Performance reviews for small agency teams

Most small agencies do one of two things: nothing, or a corporate annual review process copied from a company with an HR department. Nothing is bad because people leave without you knowing why. The corporate version is bad because it takes a week, everyone dreads it, and the output is a rating nobody uses.

At eight or fifteen people you need something in between: quarterly, 45 minutes, one page written in advance by both sides, and completely separate from the pay conversation.

Why annual doesn't work here

Agencies change too fast. Someone's role at a twelve-person shop can shift twice in a year — new service line, a big client leaves, someone quits and their accounts get redistributed. A review written against last January's expectations is reviewing a job that no longer exists.

More practically: an annual review means feedback gets stockpiled. Twelve months of small observations arrive at once, which is the worst possible way to deliver any of them, and by then the person has been doing the wrong thing for a year because nobody mentioned it in March.

Quarterly is short enough that nothing gets stockpiled and long enough that you're not doing this constantly. Four times a year, 45 minutes each, is three hours per person annually. That's affordable.

The rules that make it work

Both sides write first. Same template, exchanged 24 hours before. This is the whole trick — it removes the ambush, gives quiet people equal footing, and means the conversation starts from the second paragraph.

Separate pay from review. Not the same meeting, ideally not the same month. Once money is on the table, everything said about development is heard as justification for a number. Do reviews quarterly and pay annually, on a fixed date everyone knows.

No ratings. A 1-5 scale in an eight-person team is a comparison, and everyone knows exactly who they're being compared to. It creates resentment and tells you nothing you couldn't say in a sentence.

Nothing should be a surprise. If something serious comes up for the first time in a quarterly review, the failure is yours. Reviews summarise; they don't break news.

Write down what you agreed and open the next review with it. Otherwise you'll have the same conversation four times.

Where a conversation stops being about development and becomes about capability, conduct or continued employment, that's a different process with legal implications that vary by country. Take local advice rather than improvising.

The one-page template

Both people complete this. Same questions.

QUARTERLY REVIEW — [Name] — [Quarter]
Completed by: [self / manager]

1. WHAT WENT WELL
   Two or three specific things from this quarter. Name projects.
   Not "good attitude" — "took over the [X] account when the
   deadline moved and kept the client informed without being asked."

2. WHAT WAS HARD
   Two or three. Include things that were hard because of us —
   unclear briefs, late assets, a client we should have managed
   better. This section is where you find out what's broken in
   the agency.

3. WHAT I'D CHANGE ABOUT HOW I WORK
   One or two. Self first, then the manager's version. If both
   people name the same thing, that's your development priority
   for the quarter and it needs no debate.

4. WHAT I'D CHANGE ABOUT HOW WE WORK
   One thing about the agency. Process, tools, meetings,
   how work gets assigned. Answer this one honestly next quarter
   or people stop filling it in.

5. WHAT I WANT MORE OF / LESS OF
   Types of work, clients, responsibility. This is your retention
   early-warning system. Someone asking for more of something you
   can't offer is telling you their timeline.

6. NEXT QUARTER
   Two or three commitments, specific enough to check in 90 days.
   At least one should be the manager's commitment, not the
   employee's.

AGREED ACTIONS (filled in together, at the end)
   - [Action] — [who] — [by when]

Six questions. Fifteen minutes to fill in. If someone writes an essay, that's information too.

The 45 minutes

• 0–5 — Review the actions from last quarter. Did they happen? If yours didn't, say so first.
• 5–15 — Their section 1 and 2, in their words. Ask for detail. Mostly listen.
• 15–25 — Your section 1 and 2. Specific examples only. If you can't name the project, don't raise the point.
• 25–35 — Where the two documents disagree. This is the valuable part — every gap is a mismatch of expectations that has been quietly costing someone something.
• 35–45 — Sections 5 and 6, and write the agreed actions down together before anyone leaves the room.

End by asking "is there anything you've been meaning to raise and haven't?" and then be quiet for longer than is comfortable.

Talking about utilisation without weaponising it

Agencies have unusually good data on people — hours logged, projects delivered, budgets hit — and it's easy to turn a review into a performance dashboard. Resist that, for a practical reason: the moment utilisation becomes a personal performance metric, your time data becomes fiction, and you've traded a management conversation for the destruction of your costing.

Use the numbers as questions, not verdicts:

• "Your utilisation ran about ten points below the team this quarter — was that work not landing, or something else?" The answer is often that you assigned them internal work and forgot.
• "You were over 85% for two straight months. That's not sustainable and it's on me to fix — what should come off your plate?"
• "This project ran 40% over estimate. Talk me through where the time went." Aimed at the estimate, not the person.

Under-utilisation is usually a sales or scheduling problem. Over-utilisation is a staffing problem. Both are yours before they're theirs.

What to do with someone who isn't working out

Reviews aren't the venue for this, but small agencies conflate the two, so: raise it immediately, not at the quarterly. Be specific about the gap and what changing it looks like. Agree a short, concrete timeline. Write down what you said the same day.

The kindest version is the direct one delivered early. The cruel version is six months of hints followed by a sudden conversation. What you're legally required to do beyond that varies substantially by jurisdiction — get local advice before you act, not after.

Start with one person this week

Don't roll out a programme. Send the template to one person, book 45 minutes, both fill it in, and run it. You'll learn more about your agency in that three-quarters of an hour than from a quarter of status meetings — particularly from question 4, which most owners have never actually asked.