Mid-year performance reviews offer a great space to pause, take stock of progress, tackle any challenges, and adjust goals as needed.
But they can often feel like a chore. Mainly because the preparation can take up a lot of time.
But what if these check-ins didn’t have to feel like a dreaded task? What if they could actually become a powerful way to boost employee growth and bring your team closer together?
With the right tools in hand, you can make these reviews do wonders for your performance management strategy. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to make mid-year employee performance reviews impactful for everyone involved.
What Is a Mid-Year Performance Review?
Think of the mid-year review as a strategic checkpoint in your annual performance management cycle. These reviews offer a dedicated time for managers to have structured one-on-one conversations with their team members to discuss progress towards goals and overall performance during the first half of the year, as well as identify areas for development.
Functioning as a vital point for course correction, the mid-year review allows for necessary adjustments to strategies and objectives before the year ends. Often less formal than year-end reviews, mid-year check-ins emphasize employee growth, development, ongoing feedback, and open communication, making them a valuable tool for proactive performance management.
Some organizations may also incorporate a mid-year assessment focusing on key performance metrics (KPIs) to provide a data-driven perspective on employee contributions. The process is often tailored to an organization’s unique needs and culture. But let’s zoom out for a moment.
A recent study by software company Workhuman, surveying 1,000 full-time U.S. employees, revealed that nearly half (49%) of companies stick to annual or semiannual performance reviews. While experts agree that the only thing worse than yearly performance reviews is skipping them altogether, there’s some good news: only 7% of companies leave employees in the dark about their performance.
Even better, 28% of organizations are stepping up their performance management processes with quarterly assessments, ensuring more frequent feedback and growth opportunities.
🔥 Hot Tip: The one tip that can make all the difference during mid-year performance check-ins? Templatize your conversations. For instance, the Performance Review Template offers the perfect platform to structure these conversations in a productive yet personalized manner.
Why Mid-Year Performance Reviews Matter
Mid-year performance reviews offer significant advantages for everyone involved in the performance management process. Let’s look at how it breaks down for different stakeholders involved in the process. ✨
| For employees | For managers | For organizations |
| Ask for feedback on how you’re doing and where you can shine even brighter | Provide valuable feedback and guidance to help your team members grow and improve | Gather important data on how everyone’s performing and any challenges they’re facing |
| Work with your manager to tweak your goals if things have changed, ensuring you’re always focused on what matters most | Locate any bumps in the road that might be holding your team back and find solutions proactively | Show your team that you value their contributions, leading to a more positive and engaged workplace |
| Discuss your career goals and see what opportunities might be on the horizon | Revisit and adjust team goals to make sure they still align with the bigger picture | Make sure everyone’s individual and team goals are in sync with the company’s main objectives |
| Work with your manager to tweak your goals if things have changed – ensuring you’re always focused on what matters most | Get a better sense of what drives your employees and how satisfied they are in their roles | Recognize and appreciate your employees’ efforts, fostering a stronger sense of commitment and employee engagement |
| Know that your hard work is being seen and appreciated, giving your motivation a fantastic boost | Tackle any performance hiccups before they turn into major problems | Make necessary adjustments to keep the company moving towards its strategic goals |
| Speak up about any challenges you’re facing so you can get the support you need to succeed | Work with specific team members to solve any unique challenges they are facing | Support your employees’ growth and development, and ensure that top talent is retained for longer periods |
🧠 Did You Know? When it comes to performance management and reviews, employees are showing growing confidence in AI’s capabilities. While only about half of employees say their company has structured processes for career guidance, 53% of employees — and an impressive 84% of regular AI users — believe AI can outperform human managers in identifying the skills and development paths needed for career growth. However, employees still value human managers for coaching and navigating these career moves.
Key Elements of an Effective Mid-Year Review Process
An effective mid-year review process incorporates several key components to ensure a meaningful and productive experience for both employees and managers. These elements work together to provide a structured framework for assessing performance, providing feedback, and planning for future development.
🎯 Goal setting
Review the goals set at the beginning of the performance cycle to assess progress, identify any goals that have been met or exceeded, and determine if any adjustments are needed based on changes in priorities or circumstances. For new hires, this could be based on their individual 30-60-90 day plan.
🔁 Feedback mechanisms
From surveys to structured meetings, these tools provide opportunities for managers and employees to share feedback on performance, progress, challenges, and areas for improvement. This includes constructive criticism as well as positive reinforcement of achievements and contributions.
