Employee Self-Evaluation Template Examples to Drive Growth and Performance

A self-evaluation is a handheld mirror that helps employees uncover their true potential. A compass that guides them to navigate their professional journey.

But truth be told, rating one's own performance is tough.

And it gets more challenging when there's limited guidance and unclear self-evaluation questions.

How you phrase and present your questions will determine if the self-evaluation will be just another to-do list for your employees to check off. Or if it'll turn them into active participants in their growth and development.

We've done the hard work for you.

We'll show you how to create an effective self-evaluation process. We'll also offer multiple examples and ready-to-use templates to lead to a thoughtful self-assessment.

🪞 5 Ready-to-use employee self-evaluation templates

Self-evaluation template for performance review

What this template includes

You'll find questions addressing performance objectives for the period and the employees' fulfillment of these objectives.

This template also covers the employee's:

• performance of their core job responsibilities;
• accomplishments;
• areas for improvement;
• future goals.

When to use it

You can use it as part of your performance improvement plan. Employees can self-assess their performance and collaborate on a plan for improvement with their manager.

Make this template part of your training and development strategy as well. Employees can use it to assess their knowledge and skills gaps and identify areas they'd benefit from training activities.

Feel free to use this self-review template alongside our performance review templates.

Simple employee self-evaluation form template (word)

What this template includes

It addresses the employee's self-perception of their goal progress. It also covers their strengths, areas of improvement, accomplishments, and goals.

When to use it

This simple self-evaluation template will guide the next employee-manager 1:1 conversation.

Use this template to help employees reflect on their accomplishments, strengths, and weaknesses before the meeting.

💬 We also have 15+ one-on-one meeting templates you can use in the meeting.

Competency-based self assessment questionnaire template

What this template includes

This self-assessment questionnaire is meticulously designed to emphasize role-specific competencies. The tool delves deep into key areas such as:

• ‍communication skills;
• technical proficiency;
• team collaboration;
• time management and prioritization.

This template nudges employees to reflect on their alignment with these competencies using real-world examples from their work experiences.

When to use it

Make it part of your annual performance evaluation process.

The end of the year is an ideal time for the employee to self-reflect on their accomplishments and growth areas over the past year.

🌟 Customize the template with competencies from our competency framework template.

Annual manager self-evaluation 

Our Annual Manager Self-Evaluation Form is an essential tool for leadership team members to assess their performance, leadership skills and identify areas for growth over an entire year. 

Your managers' insights can help enhance your leadership team's effectiveness.

Quarterly employee self-evaluation

We designed our quarterly Employee Self-Evaluation Survey to help your people reflect on their performance, achievements, and areas for growth over the past three months.

You can use the input to understand their progress and development needs.

What these Zavvy templates offer

• 9 quantitative and qualitative questions;
• a place for collecting the top three goals for the upcoming period;
• competency-based questions—you can also link these questions to career paths and role descriptions to add more context to employees and their leaders; 
• instructions for reviewers; 
• a fully automated workflow—with Zavvy, you need to add your participants and adjust the deadlines, and you're good to go.

📝 9 Employee self-evaluation form examples

Let's see these elements in action using examples from organizations.

We'll look at what makes them great and what can make them better.

A simple self-evaluation

We start with a basic self-evaluation example from Indeed, a career website.

What we like about this

• It's simple.
• Each question collects both qualitative and quantitative data. 

How you can improve it

• Encourage respondents to provide concrete examples.
• A few questions addressing the employee's strengths and weaknesses would create a more thorough self-evaluation.

Role-based self-evaluation

Here's a more comprehensive self-evaluation form from Upstate Medical University. It's a role-based self-evaluation for residents.

What we like about this

• It begins with an explanation of the objective of the self-evaluation.
• It states the skills and behavior expected for this specific role.
• It uses a combination of rating scales and open-ended questions.

How you can improve it

• Perfect it by providing access to previous evaluations and feedback on their performance.
• Access to more performance context will give the employee an external reference that makes them more objective about their strengths and weaknesses.

Semi-annual self-evaluation

The University of Colorado gives us another simple employee self-evaluation example. It's in the form of a Word Document that contains only four questions.

What we like about this

• The questions encourage employees to get specific with their answers.
• It addresses the employee's challenges.

