The List of 50 Effective Self Appraisal Comments

Self-appraisal comments or self-evaluation mostly form the first step in a performance review program. While this offers an excellent opportunity for an employee to accurately evaluate their performance elaborate on their achievements and areas of improvement, most of us do not do complete justice to this step.

As a result, we misrepresent our work by either overestimating or underestimating our efforts. To do complete justice to oneself, an employee needs to use the art of writing with the science of data.

If done correctly, this exercise can provide meaningful data that can help reward the right attributes, plan training interventions, re-assess the need for realignment with organization objectives at regular intervals, and help employees in their daily and long-term performance projects.

Here you will find 50 self-appraisal comments and phrases that will help you write a performance review for yourself.

While self-appraisals are meant to be our best friend and help us in getting a crisp, clear understanding of our work and learning, it somehow does not come on our priority at all.

This could be because of:

1. Lack of time.
2. Sheer laziness.
3. Feeling that your work is anyways known to your manager.
4. Unable to recall the information while doing self-appraisal.
5. Not seeing the importance of doing it elaborately.

Influence of others and pre-set notions such as whatever we write, managers will anyways give the score they want or let me write only good things about me as the manager will anyways criticize or as I am aspiring for promotion or good hike let me only write thoughts that show me in good light can also hinder the objectivity of this exercise.

This blog will take you through the importance of self-appraisal, how to write self-appraisal comments, and 50 examples for performance reviews to clear any doubts.

Why is self-appraisal important?

For an organization to continue succeeding, it is important that all its employees precisely know what they are doing. At all times, there must be an alignment of individual efforts towards the organization's objective.

There must be a sense of accountability, a will to introspect and learn, and a sense of accomplishment at each level. Hence, an employee must assess themselves correctly with supporting data points.

As an individual, it is every employee’s responsibility to do justice to the work they have made and their contributions by presenting it in the best possible manner they can.

We also hear that the managers didn’t provide the right or constructive feedback. They didn’t gauge an employee’s performance correctly or were not fair in their scoring – well, it may be impractical to expect the managers to remember all your accomplishments and then score you.

The foundation for a great review process starts with writing a performance review for yourself.

How to write self-appraisal comments?

Here are the steps following that can teach you how to write your self-evaluation and help write a performance review for yourself.

1. Track your work regularly

Get in a regular habit of making your notes. You surely would not remember it all when you get down to writing your self-appraisal.

Keep track of your improvements from the last feedback, your contributions, the training you did, and the challenges you faced.

In an ideal scenario, it would be good to start maintaining a performance document at the beginning of an assessment period and record your performance under the following categories month on month.

• Contributions and achievements
• Areas of improvements
• Extra initiatives
• Feedback received and action taken
• Training and certifications and so on

2. Prepare a draft

Do not be in a hurry to click on the ‘Submit’ button in your self-appraisal form. Working in the draft mode will allow you to read, review, amend your inputs and refer to data points.

Remember, presentation matters! Be sure to check on grammar, sentence formation, and overall presentation of your thoughts.

3. Take time to complete it

Usually, the tendency is to start working on self-evaluation when HR sends reminders. The priority then is to complete the exercise and, in an attempt, to meet the timelines – the quality of content is compromised to a great extent.

The 1st two points can come in handy if you are crunched on time. If you do not follow this practice, it surely will be good to start early to have ample time to refer to historical data and prepare your write-up.

4. No achievement is a small achievement

We often don't understand how to do self-appraisal assessments. While working on self-appraisals, there is always a dilemma – how much self-praise is a lot?

Would it look better if I were more critical of myself? Will it be considered arrogance if I write about every achievement of mine – big or small?

Well, the whole intent of self-appraisal is to provide an avenue for an employee to express and share their inputs. Utilize it to the best.

You can probably consider the style of writing – see what works best – paragraphs or bullet points. Would you want to make a list of small ones and describe the big achievements?

Find ways to make your data crisp yet cover all the details you want to present.

5. Be realistic

Do not under or overestimate yourself. Be realistic about scoring your work. Remember to do this exercise to benefit your learning and intellectual growth first.

There is no fun in over-rating yourself and then having an unpleasant discussion during review stages and getting demotivated about your final rating.

50 Self-appraisal comments and phrases

With data in place and time set aside to write self-appraisal, it is time management to get creative in writing the review. You may have the best of work to write about.

Still, if you cannot articulate your thoughts and express them in a crisp, engaging, and data-based manner, you may see a repetition of content and an excessively lengthy yet less impactful self-review.

