Performance appraisals are used to evaluate the duties and effectiveness of an employee. Data entry clerks usually receive performance appraisals twice per month in order to assess their typing/inputting speed, which is crucial to meeting the company’s turnaround time. If written correctly and creatively, performance appraisals can help your data entry agent improve in any area of his job performance. Following these tips will help you create an effective performance appraisal.

Write the job description on your appraisal sheet. List down data entry duties including word processing, typing, error checking and recording data into proprietary systems.

Write a general statement about the data entry agent. This statement will include her contributions and impact to the success of your company. For example: “Miss Smith keyed in more than 30 pages of information into our system error free, which resulted in more profits for our company.”

List the projects or duties the data entry agent has performed well, such as lack of errors in typing or attention to detail. If you are not sure, ask her to submit to you a list of six so you have something to work with.

List the things the data entry agent did not do well, such as slow turnover time of projects and spelling errors. Writing down the negative things will help you identify the areas that need improvement.

Write down and outline where the data entry agent needs improvement. Write them in a way that you don’t sound like you are fault-finding or personalizing. “Mr. Smith cannot finish inputting the spreadsheets because he goes on too many breaks.” Instead, say, “Mr. Smith can finish imputing the spreadsheets faster if he took less breaks.”