How to Conduct a Peer Review in the Workplace: A Complete Guide

Conducting effective peer reviews in the workspace requires preparation, structured sessions, constructive criticism, and follow-up actions to benefit both individuals and teams.

There is no one-size-fits-all peer-to-peer review process. But by following the steps in this guide, you’ll avoid common mistakes when implementing—or elaborating—the peer review process at your workplace. You’ll also find practical tips to guide you through every implementation stage.

How to conduct a peer review in your workplace

Follow these steps for a successful peer review process.

Set clear objectives for your process

Understanding and communicating where your peer review process fits into the big picture helps workers get engaged.

Start by answering a few essential questions:

1. Will the peer review be part of a 360 review system or a standalone operation?
2. Will peer reviews contribute to compensation decisions?
3. What is the purpose of the review and feedback? Should it strictly evaluate performance or provide development opportunities?

Once you have answered these questions, you can develop a comprehensive strategy that meets your organization’s goals. Let’s examine each question in more detail.

You can include peer reviews in a 360-degree process or 360-degree feedback or conduct them as a standalone process. Integrating peer reviews into annual employee performance reviews gives a more holistic picture of each employee.

You may prefer a standalone process if you lack the resources to host an organization-wide evaluation process or if it’s unnecessary to survey everyone for the scope of the evaluation. Since fewer workers are involved, it’s usually faster, too.

Regarding compensation decisions, workers often affect their peers more than their managers. Consider someone who has trouble communicating and possesses a role that requires frequent communication with colleagues. The colleagues will suffer the most from poor communication skills. Thus, it can make sense to include peer reviews in compensation decisions.

Additionally, consider the negative impact of unconscious bias. For example, an extroverted colleague can be well-liked and receive great feedback even if their performance is subpar.

Choosing the right format: Anonymous or non-anonymous feedback

Anonymity is a double-edged sword: it can allow for more frank feedback, but it can also inspire workers to give unnecessarily negative feedback since they aren’t held accountable against the person they evaluate.

A way to mitigate the potential negative consequences of anonymous interviews is to educate your reviewers. Inform your workers to only share things they’d be ready to have a constructive conversation about in person. Encourage everyone to include positive feedback in their critiques.

Ultimately, it depends on the culture at your workplace. If you’ve got a culture of transparency and regular evaluations, anonymity isn’t that critical.

Outline expectations for everyone giving and receiving feedback

Setting expectations is key to any successful work process, particularly sensible ones like evaluations. For peer reviews, you need to set expectations with both managers and employees.

Involve them in the preparations and planning as much as possible to increase employee engagement. Engagement is one of the main contributors to building a healthy workplace environment. With more eyes on the review process, you also reduce the risk of serious errors affecting its effectiveness later.

Also, communicate beforehand what type of feedback you’d like from the reviewers. Peer review feedback can focus on evaluating past performance or exploring future potential (feed-forward). Communicate what kind of feedback reviewers should focus on when reviewing their peers. That way, everyone can prepare for the type of meaningful feedback you target.

Define the peer selection process

Selecting the right peers for each reviewee is crucial to managing peer reviews. For example, if Employee A has never collaborated with Employee B, they won’t be able to leave meaningful feedback.

Similarly, if Employee C started last week, they may not have had enough time to assess their team members’ performance or problem-solving skills. In addition, it might not yet be time to receive feedback from peers.

Some great questions to ask yourself when selecting candidates would be:

• Who nominates peers?
• Who approves them?
• What are the terms for becoming a peer?
• What is the maximum number of peers per reviewee?

The person or team responsible for nominating peers should take into account a variety of factors, such as:

• Level of experience
• Diversity of opinion
• Level of trust

Limiting the number of peers who review an employee can also be beneficial, as too many voices can make the process challenging. The exact number depends on a few factors. For example, more complex roles call for more reviewers. The same goes for roles where teamwork and communication are key.

Smaller teams naturally have fewer options for reviewers. Another factor to consider is the purpose of the review: a performance review can motivate a small, focused group that knows the reviewee well. At the same time, developmental feedback can benefit from a broader range of reviewers. A rule of thumb is to go for 3 to 6 reviewers per worker.

