Employee review template: Growth, Impact, and Goals (GIG)

It’s time to move past standard annual employee reviews. Our research has found that employee reviews are often too infrequent, focus too much on past performance, and ultimately don’t help employees learn or grow. To try to make a better place for employees to develop their abilities as they develop their careers, SurveyMonkey put a new system in place. 

GIGs (which stands for growth, impact, and goals), are quarterly conversations every employee at SurveyMonkey has with their managers that focus on what impact the employee has made on the product, team, or culture; what they can do to have a greater impact in the future; and how they can further their career goals in the quarter ahead. 

Most importantly, GIGs are employee-led, which makes the employee review feel less like a performance evaluation and more like a conversation about what’s going well, and what needs to be improved.

Most of the employees we surveyed said they felt comfortable leading the conversation itself, especially when they used the 6-question template below to help guide their conversation. Simply send this survey to your employees to fill out in advance, then use their responses to help guide your conversation. 

The results of trying GIGs at your own organization might surprise you: Our internal surveys show 95% of employees say they are in sync with their managers on their impact, and 80% feel aligned on goals for the next quarter. Try it for yourself, or learn more about SurveyMonkey’s journey to reimagining how we give and receive feedback at work.

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