The annual performance review is one of the key pillars of a performance management program. However, as performance strategies have evolved, so has the need and purpose of the performance review.
So what is a performance review today? A performance review is more than just a formal check-in. It’s a foundational, ongoing conversation that shapes how employees grow and succeed.
Beyond evaluating past work, it helps clarify expectations, strengthen alignment between individual goals and organizational priorities, and surface opportunities for development and advancement. When done consistently, reviews foster trust, boost engagement, and give employees the clarity and support they need to perform at their best.
The performance review definition we like to work by is that it’s a collaborative process that turns feedback into forward momentum. Let’s dig a bit deeper into defining what is a performance review:
A performance review (definition) is a structured, two-way, individualized conversation between a manager and an employee focused on performance, progress, and growth.
There are multiple types of performance reviews, including multi-rater feedback (like 360 reviews), self-assessments, peer reviews, and upward feedback, as well as reviews based on cadence (annual, quarterly, monthly).
Modern performance reviews favor continuous conversations (monthly or quarterly) rather than just annual check-ins – enabling real-time coaching, reducing agency bias, and helping employees take action to course correct faster.
The purpose of a performance review is to create a clear, ongoing conversation that helps employees understand how they are performing, where they are growing, and what support they need to succeed. Likewise, feedback loops empower organizations to collect employee insights and take action to build thriving teams.
Modern organizations use continuous review cycles – not just annual check-ins – to access real-time insights that strengthen alignment, productivity, and trust organization-wide. This approach turns performance reviews into a partnership between employees and managers.
How continuous feedback supports the core purpose of a performance review:
Feedback: offers timely, specific insights so employees always know what’s working and what needs adjustment as they move toward individual and company goals.
Goals: Keeps individual and team goals aligned with business priorities, allowing goals to be updated and clarified as work changes.
Engagement: Strengthens connection and motivation by showing employees their contributions matter and giving them a voice in regular conversations.
Development: Helps employees build skills and grow faster through ongoing coaching, support, and opportunities identified throughout the year instead of once a year.
In short, the purpose of a performance review is to improve performance and growth through consistent, meaningful conversations that guide employees toward a deeper connection with the organization.
While there are many types of performance reviews, evaluations can typically be grouped into two approaches: multi-rater and single-input reviews. The most effective performance review process should reflect your organizational culture and provide meaningful insights to employees and managers. When reviews are engaging, relevant, and actionable, they support growth, alignment, and stronger team performance.
Performance reviews can be organized by these four types:
Multi-rater performance reviews bring multiple perspectives into the performance evaluation process. This approach creates a more balanced and complete view of how employees show up and contribute. Feedback from these reviews can be collected on a continuous cycle or aligned with Single-rater reviews (between employees and managers) to reinforce formal evaluations on an annual, mid-year, or quarterly basis.
Likewise, helps organizations cultivate a thriving culture by capturing a fuller picture of performance through meaningful development conversations. There are many different ways you can build this layered approach to feedback into your performance review strategy.
360 feedback brings multiple voices into the conversation—an essential approach in today’s matrixed, collaborative workplaces. While centered on evaluative feedback, 360s work best when built on trust and focused on clear, actionable next steps.
360 feedback helps your team:
Diversify performance data
Gain broader perspectives on strengths and gaps
Give leaders clearer insight into how they can improve
Managers can’t—and shouldn’t—see everything. Strong teams rely on peer feedback to surface insights only coworkers can provide.
Peer feedback matters because:
Peers see day-to-day behaviors that managers might miss
Recognition often carries more weight when it comes from peers
Peers can act as trusted mentors
Feedback between peers can be delivered in a more relatable way
Team performance reviews help managers evaluate collective progress, coach in context, and identify development opportunities that strengthen both individual and group success.
Team reviews help:
Upward feedback empowers employees to share what’s working and what’s not. When both sides approach this with openness, it builds trust and fuels continuous improvement.
It creates a healthier feedback loop— where employees feel heard and leaders get actionable insight to grow, too.
Structured or formal performance reviews are scheduled evaluations that follow a defined process, consistent criteria, and documented expectations across the organization. They typically occur on a set cadence–such as annually, semi-annually, or quarterly–and provide employees and managers with an objective framework for assessing progress, achievements, and development needs.
These reviews are important to people management strategies because they create transparency, ensure fairness, and help leaders make informed decisions about promotions, compensation, and succession planning. They also strengthen alignment between individual performance and organizational goals, giving employees clarity on what success looks like and who to grow within the company.
An annual performance review is a formal, once-a-year evaluation of an employee’s overall contributions, strengths, and development needs.
Annual performance reviews reinforce people management by:
A mid-year or quarterly review is a scheduled check-in that evaluates progress against goals and performance expectations and provides an opportunity to realign goals, coach employees for better performance, and keep a pulse on the effectiveness of strategies and resources.
