.
15. I have realised the team facing some issues while communicating with customers and my team members can benefit from the training program that I have attended on how to write for formal communication.
16. I am a significant contributor to the team and I have a tendency t to go the extra mile whenever my team need to be working faster for the situation.
17. I helped my team members to cut down processing time my optimise the performance with a well-defined strategy.
18. I strive to ensure that I have sufficient communication with a team and that all my team members are well-informed so their work doesn’t get hampered in my absence.
19. I will try to improve on your suggestion of paying more attention to the details so I can be able to improve the quality of my work.
20. I will make a note to improve that all my team members complete the work they need to submit on time.
21. In my self-appraisal comments, I will promise you that I understand I need to speak up in team meetings and from now onwards I try to express all ideas on innovation and creativity with everyone.
22. I have a great record of finishing work on time as well as helping the team to do the same.
23. I always make a list of tasks I need to complete in a day so I never miss my weekly deadlines.
24. I always focus on your guidelines on the quality of work and how to improve it further.
25. I have a list of parameters that I go through every time before submitting the assignments so I and the team can ensure quality output.
26. I am used to approaching tasks with a goal in mind to ensure that my efforts don’t get sidetracked until the successful implementation of the strategy.
27. I am consistently trying to improve my communication and also doing training for the same

Summary

Self-assessment should always be a part of performance management efforts. The appraisal comments that are solely done by the managers are not enough. That often makes employees feel that their performance evaluation didn’t get the appreciation and recognition they deserve.

The self-evaluation makes people valued and improves employee engagement. This also strengthens the employee-employer relationship. The self-evaluation done the right way can benefit the employee’s career in a massive way. Employees should be objective and professional, keep a growth mindset and can also ask for additional training if they need it.