1 Employment Law Deskbook § 5.01

Summary

Periodic performance evaluations may take the form of informal verbal reviews, but are more frequently reduced to writing and are recorded on a specialized form.

Done properly, performance evaluations are an effective instrument for defending employment discrimination or wrongful discharge claims because they provide contemporaneous documentation of an employee’s work deficiencies and misconduct. Moreover, the existence of properly prepared performance evaluations is likely to discourage litigation, if only because a potential litigant will give second thought to challenging a well-documented personnel decision. Courts continue to split over the issue of whether performance evaluations are tangible adverse employment actions.1