How to Run Performance Reviews for Remote Software Developers

Performance reviews are a structured method to evaluate an employee’s job performance. They typically are used to assess progress, give feedback and identify opportunities for professional development. To be effective, performance review processes should be structured around your business goals, needs, and evolving working models.?

If you're managing a remote team, performance reviews can be an invaluable tool to encourage an open dialogue, identify individual strengths and key accomplishments, and develop a roadmap for any areas that need improvement.??

Should You Run Reviews for Contractors as Well as Permanent Team Members?

In our experience, performance reviews are beneficial for companies and staff alike, regardless of engagement type. For this reason, we recommend holding performance reviews for all team members, including permanent full-time or part-time staff, as well as contractors.?

Giving contractors feedback helps them to improve in future engagements (with your company or another), and also encourages you as a leader to reflect on the working relationship. By reviewing what went well and what didn’t, you are better equipped to hire in the future.

How to Prepare for Performance Reviews with Remote Developers

In your preparation for a performance review, there are four key questions to ask yourself before that will help build a solid foundation.

1. How Will You Assess Performance?

The first step is for your leadership team to establish a set of criteria and goals for evaluating your team members. Some questions you can ask yourself at this first stage include:

• Will you measure performance based on concrete goals, progress towards company KPIs, or both?
• What elements (e.g. technical abilities, domain knowledge) will you use to evaluate staff in various departments, roles, and seniorities??
• Will soft skills (e.g. collaboration, team communication, etc) be part of the overall evaluation?

The approach you choose will influence the data you need to collect and review in advance of the meeting.? If you are using metrics to evaluate staff, these should be communicated long before the performance review so the employee has a clear understanding of how their performance is to be evaluated.?

2. Who Should Perform Each Evaluation?

The person who will provide the best evaluation and feedback is the one most involved in their regular projects. They will have the insight, credibility, and authority to speak about someone else’s performance.?

3. How Has the Team Member Performed?

If you are measuring and collecting metrics, this is the time to use them to help you assess your people. Make sure you take some time to understand your metrics and review them for each team member in advance.

Your team should also review their metrics and comment on them in advance of the review. We recommend having everyone complete a self evaluation that includes spaces for them to reflect on the metrics relevant to them.

4. How Have You Been Assigning Tasks?

Tasks assigned to your team members will be an important part of their evaluation. It’s important to understand what they have been working on lately and what company goals have kept them busy. Getting into the details of their role and tasks will help you provide meaningful and relevant feedback and, moreover, will give you the tools to design an action plan in case there are recommendations to improve.?

How We Conduct Performance Reviews at Scalable Path

We follow a four-step process to run reviews for all Scalable Path team members (regardless of role or department).?

1. Leadership Meets to “Set the Tone.”

Before we begin to look at individual performance, we run a leadership meeting to map out how reviews will run. This includes:

• Desired outcomes. What do we want to come out of the performance reviews?
• What will be discussed. This includes raises, promotions, lay-offs, bonuses, etc.
• Develop an action plan for each team member. At this stage, we list key strengths and accomplishments as well as areas that need improvement. For the latter, we work on a plan to get the team member to where we want them to be.?
• Set the agenda and communicate to the team members.
• Gather evidence and concrete examples that can help people to improve.

2. Employees Complete a Self-Assessment and Managers Assess All Direct Reports

The team members should prepare the same way as leadership does for this instance. Some example questions you can ask them to prepare include:

• What 2-3 items do you think were your biggest accomplishments since the last review?
• How could your manager/team better support you to reach your goals?
• Are there any skills you don't feel like you're using in your current role??
• What are your key strengths?
• What 2-3 areas could you improve? How will you do this?

3. Employees Review Their Managers

During this stage, we also have employees review their manager: the direction they provide, focus, key accomplishments, and areas to improve.?

Ask them to describe your management style according to the following key aspects:

1. Direction & Coaching
2. Micromanagement level
3. Ability to delegate
4. Adaptability to change?
5. Conflict resolution
6. Communication and clarity

4. Conduct Reviews

For remote employees, start by initiating an engaging conversation. Remove distractions and ensure they do the same. Make sure you both have your cameras on. Start off with personal conversation (if you’re comfortable). This can help ensure active listening and effective communication.?

Start with the things that you know they are doing well, and continue to the aspects that should be improved. Toward the end, you should come up with an action plan and make sure the person you’re reviewing understands and is on board.?

Sometimes in a review, you’ll have to deliver tough feedback. In this case, make sure to plan ahead. Get your notes together, think through how to deliver the feedback, and be prepared for follow-up questions.

At the end of the review, discuss any raises, bonuses, equity, and/or benefits. Given the planning you’ve done to understand the employee’s performance against goals, you should be able to define whether you are giving someone a raise, bonus, promotion, or other benefits of some sort. This is heavily related to your company’s broader reward system.

Conclusion

In our view, performance reviews are a useful tool for evaluating remote staff, motivating your team, and receiving useful feedback. Of course, to be effective, they must be developed thoughtfully. Don’t simply adopt a traditional approach. Think deeply about your company goals and values, and what you want to achieve with performance reviews.?

A combination between casual check-ins and an annual assessment process might be that sweet spot you are looking for. From personal experience, we can vouch for it, as this is the approach we have adopted internally. A proper time frame between these instances will allow people to pay attention and listen to feedback without feeling micromanaged. Then, it's all about making these instances fair and meaningful by preparing them, making assessments based on data, and setting the right path forward without forgetting the human aspects and values that should come with this.