The people giving peer feedback should have worked closely with the reviewee. However, a few additional criteria can help guide your selection.

Also, include diverse perspectives in the evaluation process—e.g., interns and senior employees— to better understand an employee’s performance and contributions to the organization.

Establish criteria for evaluation

To make the review process fair and focused, create clear, specific criteria that align with the objectives of your review process. For example, evaluating a social media manager based on their numerical skills or someone in a technical role based on their artistic mastery might be less relevant.

Some criteria to consider including:

• Job performance
• Communication skills
• Teamwork
• Problem-solving
• Time management
• Leadership skills
• Work quality
• Innovation
• Alignment with company values

Design a peer-review survey

Choosing relevant peer-review questions for your performance appraisal is crucial because poorly crafted surveys can undermine trust in the company and among colleagues.

When creating your review questions, make them specific and leave as little room for interpretation as possible. Additionally, include a mix of closed-ended questions (ratings) and open-ended questions that invite valuable insights and allow your peers to provide more context to their insights.

Some examples of peer review questions are:

1. What do you believe are this peer’s greatest strengths?
2. What specific examples of projects or tasks demonstrate your coworker’s strengths?
3. On a scale of 1 to 5, how well does your peer communicate with colleagues across teams? (1 = Not well at all, 5 = Extremely well)
4. Rate this peer’s ability to manage their time and prioritize tasks on a scale of 1 to 10. (1 = Very poorly, 10 = Extremely well)
5. Can you describe a situation where your peer faced a difficult problem and how they approached it?

We recommend keeping your peer review survey to 10-15 questions. This length is not too overwhelming and provides an accurate picture of the reviewee.

Once you picked the questions for your survey, add concrete instructions to accompany it. Some examples include:

• “When reviewing your colleague’s performance, focus on behavior over personal traits.”
• “Check your feedback for readability before submitting.”
• “Ensure your feedback is concise and to the point.”
• “Provide honest and constructive feedback you would like to receive to help you grow.”
• “Remember that the goal of the feedback should be to help your peers evolve and perform better.”

Incorporate job descriptions or competency models into the peer review process

The reviewers need to know what’s relevant to the specific role. To be eligible as reviewers, they should be fairly aware of this, but the job description or relevant competency models will add important details to consider when evaluating.

The goal is for everyone involved to get the best possible understanding of what their colleagues do and what they need to perform well. For example, imagine one of your graphic designers received this peer review:

“Your presentation skills are excellent, and you are adept at engaging your audience. However, I noticed you could improve your data analysis skills, particularly when using advanced statistical techniques and interpreting complex data. You should consider taking a course in data analytics to enhance your abilities in this area.”

This feedback is valid and reasonable, as data analysis skills can be valuable in various professional settings. However, advanced data analysis skills may not be directly relevant to a graphic designer’s core job functions, whose primary responsibilities involve creating visually appealing designs and communicating ideas through visual elements.

Linking peer review forms to job descriptions or competency models will prevent the above scenario.

Communicate with the entire organization

Explain the new peer review process’s methods, expectations, and timelines to everyone in the company.

Discuss how you will roll out peer reviews, timelines, goals, and expectations with your teams. Encourage open dialogue and questions for a transparent and meaningful review process.

Use multiple channels to communicate about the peer review process:

• Send emails
• Include it as a talking point during team meetings
• Post on your company’s intranet
• Host a pre-review meeting with a Q&A where workers can ask clarifying questions
• Touch on this topic during one-on-one meetings before the review and ask each worker to bring one question about the review process to ensure they’re on board

Train workers to give effective feedback to their peers

Without proper instruction, chances are high that peer reviews will be misunderstood and ineffective. Training reviewers to increase the chances of constructive and balanced feedback that leads to actual improvements in the evaluated areas.

Training may take extra effort, but it will help employees understand expectations and how they should give and receive feedback respectively. It will also make them more prepared and comfortable.

