Performance Appraisal Phrase Book: The Best Words, Phrases, and Techniques for Performance Reviews

This book is an excellent resource for those who have to write performance appraisals. Makes the process easier because you don't have to spend so much time trying to find just the write phrase. Makes your outcome sound more professional.

Our corporate office Human Resource Department was so impressed with this book, we purchased one for each of our managers. Excellent book.

When you are lacking inspiration for detailing the successes or failures of your direct reports this handy reference book provides a vast library of useful phrases that can be used on performance appraisals. The phrases are nicely organised into key competencies with 3 levels (exceeds, meets, does not meet) of grading. Each competency also has listed a number of key verbs and nouns. Although it can be argued that this type of book can devalue the feedback given in performance reviews, it can also help to prevent the reviewer from writer's block and falling back onto a few stock phrases. The biggest criticism I have is that the book does not contain a concise index to all of the competencies. You have to browse the whole book to discover and find specific competencies.

Compared to some similar books I have read, this book has better phases to use on performance reviews along with key verbs and nouns for each "area" of an employee's review. When choosing a rating for an employee in a specific area it also helped to review the statements described in the book to have a consistent measure to judge performance.