How you can improve it

• Add rating scale questions to give the self-evaluation a variety of evaluation formats.
• Add free space for the employee to provide extra information.

Performance review self-evaluation

This template from Smartsheet is also simple. It ties every evaluation question to the employee's performance for the period.

What we like about this

• Categorizing the evaluation questions gives the template a logical structure.
• It checks the employee's knowledge of their role and performance expectations before asking for their self-evaluation.

How you can improve it

• Offer more details in your questions, such as stating the core values.
• Provide access to past performance data to make employees more accurate with their self-assessment.

Self-evaluation for performance review

The self evaluation form example from Brown University goes into detail about expectations for answering each question. But a few additions could bring it closer to a perfect employee self-assessment template.

What we like about this

• It encourages the employee to provide specific examples.
• The self-evaluation addresses professional development goals and activities.

How you can improve it

• Leave a space for the employee to add information they feel is essential.
• Add rating scales to obtain a quantitative measure of the employee's performance.

Annual performance evaluation self-assessment

This performance-focused employee self-assessment template from the University of Louisville is in preparation for the upcoming yearly performance evaluation meeting.

What we like about this

• It provides data on the prior period's evaluation for reference.
• The last question is an invitation to raise any concerns the employee may want to discuss with their manager or supervisor.

How you can improve it

• State the organization's core customer service values in the second question. It prevents the employees from using conflicting values to assess themselves.  

Employee self assessment template for performance appraisals

Let's look at a self-assessment for government employees. We got this example from the U.S. General Services Administration.

What we like about it

• It provides detailed guidelines on filling out the employee self-assessment template.
• The accomplishments are split into two categories: achievements related to the period's performance plan and any other achievements the employee has made.

How you can improve it

• Gather more details like challenges the employee faced during the review period. 
• Leave some space for the employee to address their concerns.

Self-assessment for specific performance attributes or competencies

Chariton Valley Association, an NGO, provides its employees with a self-evaluation template that doesn't require much effort from the reviewers.

They only need to assess their competencies using either of three answers—exceeds expectations, meets or below expectations.

What we like about this

• It collects plenty of data on the employee's skills, behaviors, and interpersonal qualities.
• It provides a standardized evaluation that promotes fairness and consistency when comparing employees.

How you can improve it

• Add questions encouraging employees to reflect on their performance, accomplishments, and contributions during the review period.
• The field for qualitative data can benefit from additional instructors for reviewers, e.g., encouraging them to add specific examples or achievements or adding context to instances where they have not met expectations.

Annual or bi-annual self-review

This employee self-assessment template from the Community Arts Agency goes deep into employee strengths and developmental needs.

What we like about this

• It specifies the core skills the employee should focus on and provides a detailed description of each skill.
• It addresses the employee's weaknesses and development plans to address these shortcomings and their career aspirations.

How you can improve it

• Include a section where employees can suggest performance goals for the next evaluation period.
• Ask the employee to include specific examples demonstrating their strength in each core skill. They could also quantify their accomplishments and contributions.

❓Here are some extra self-evaluation questions you can use to customize these templates.

🕵️‍♀️ Key elements to include in your employee self-evaluation template

Employee information

It's the simple things that are easiest to forget. Always start with basic information about the employee:

• Name
• Employee ID
• Role

Performance objectives

Performance objectives create a clear picture of what the employee needs to achieve.

Restating the performance objectives in the self-evaluation template makes it easy for the employee to measure the appropriate performance outcomes.

Core competencies for the role

Core competencies define the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to succeed in a specific role.

A self-evaluation of an employee's core competencies identifies gaps for improvement.

Define the most important development areas and add them to a development plan that supports continuous improvement.

Accomplishments

This section paints a picture of the employee's growth and the impact of their role in the organization. It covers:

• milestones, such as hitting revenue targets;
• contributions, such as process improvements, cost reduction, or revenue generation initiatives;
• goal achievements.

Strengths

Strengths cover the positive attributes and unique qualities the employee possesses. These can be analytical skills, leadership qualities, or technical expertise.

➡️ Learn more about strength-based performance appraisals.

Areas for improvement

These are skills, behaviors, and knowledge areas the employee can enhance to become a more valuable contributor to the organization.

