Adding Notes to Your Review

Adding notes throughout the year is a great way to document your accomplishments, track progress, and prepare for performance reviews. By recording important achievements as they happen, you'll have valuable information readily available when it's time to complete your appraisal.

Detailed notes help create more meaningful performance conversations by providing examples of your work, contributions, and growth.

Benefits of Taking Notes

Using notes throughout the performance cycle can help you:

• Create more detailed and meaningful performance reviews.
• Provide context that supports competency ratings.
• Encourage ongoing feedback between employees and managers.
• Reduce recency bias by capturing accomplishments throughout the year instead of relying on recent events.
• Save time during the review process by having relevant information readily available.

As organizations continue using Trakstar Perform, maintaining notes throughout the year helps streamline evaluations and improves the quality of employee reviews.

Note Examples and Use Cases

Employees: Add Notes About Your Performance

Employees can use notes to:

• Document accomplishments and completed projects.
• Record progress toward competencies.
• Capture important milestones or successes.
• Share personal circumstances that may have affected performance.

Many organizations incorporate employee self-appraisals into their review process, making ongoing notes a valuable resource when reflecting on performance.

How Notes Work

Each employee profile includes the competencies used during performance evaluations.

When creating a note, you can:

• Associate it with a specific competency so the feedback is organized and easy to reference later.
• Leave it as a General Note if it does not relate to a specific competency.

All notes are automatically time-stamped, making it easy to reference events during future performance discussions.

Depending on your permissions and your organization's configuration, notes may be:

• Visible to your manager.
• Kept private.

Managers may also use private notes to document observations or reminders that are not shared with employees.

Tips for Taking Effective Notes

To get the most value from notes:

• Record accomplishments as they happen rather than waiting until review time.
• Include enough detail to provide meaningful context.
• Make each note purposeful and relevant.
• Use privacy settings thoughtfully when available.
• Remember that sensitive feedback should still be discussed directly rather than relying solely on notes.

Create a Note

Step 1: Open My Notes

1. Log in to Trakstar Perform.
2. Select My Notes.

Step 2: Create a new note

1. Select New Note.

Step 3: Enter your note

1. Enter your note in the provided text field.
2. Choose whether the note should be:
   • Visible to your manager.
   • Private.
3. If applicable, associate the note with a specific competency or review element.
4. If the note is not associated with a specific element, it will be stored under General Notes.
5. Select Create Note.

Your note is saved in My Notes and will be available during your performance review.

Use Notes During the Score Phase

During the Score phase of your appraisal, you can reference notes you've collected throughout the review period.

If a note is associated with a specific competency:

1. Navigate to that competency while scoring your appraisal.
2. Select Notes (#) to view the related note.

You can copy the contents of the note into the competency comments if you want the information included in your completed review.

Any notes that are not linked to a specific competency or review element appear in the Summary Comments section at the bottom of the appraisal form.