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Free tools for HR leaders

Performance review
phrases

Phrase banks for eight competencies, each across four rating bands and three voices. Written to describe behaviour, not personality. Free, no sign-up.

Pick the competency you are writing about. Each bank filters by rating band and by who is speaking, so the same competency reads correctly whether you are recognising strong work or opening a difficult conversation.

How these were written, and the five steps to a review that holds up ↓
748 phrases across 30 competencies

Accountability

Delivering what you said, and saying early when you will not.

26 phrases →

Adaptability and flexibility

Phrases that describe what someone actually did, not what they are like.

36 phrases →

Attention to detail

Rate what reached the next person, not how careful somebody looks.

24 phrases →

Coaching and mentoring

Rate what the other person can now do.

24 phrases →

Collaboration and teamwork

Rate what moved, not who was pleasant to work with.

26 phrases →

Communication

Rate whether the information moved, not how articulate somebody is.

28 phrases →

Creativity and innovation

Rate the ideas that got tested, not the ones argued.

24 phrases →

Critical thinking

Rate the reasoning, not the confidence it was delivered with.

24 phrases →

Customer service

Whether the problem stopped, not whether the call went well.

24 phrases →

Decision making

Rate the call and the timing, not just the outcome.

24 phrases →

Delegation

Handing over the task is not handing over the thinking.

24 phrases →

Dependability

Rate the routine commitments, not just the visible ones.

24 phrases →

Goal setting

A goal you cannot fail is not a goal.

24 phrases →

Initiative

What they did without being asked, and whether it was the work nobody owned.

26 phrases →

Integrity

Consistency across audiences, not agreeableness.

24 phrases →

Interpersonal skills

Whether friction gets resolved, not avoided.

24 phrases →

Job knowledge

Depth that is not shared is a risk too.

24 phrases →

Leadership

Rate the leadership behaviour, not the team's output.

26 phrases →

Learning agility

Rate what transferred, not what was attended.

24 phrases →

Listening

Rate what changed, not whether somebody stayed quiet.

24 phrases →

Organisation and planning

Whether the plan survived contact with reality.

24 phrases →

Problem solving

Whether the problem stayed solved, not how fast the answer arrived.

26 phrases →

Productivity

Rate output against quality, not against hours.

24 phrases →

Professionalism

Consistency under pressure, not politeness on a good day.

24 phrases →

Quality of work

Rate against the purpose, not against the brief.

24 phrases →

Resilience

Recovery and honesty about capacity, never endurance.

24 phrases →

Safety awareness

The standard is not negotiable, and the review should say so.

24 phrases →

Strategic thinking

Rate the trade-offs named, not the vision described.

24 phrases →

Time management

Commitments and notice are different behaviours. Rate them separately.

26 phrases →

Written communication

Rate whether the reader found the point.

24 phrases →
What are performance review phrases?

Ready-made sentences you can adapt when writing a review, so you spend your time on the evidence rather than the wording. They are a starting point, not a finished comment.

How these were written

Nothing here is calculated. Every phrase in every bank is built the same way: the situation, the observable behaviour, and the effect on the work or the team. That order matters because a review comment is read twice, once by the person who needs to know what to change, and once later by somebody deciding a promotion, a pay review or an exit. A comment that names only a trait fails both readers, which is why there is no phrase on this site that says somebody is a good communicator or a strong team player.

Assumptions
  • Every phrase is a starting point, not a finished comment. The specifics have to be real.
  • Four bands, three voices throughout. On a three or five-point cycle the band is a sorting device rather than a score.
  • Written for Australian workplaces and Australian English.
  • Competencies are grouped the way managers write, not the way frameworks list them. Adaptability and flexibility are one bank, as are collaboration and teamwork, because splitting them produces thinner lists that compete with each other.
  • Comments in the unsatisfactory band assume a dated record already exists and the issue has been raised before.
Sources

What to do about it

Good phrasing rescues a review that was already done properly. It cannot rescue one where nobody wrote anything down until the week it was due, which is the actual problem in most cycles.

1

Start from your notes, not from a phrase list

Open what you recorded during the year, pick the situations that really happened, then come back and find the wording. The other order produces a review that sounds fluent and says nothing.

2

Name the situation in every comment

The real project, the real quarter, the real result. Only one person could have earned it, and that is the point.

3

Match the band to your evidence, not to the conversation you want

A meets-expectations comment on somebody you privately consider a problem is how next year's difficult conversation ends up looking like it came from nowhere.

4

Pair every development comment with a support step

Training, a pilot, a pairing, a cadence. Criticism without a path forward produces defensiveness and reads badly to anyone reviewing the file later.

5
Where a tool helps

Read your reviews as a set

If the same competency is the gap across a function, that is not a dozen development plans. It is a capability gap in how the team was built.

One review is a person.
Twelve is a system.

Compono Develop maps capability against what a role actually requires, so the gap a review surfaces in November was visible as data well before it. That changes what the conversation can be about: not whether the gap is real, which is where most review disagreements stall, but what to do about it.

Step 5 asks what your reviews say together. That is very hard to answer from a folder of review documents and straightforward to answer from capability data.

See how it works
Compono Develop
4.7/5
rating across millions of learners

Common questions

How do I write a good performance review comment?

Name the situation, say what the person did, and note the effect. If your comment could describe anybody on the team, it is not finished.

Should I use the same phrase for two people?

Not without changing the specifics. Two identical comments in a review cycle is the fastest way to lose trust in the whole process.

What are the four rating bands?

Exceeds expectations, meets expectations, needs development, and unsatisfactory. If your cycle uses three or five points, treat the band as a sorting device rather than a score.

Why are the phrases grouped by voice as well as rating?

Because the same finding is worded differently depending on whether you are writing about somebody, coaching them, or writing your own self-evaluation. Most phrase lists ignore that and read wrong in two of the three situations.

Are these free?

Yes, and there is no sign-up. Copy what you need, or print what is showing.

These phrases are starting points, not finished comments. Change the specifics so each one is true of the actual person and the actual situation, because a comment that could describe anyone is the thing you were trying to avoid. Review comments can later be read as evidence in an employment matter, so anything you take from the unsatisfactory band should match a dated record you already hold. Last reviewed July 2026.

Next step

HR Glossary

Competency framework

The bands above are competency ratings. This is what a competency framework is, and how the levels are meant to work.

Read the definition →Related tool

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Build the scorecard →Talk to us

Bring us your review cycle

A conversation about what your reviews are telling you as a set, not a demo script.

Talk to us →