Mid-year and quarterly reviews help:
A continuous performance review involves regular, real-time feedback and coaching through ongoing conversations between managers and employees.
Continuous performance reviews support strong teams because they:
A self-assessment is a review that strengthens shared accountability and alignment between employee and manager by giving managers insight into how to better coach while helping employees reflect on their contributions, challenges, and future goals.
Self-assessments facilitate performance and connection by:
Role- or project-based performance reviews evaluate an employee’s contributions within the context of their specific responsibilities, deliverables, or goals. These reviews can be single-rater (often manager-led) or multi-rater (including peers, project leads, cross-functional partners, or even customers), depending on the organization’s culture and needs.
They help maintain alignment with organizational goals, reveal execution gaps or resource needs, and strengthen cross-functional collaboration by showing how individual and team work impacts the broader outcomes. Some examples of role- and project-based performance reviews include:
A task-based or KPI-focused review collects feedback on how well an employee meets defined performance metrics, project milestones, or task-level expectations that contribute to broader team- or company-wide goals.
Task-based and KPI-focused reviews help:
A sales performance review assesses an employee's performance based on sales targets, pipeline activity, client engagement, and revenue-driving behaviors.
Sales performance reviews support revenue growth because they:
A customer service review measures performance based on service, quality, customer interactions, response time, and satisfaction metrics.
Customer service reviews help:
A product development review evaluates how effectively an employee drives product initiatives–from roadmap planning to collaboration, execution, and post-launch performance.
Product development reviews contribute to organizational success by:
Probationary or new-hire performance reviews are structured feedback that assess how well a new employee is integrating into their role, team, and the company during the early stages of employment. These reviews give HR and managers insight into whether onboarding processes are working, where additional support or clarification is needed, and how effectively the new hire is adapting to expectations.
When done well, these reviews help new employees feel welcomed, confident, and culturally aligned so they are equipped to perform productively in a reasonable time. There are many reasons HR may want to collect feedback to improve new hire processes, but here are a few common reviews:
An interview process feedback evaluates how ell the interview accurately represented the role, expectations, team dynamics, and overall work culture once the employee is on the job.
Interview process feedback helps HR and managers improve hiring by:
A 30-60-90 day review provides structured checkpoints during the first three months to assess progress, learning, milestones, cultural integration, and overall performance.
30-60-90 day feedback supports the new hire experience by:
Manager onboarding feedback allows new hires to evaluate how well their manager is supporting them with guidance, clarity, communication, and training.
Manager onboarding feedback improves onboarding outcomes by:
A culture alignment review examines whether a new hire is integrating into team values, communication norms, and organizational behaviors.
Cultural alignment reviews support employees in onboarding because they:
The performance review process typically involves several participants: HR, managers, and employees. Each has a distinctive role in ensuring reviews are fair, consistent, and meaningful.
HR often designs and manages the overall process by building review templates, setting timelines, training managers, and ensuring evaluations align with organizational policies and goals. They also track completion rates, monitor calibration, and provide tools or systems that support practical, data-driven assessment and feedback loops.
Managers are responsible for assessing employee performance, providing clear feedback, and guiding development. They review goals, document achievements, and facilitate a constructive conversation about strengths, growth areas, and next steps.
Employees actively participate by reflecting on their own performance, completing self-assessments, providing peer and upward feedback, and collaborating on goals.
When all team members engage in their roles, the performance review becomes a structured, transparent process that supports connection, growth, and stronger performance.
Performance conversations don’t need to be hard. Keep your managers and employees on the same page with engaging performance reviews. Our performance review software gives your teams reliable context to help them have more objective and engaging conversations.
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1. Customize reviews to fit your needs.Easily measure what you want, when you want with flexible review modules that you can tailor to fit the needs of your culture and the various groups within it. |
2. Help your managers build positive performance habits.Make it easy for manager to coach to performance by integrating your process into their existing workflows. Set up formal conversation cycles to create the right frequency and consistency of touch points. |
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3. Easily track review response rates.See the status of each review cycle to help your teams stay accountable and monitor performance ratings in real-time. |
4. Embed performance goals directly into reviews.Our platform makes it easy to include goals as part of performance evaluations—and helps coach managers have objective, effective, and growth-oriented conversations. |
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5. Orient reviews around multi-rater feedback.Incorporate feedback into your review cycles to gain valuable insight from the individuals your people work with most, and better orient performance conversations around development. |
6. Visualize and align on performance data across teams.Get a comprehensive view of your organization’s talent with our talent dashboard. Zoom out and see the big picture, to help you make more informed decisions on how to keep and develop your best talent. |
Make your performance review process more effective, efficient, and engaging. Quantum Workplace's performance review software helps your managers and teams prepare for, facilitate, and follow up for better reviews and better performance.