📝 Self-assessment
Encourage employees to reflect on their own performance, accomplishments, challenges faced, and areas where they feel they need to improve. It is a critical step for building self-awareness among employees and generates valuable input for the review discussion.
💁🏽♂️ Manager evaluation
The manager assesses their direct reports based on performance, progress towards goals, demonstration of core competencies, and overall contribution to the team and organization. This evaluation should be based on specific examples and data, where possible.
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How to Prepare for and Conduct a Mid-Year Performance Review
With the right approach, mid-year reviews become valuable opportunities for meaningful connection and growth. Think of them as pit stops in a race – a chance to refuel, check your bearings, and make necessary adjustments before crossing the finish line.
Here’s how to make it happen, step by step.
Step 1: Schedule the review meeting in advance
To schedule a mid-year review meeting, start by planning ahead and setting the meeting well in advance. This allows both parties sufficient time to prepare and ensures a more productive discussion.
✅ Attach the performance review form to the calendar invite. This step helps focus the conversation and keeps the discussion on track.
✅ Include a clear agenda in the invite, highlighting key topics such as achievements, areas for improvement, goals, and next steps. A well-structured agenda ensures all critical points are addressed and provides a roadmap for a meaningful and effective review.
To help track these important meetings, you can create calendar events with automatic reminders using AI-powered calendar tools like ’s Calendar. Ask Brain, the built-in AI assistant within , to find an optimal time for the meeting and schedule it. This way, you get to outsource admin tasks like scheduling to AI and that means more time for meaningful prep!
💡Pro Tip: Set up recurring tasks to ensure mid-year reviews become a consistent practice for your team.
Step 2: Prepare comprehensive documentation
As you prepare for the meeting, be sure to gather all relevant quantitative and qualitative data, including goal progress, project contributions, and accomplishments since the beginning of the year. Also, compile notes from previous check-ins and any feedback received from colleagues.
A built-in AI assistant like Brain can make a world of difference when pulling from previous conversations and insights from older meeting summaries and task updates.
Once you have all the information, leverage Docs to create a central repository for performance documentation. This will provide a collaborative space where you can invite employees to contribute their perspectives. You can also use dedicated templates for consistency across all team members’ reviews and link to specific tasks or projects as evidence of performance.
Step 3: Encourage self-assessment
Ask employees to reflect on their performance before the review meeting. Have them document achievements, challenges, and areas where they feel they need support or development opportunities. Use custom feedback forms to standardize the self-assessment process. Include fields for accomplishments, challenges, and development goals to ensure you’re collecting consistent information from everyone on your team.
Step 4: Kick off the meeting (with positive recognition)
Start the review conversation by acknowledging specific achievements and contributions. This sets a constructive tone and helps the employee feel valued before discussing areas for improvement.
🌻 Here’s an example:
“Sara, I wanted to begin by highlighting how your redesign of our onboarding materials has made a tremendous impact. Not only did you complete it two weeks ahead of schedule, but we’ve seen a 30% increase in new hire satisfaction scores since implementation. The way you gathered input from multiple departments and incorporated diverse perspectives really demonstrates your collaborative approach and attention to detail.“
Step 5: Discuss progress toward goals
Next, you’ll want to review the goals set at the beginning of the year and assess progress made. Instead of relying on memory or scattered notes, use visual trackers to make this conversation more productive.
With Goals, you can transform abstract objectives into concrete, measurable targets that clearly show progress with percentage indicators and color-coded status updates.
The platform lets you track various goal types — whether they’re numerical targets (like “increase sales by 15%”), monetary goals (such as “reduce department expenses by $5,000”), or task-based achievements.
Identify any goals that have been completed, those that are on track, and those that may need adjustment.
🌻 Case study: At the University of Pennsylvania, performance reviews are designed to be a powerful opportunity for reflection, development, and growth. A core part of the process focuses on setting clear, purposeful goals in four key areas:
- Performance and operational goals: Focus on everyday responsibilities, emphasizing accuracy, timeliness, quality, and resource management
- Project and initiative goals: Highlight time-bound projects that go beyond routine work, often tied to strategic priorities or innovation
- Competency and interpersonal development goals: Encourage growth in soft skills like communication, collaboration, initiative, and leadership
- Professional development goals: Support ongoing learning through training, certifications, conferences, and other career-advancing opportunities
This structured goal-setting approach helps staff stay aligned with their roles while also growing in meaningful ways.
Step 6: Address development areas constructively
Approach areas needing improvement with specific examples and a focus on growth. Frame it as constructive feedback, aka opportunities for development, rather than criticism of past performance. For instance, you could say:
“I noticed the customer service ratings on your last three projects were slightly below our benchmark. Let’s look at what might be causing this and how we can build your strengths in this area.”