This training should teach them how to:

• Be specific and constructive
• Avoid generic phrases
• Comment on facts and evidence instead of opinions
• Keep language respectful and professional
• Provide actionable advice
• Evaluate results rather than personality

To ensure you drive your points home, include some peer review example phrases. Include both positive and negative examples to illustrate the dos and don’ts. It’s essential to make the training mandatory for all performance review participants. Otherwise, you’d just repeat the same feedback process over and over without any tangible progress.

Follow-up: Discuss peer feedback with employees and plan for the future

Effective feedback will reveal insights into your people’s strengths, areas for improvement, and unique challenges. Use this feedback to find opportunities for improvement and drive change.

Encourage workers to reflect on how they can leverage the valuable observations they’ve received to develop themselves. Consult with each employee to assess their growth goals and objectives and create a development plan tailored to their needs.

Then, develop an actionable timeline for when they should complete each task/goal and any milestones to ensure they are on the right track. Offer incentives for completing certain parts of the development plan, such as additional training opportunities or rewards.

From an HR perspective, examples of action planning after feedback include:

• Designing programs focusing on experiential learning, such as job shadowing or apprenticeships, where employees can learn by doing
• Creating interactive materials that promote engagement, such as videos or podcasts

Lastly, remember that the peer review doesn’t stop once the feedback is collected and shared. Monitor progress, provide continuous support to make the most of it, and ensure your people feel supported.

Peer review template

Use this free peer review survey template as a foundation for your peer reviews. Ensure all questions match your company’s roles, feedback culture, and performance review process. Remove or add questions to create an effective survey.

The dos and don’ts of setting up a constructive peer-review process

Creating an effective peer review system promotes open feedback among colleagues and helps them better understand their strengths and weaknesses. Here are some tips on how to set up a constructive peer review process.

Do set up a SOP

Standard Operating Procedures save time and reduce the risk of misunderstandings. Create a consistent format for conducting reviews that you can use for every performance management cycle. Craft structured forms or templates to guide feedback. Consider using a software solution to organize and automate the process.

Do provide support

Assign managers or HR personnel to answer questions and address concerns to support your workers. Otherwise, they may interpret questions incorrectly, and you won’t get the value you could from the peer reviews.

Don’t forget to document your process and make the information easily accessible to everyone

Remembering the documentation aspect is imperative when setting up a peer review process.

A clearly documented process keeps everyone on the same page regarding expectations, deadlines, and other rules.

Document any changes or amendments in one place—having quick access to that information is key.

HR teams using Deel Engage often use training journeys that are complimentary to performance review cycles. These introduce the tool to participants (different training materials for employees and managers) and teach participants how to give and receive constructive feedback.

Don’t forget to create precise peer nomination and approval rules

Clear guidelines ensure that the peer selection process is fair and objective, reducing the risk of personal bias or favoritism. Other nomination criteria can include minimum tenure and minimum performance requirements.

The peer nomination process could be a mix of:

• Self-nomination
• Managerial input
• Peer voting

Self-nomination means that workers express their interest in reviewing. Managerial input is recommendations from managers, and peer voting means that a worker can express a desire to be reviewed by specific colleagues.

Don’t overcomplicate the process

Avoid creating a process that’s too complex or time-consuming. To respect your workers’ other commitments, keep the peer evaluation as clear and straightforward as possible. It will pay off in higher engagement and potentially higher-quality feedback.

Automate peer reviews with Deel Engage

Peer reviews can drive motivation and increase performance, but matching employees with the right reviewers can be time-consuming.

Deel Engage’s performance management module simplifies this process with smart assignments and automation:

• Easily set up growth-oriented 360-degree feedback cycles
• Enable multi-rater feedback with rating or open-ended questions or even a mix of the two
• Gain valuable insights into employee performance, skills, and potential
• Set rules for your peer nomination process, such as approval responsibilities, the maximum number of peers to review per reviewer, the maximum number of peers to nominate per employee, etc.
• Connect the dots between performance reviews, employee training and growth, and future career paths
• Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free

Book a demo to see how our solutions will help you build a high-performance workforce.