Reviews are a great opportunity to think about what you want from your career and get some feedback that might help you achieve your goals. Hopefully you’re in a workplace that welcomes feedback and supports you when you bring up challenges you might be facing.

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Here are some tips on how to prepare for a performance review:

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Evaluate Your Performance

Look at your position description and evaluate what you do, what you’ve achieved and maybe the things that don’t get done. Think about what you’ve enjoyed doing the most, the things you’ve enjoyed the least and what successes you’ve had. It’s also good to recognise any projects or extra tasks you worked on that aren’t included in your position description.

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Your Manager and Your Team

Working well with your manager is important to feel part of the team and feel listened to. What sort of relationship do you have with your manager? Think about what you like and works for you, and also what can be improved. Thinking about the wider team is important too. Do you work well together? Is there enough collaboration?

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Company Culture and Values

Company culture is an important part of where you work and your day-to-day interactions with co-workers. Do you think this can be improved? The values play very heavily to what the company culture is. Do they actually reflect what the company values?

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Benefits and Perks

A company’s benefits and perks aren’t the be all and end all of any job, but they can have a big impact on how appreciated you feel and the culture of the workplace. For example, flexibility is a very popular topic at the moment, and you might want to think about what flexibility you want. If there are perks or benefits you’re seeing at other companies and think it could work well where you are, suggest it.

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Your Goals

It’s a topic that we bring up a lot, but getting clear about what you want from your career both in the short term and long term is key in understanding what you need from your performance review. Knowing what you want will help you work out how to get there, or if you’re already on the right path. If there’s more you want to be doing, for example, more training, this is a great chance to talk about it.

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Salary

Talking about your salary can be difficult, especially if you’re wanting a pay rise. But it’s an important topic. If you need some tips about how to tackle this, give our dos and don’ts of negotiating a higher salary a read.

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Preparing for your performance review is important. You don’t want to go in not knowing what to talk about. Knowing what you’ve achieved, what you need to work on and any suggestions you have should make you look all the more professional.