Performance reviews are around the corner, but is it harder to evaluate fully remote
workers?
There are differing views on whether remote employees should be concerned about their
reviews.
Insider spoke with experts for advice to prepare remote workers for their reviews.
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Whether an employee works in the office, remotely, or with a hybrid schedule has no
influence on performance at the firm, she said.
“We’re going to expect you to do your job and do it well. We’re going to expect you to stay
engaged with your colleagues and your clients, and we’re going to evaluate you at the end of
the year based on that impact,” she said.
Pyrzenski, who serves as the chief people officer for the digital-transformation-software
company WalkMe, says tools like Zoom, Trello, and Google Drive level the playing field
between in-person and remote workers. She encourages workers to leverage collaboration
tools to highlight their contributions.
“Write down ideas in Google Docs and tag fellow team members to get their perspectives.
The more you bring others in, the more you will stand out for showing off your ability to
bring people together and collaborate using digital tools,” she said.
Celia Balson, the founder and CEO of the HR consulting agency Work Friendly, says her
advice to remote workers is to continue doing the things that come naturally to them,
whether that’s raising a hand to host a virtual happy hour or spearheading an employee-
resource group, like a veterans network or a virtual meetup for parents.
“If you get involved enough, your efforts will absolutely be noticed come performance-
review time,” she said.
Quantify your contributions
So-called soft skills — things like how you communicate and how well you work with others
— are important in nearly any job.
Robert Kelley, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, offers
the following prompts to help remote workers evaluate their soft skills:
Did you mentor or help train any employees?
Did you pull people together for brainstorming sessions or to discuss how to work
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together on a project?
Did you help resolve bottlenecks or team conflicts?
Did people seek out your advice or help on their projects?
Remote employees who come to their performance appraisal prepared to quantify their
softer contributions give themselves an edge for a favorable conversation.
Track your accomplishments
For managers with several direct reports, closely monitoring the performance of each one
can be harrowing. Kelley suggests that employees track their own accomplishments. He
offers the following prompts to help virtual workers prepare:
How did your work add to the organization’s success — more profits, more sales,
more satisfied customers, more growth?
Did you initiate some new ideas or projects that contributed to the department or
company’s success?
Did you take the lead when you didn’t have to do so? What was the outcome?
These questions might require extra work, like digging through archived emails, Slack
messages, and performance dashboards. Still, time spent preparing for a successful
performance review could pay off in the form of a salary bump or a performance bonus.
Maintain professional decorum
Working from home can create a certain informality among teams, but Pyrzenski says
remote workers shouldn’t get too comfortable. A virtual workplace is still a workplace.
“Check on your body language during the video call as well — are you nodding or reacting to
the speaker? Are you using Zoom’s ‘reactions’ or typing ideas or questions into the chat?” she
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said. “These small gestures can go a long way in proving that you are an engaged member of
the team — and next time you are leading a call, you will see just how much they matter.”
Pyrzenski said remote workers should respond to messages with reasonable timing.
“Online, it’s hard to know if someone has seen our message or not. Whether it is an email,
Slack, Teams, or text — it’s important to respond to others as quickly as possible, especially if
a question or comment is aimed directly at you,” she said. “Even if you don’t have an answer
yet, simply confirming that you received the message can be very helpful to the person on
the other end of the chat. Sometimes even a thumb’s up or smiley-face emoji acknowledging
their message will do the trick.”
Maintaining solid digital hygiene goes a long way toward making a good online impression
with your boss going into your annual performance review.