Here we will take some commonly known functional and additional skills and suggest fifty self-appraisal comments and phrases for your reference, which can be used in conjunction with your project details to describe your work.

Note that these phrases will be meaningful when used along with crisp data points/supporting instances.

Let us now look at a couple of self-appraisal comments examples that can help in self-evaluation for performance review.

Customer support

1. I have handled X tickets and resolved Y% of tickets in Z amount of time.

2. Service SLAs maintained for Y% of time.

3. I have received appreciation from the client for handling the critical case [mention the details].

4. While my interaction with A client is seamless, I need to strengthen my working relationship with B client.

5. Based on my rapport and team delivery, I pitched in for a new assignment, and we received [provide the details on the new assignment].

6. I was selected as the KT point of contact by the client for the X project.

Business communication

7. I am always polite and respectful during my written and verbal communications.

8. I set my expectations with other stakeholders.

9. I document the meaningful discussions for later reference.

10. I have handled escalation emails with ease and composure.

11. I participate in team collaboration and idea-sharing forums and contribute ideas. [if you have any ideas that helped in process improvements, you can add them here].

12. I share feedback constructively that helps in acceptance, assimilation, and action.

Team handling and collaboration

13. I deal with my team respectfully and acknowledge everyone’s presence.

14. I invite fresh ideas of process improvements from the team.

15. I encourage open dialogue in the team.

16. In absence of my Team leader, I take the team huddle every day.

17. I planned a team outing and team bonding exercise that involved [can share the details here].

18. I collaborated with other departments on the recent RFI and sales pitch.

19. I work with the support teams in driving their initiatives in my team.

20. I am the engagement POC for my team and plan for team celebrations and budget utilization.

21. My team participated in inter-corporate sports/cultural events.

Learning and development

22. I attended X training on the following subjects [mention the issues].

23. I have incorporated the following learning in my daily task, which has helped [enter the details on how it has helped your work].

24. I encourage my team to indulge in self-learning and attend training constantly.

25. In X duration, L&D penetration in my team is at Y%.

26. I introduced the concept of cross-training and upskilling within the team, thereby enhancing the team’s learning and ensuring business continuity.

27. As part of IDP (individual development plan), I am participating in a leadership job shadowing and mentoring program.

Process improvements and innovations

28. I worked on X projects and made a saving of Y person-hours.

29. I constantly strive to add more quality by automating manual processes.

30. I constantly contribute fresh ideas within the organization beyond my scope of work too.

31. I am undergoing Quality concept training [providing details and certification level].

Additional initiatives and responsibilities

32. I took X number of initiatives beyond my regular task in Y duration.

33. For the “A” initiative, I also received appreciation from the Business head.

34. I could not devote time to X initiative taken due to [add details].

35. Due to a lack of resources and understanding, I could not complete the Y initiative.

36. I participated in the DD/MM/YY CSR drive and helped [detail the contribution].

37. I am part of a corporate cultural group.

38. I volunteered to [provide details].

Improvement areas

39. I need to improve my time management and problem-solving skills.

40. I can work on enhancing my people management skills.

41. I can get more proactive in gauging my team sentiments.

42. I delegate tasks within the team but eventually, I get down to doing it on my own. I need to hence work on upskilling and supporting my team.

43. I can further improve my interviewing skills.

44. I identify the need for advanced excel and presentation skills training.

45. I need to work on balancing between work and personal time.

Discipline and compliance

46. I am punctual, always log in on time, and complete my work timings.

47. I ensure I follow IT and data security safety guidelines.

48. I do not indulge in password and access card sharing.

49. I contribute to the safety of the organization by reporting matters.

50. I participate in compliance projects run by various departments.

Conclusion

Self-evaluation is a must. Unless you know your actions, how can you expect to improve yourself? Self-appraisal comments can be an overwhelming experience as we usually do not know how to do self-appraisal assessments.

You can opt to take the help of some self-help books, contact your training department for assistance, and then try this technique of looking and evaluating yourself as a third person.

But the key for this technique to work will be that you stay honest in capturing the accomplishments and improvements correctly.

Taking periodic feedback from your stakeholders will also help you gather the correct data and aid in a constructive self-appraisal.

Writing self-appraisals might bore you at some time, but it's the need of the hour because it's you who know about your strengths and weaknesses better than the others.

Self-appraisal is not just about evaluating your actions but is more about looking at things from a different point of view.

Remember, if you articulate and present the data in a correct, precise, and accurate manner, you will be able to do justice to your work and carve a learning and upskilling path for future growth.