For these delicate conversations, use visual data to transform abstract feedback into actionable insights. Pull performance metrics into customized Dashboards where detailed charts and graphs can help unveil common patterns as well as progress. These interactive displays highlight both strengths and growth areas at a glance, turning potentially uncomfortable conversations into collaborative problem-solving sessions.
With that, you’ve covered the most important aspects of your mid-year performance conversation and hopefully uncovered some interesting data and insights. Now what?
Turning Mid-Year Insights into Action Plans
The real value of a mid-year review lies in what happens afterward. Don’t let those valuable insights gather dust! The second half of the year offers a perfect opportunity to put feedback into practice and make meaningful progress.
Refine your goals with clarity and purpose
Take what you’ve learned during the review and transform it into refreshed, energized goals for the remaining months. Be specific about what needs to change or continue, and why it matters to both the individual and the organization.
Connect the goals directly to personal growth and organizational impact.
With Goals, you can easily update existing targets or create new ones that reflect your adjusted priorities. The platform’s flexibility allows you to structure goals in multiple dimensions — tracking numerical metrics for quantifiable outcomes (like conversion rates), financial targets for business impact, or task completion for project-based work.
Create a roadmap for growth and development
The difference between wishful thinking and actual development lies in the details.
When an employee needs to improve their presentation skills, create a progressive sequence: first mastering small team presentations, then departmental updates, before tackling executive-level pitches. Each milestone should include specific resources (like training videos, mentor sessions, or practice opportunities) attached directly to the tasks.
’s Task Management features make it simple to create a visual development roadmap with dependencies, priorities, and deadlines.
By establishing dependencies between learning tasks, practice sessions, and application opportunities, you create a logical progression that builds competence systematically. This visual approach helps employees understand not just what they need to improve, but how each step builds upon previous learning.
Build in regular checkpoints to maintain momentum
The time between mid-year and year-end reviews can feel long.
Combat this by establishing a rhythm of brief check-ins to discuss progress, remove obstacles, and celebrate wins along the way. You can leverage Automations to schedule these follow-up conversations automatically.
Set triggers based on specific dates or completion of key milestones, ensuring that development remains a priority without creating additional administrative work.
Mid-Year Review Best Practices for Remote and Hybrid Teams
Conducting effective mid-year performance reviews for remote and hybrid teams requires you to employ a sharper lens. Here are some helpful tips to make the process easier:
✅ Set crystal-clear expectations: Document performance standards, communication protocols, and deadlines in shared resources that remote team members can reference anytime. Update these guidelines regularly as projects evolve.
✅ Schedule more frequent, shorter check-ins: Implement biweekly 15-minute video calls to catch potential misalignments before they become problems. These regular touchpoints help replace the spontaneous office interactions that remote workers miss.
✅ Create deliberate connection opportunities: Establish virtual coffee breaks or team-building activities that don’t focus on work tasks. Consider monthly “remote retreats” where team members can share personal wins and challenges.
✅ Measure outcomes, not hours: Develop result-based metrics that focus on what was accomplished rather than when or how long someone worked. Define success by impact and quality of deliverables instead of activity levels.
✅ Gather 360-degree feedback: Collect input from 5-7 colleagues who regularly interact with the employee to counterbalance the limited visibility in remote settings. Include peers from different departments who collaborate with them.
✅ Recognize remote work competencies: Add specific remote work skills to your evaluation criteria, such as digital communication effectiveness, self-management, and the ability to maintain productivity despite distractions.
✅ Acknowledge adaptation efforts: Recognize employees who have successfully navigated remote work challenges, showing appreciation for their flexibility and resilience during changing circumstances.
Ace Your Mid-Year Performance Review Prep With
Mid-year reviews aren’t just another box to check—they’re strategic inflection points that can transform individual performance and team dynamics. The most effective organizations have discovered that these mid-point check-ins serve as crucial bridges between goal-setting and achievement.
By leveraging ’s versatile ecosystem of interconnected tools, you can elevate these conversations from potentially awkward evaluations to dynamic, data-informed strategy sessions. From collaborative documentation that captures multiple perspectives to visual dashboards that make progress unmistakable, the platform transforms abstract performance concepts into tangible, actionable insights.
Remember that the true measure of a successful mid-year review isn’t just what happens during the meeting — it’s what changes afterward. Sign up for a free account and make your mid-year performance more impactful!
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