Goals for the upcoming period

In this section, the employee should set targets to achieve in the following evaluation period.

The goals should align with their job responsibilities, performance expectations, and overall organizational objectives. 

Here are some types of goals you can cover:

• strength-based goals;
• performance goals;
• skill development goals;
• professional development goals.

Free space for the employee to add extra insights

Allow the employee to provide additional insights or reflections on their performance.

Tip: These are general categories you can add to your employee self-evaluation templates. You don't have to include all of them in your templates.

The aim is to add elements that'll produce comprehensive results that power employee growth and development.

💡 4 Tips for formatting your self-evaluation template

Combine multiple evaluation formats

Variety is the spice of self-evaluations. Use a mixture of assessment methods to collect comprehensive results from your self-evaluations.

It's also an excellent way to cover the communication preferences of your employees.

Combine methods such as:

• Open-ended questions: Give employees a chance to give their story unhindered. It encourages them to think critically about their performance.
• Rating scales: They provide quantitative data. You can aggregate the results to compare your employees' performance.
• Yes/no questions: This is simplicity at its best. They eliminate subject biases and create a standardized evaluation process.

🔢 Explore various examples of rating scales you can include in your employee assessments.

Provide clear guidelines

Clear instructions give you consistent, relevant, and comprehensive results.

Start by creating a framework that shows the key areas the self-evaluation covers. It's also important to explain the purpose of the self-evaluation and how you'll use it.

Here're a few other tips:

• Explain the rating scale. It prevents employees from using conflicting methods in rating themselves.
• Where possible, help employees understand the objective of a question by providing some context.
• Encourage employees to include specific examples when discussing achievements, strengths, or challenges.

Balance strengths and weaknesses

Build a self-evaluation that encourages the employee to assess their strengths and acknowledge the areas of improvement for a balanced evaluation.

Frame thought-provoking questions that inspire constructive and actionable responses. Your questions should encourage employees to be growth-oriented.

Offer extra support

Help employees provide a more informed self-evaluation by providing resources and support materials.

These support materials can include:

• A competency framework and job description to show the skills and behavior expected of the specific role to help employees conduct the self-evaluation in alignment with the organization's expectations.
• Access to previous evaluations and 360 feedback helps employees validate their self-assessments.
• Samples of self-evaluations: They are a reference point for the language and level of detail you expect. 

We also have a complementary resource where we scrutinize competency matrix examples from different organizations you can use to map the skills and abilities necessary for each role.

➡️ Drive your people's growth with Zavvy

Get 360 feedback software from Zavvy to automate and streamline the self-review process.

With this software, you're not limited to collecting self-reviews. You can use it to get upward, downward, and peer feedback for an all-rounded view of the employee.

With Zavvy, your people will have access to past feedback from managers, peers, and supervisors. Providing them with an external perspective of their performance uncovers their blind spots for a more objective employee self-assessment.

There are plenty more reasons to automate your employee evaluation process with Zavvy:

• Customization options: Set the anonymity of the feedback, what questions to ask each employee, and the timeline for the review. 
• Templates: No need to create questions from scratch. There are plenty of templates to choose from. 
• AI assistant: Just ask Zavvy AI to create a report of your recent feedback cycle, or summarize feedback results for your reviewees. 

Once you have your results, develop an action plan for the employees' personal development with Zavvy's tools:

• Create a development plan with our employee development software.
• Use our learning experience platform to provide your employees with relevant learning resources based on the skill gaps identified.
• Coach employees on skills and growth-related areas within Slack using our AI coach.

📅 Book a demo to experience these powerful features in person.

❓ FAQs  

How can organizations support employee growth and development based on self-evaluation results?

• Create personalized professional development plans based on employees' goals, aspirations, and competency gaps.
• Initiate meaningful dialogues between managers and employees about performance, strengths, obstacles, and areas of improvement.
• Identify coaching needs and tailor the approach to each employee's self-perception.

🌱 Here are 10+ employee development plan examples you can use for inspiration. 

What is the role of managers in the employee self-evaluation process?

• Provide guidance on how to conduct the self-evaluations and outline the evaluation criteria.
• Avail downward feedback and appraisal results that the employee can use to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement.
• Collaborate with employees to set challenging but achievable goals based on the self-evaluation.