Talent Review Pre-Work Manager Checklist

This template covers the manager prep work that should happen before a talent review session: performance assessment, evidence collection, promotion-readiness notes, risk flags, and career-interest conversations. It is designed to produce a consistent packet for each employee so leaders can compare people using the same inputs. It is not the talent review meeting itself. Use it as the pre-work that feeds the session.

The direct manager usually owns the checklist, with input from the DRI for the employee if your process uses shared ownership. In some organizations, a skip-level manager or HR partner reviews the completed pre-work for consistency. The key is that one person is accountable for each checklist item so the output is complete before the meeting. If multiple people contribute, assign one owner to consolidate the final version.

Use it on the cadence of your talent review cycle, such as quarterly, semiannual, or annual reviews. It can also be reused for off-cycle calibration sessions or succession planning discussions when leaders need a current view of performance and growth. The recurrence should match your review rhythm, not an arbitrary weekly or monthly schedule. If your process changes, update the recurrence_config to match the actual meeting cadence.

Managers should collect specific, verifiable examples of performance, outcomes, behaviors, and development progress. Good evidence includes completed goals, project results, customer feedback, peer feedback, and notes from coaching conversations. Avoid vague statements like "doing well" without examples, because they are hard to compare across employees. The checklist should push managers toward concrete observations rather than memory-based summaries.

The most common mistake is arriving with opinions but no evidence, which makes the review session subjective and slow. Another issue is mixing performance assessment with compensation decisions when the process is supposed to separate them. Managers also often skip career-interest conversations, which leaves leaders guessing about mobility and development. This template helps prevent those gaps by making each input explicit before the meeting.

Yes. You can tailor the checklist items for individual contributors, people managers, technical roles, sales roles, or operations roles while keeping the same overall structure. Many teams also add level-specific prompts for readiness, scope, and leadership behaviors. Keep the items independently verifiable so the checklist still works across teams and review cycles. Customization is most useful when it reflects the actual criteria used in your talent framework.

This checklist can sit alongside your HRIS, performance management tool, or document repository as the manager's pre-work task list. It works well when linked to employee profiles, review packets, or meeting agendas so managers can attach evidence in one place. If you use Kanban or task tracking, set WIP limits so managers do not start too many pre-work items at once. The goal is to make the review packet easy to complete and easy to audit.

Start with a small pilot group and give managers a sample completed checklist so they can see the expected level of detail. Clarify the deadline, the DRI, and what counts as acceptable evidence before the first cycle begins. A short calibration session helps leaders align on standards and avoid inconsistent scoring. After the pilot, refine the prompts based on where managers struggled or over-explained.

Ad-hoc notes tend to be uneven, incomplete, and hard to compare across employees or teams. This checklist creates a repeatable pre-work process so each manager brings the same categories of information to the review. That improves meeting quality, reduces back-and-forth, and makes it easier to spot gaps before the session starts. It also leaves a clearer record of what was considered and why.