Ryan King

Performance reviews for 22 staff members in one afternoon

I manage a warehouse team of 22 people. Mid-year performance reviews are theoretically important but in practice I was writing 22 documents under time pressure and they ended up being rushed and generic. "John has performed well this period. He shows up on time and works hard." That's not useful feedback for John. This year I changed my approach. I spend 5 minutes before each review making notes on the specific person — what they've done well, what they need to improve, any specific incidents or achievements. Then I paste those notes into Claude and ask for a structured performance review that's specific, balanced, and actionable. What comes back is a real document that references real things, not generic performance review language. I still have the conversation with each person myself. The document is the starting point, not the whole thing. John's review this year said specific things about his improvement in the picking accuracy numbers and his initiative on the new racking system. He told me it was "the most useful feedback I've ever gotten in a review." That's the bar we should all be hitting.