6 examples of areas of improvement for performance reviews in 2025

If you manage a team in 2025, you know that today’s professionals expect more than just general feedback. They want tailored insights tied to their career goals and challenges.

Career growth isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore — it’s a retention matter.* When employees don’t see a meaningful path forward, they are likely to move on.

If you want your team to thrive, performance reviews must address areas for improvement. These conversations might feel uncomfortable at times, but they’re essential. Identifying and acting on performance gaps helps employees grow — whether they’re new to the role or seasoned leaders.

Let’s explore six examples of areas of improvement to cover in performance reviews — along with actionable ideas for how to support progress.
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🪜 Help employees reach their career goals

Leapsome has the templates and workflows you need to build an impactful, development-focused performance management system.

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*Forbes, 2025
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Why professional growth is paramount in 2025

Younger generations are set to take over the job market in the next decade. Gen Z already makes up over a quarter of professionals and is expected to become the largest working generation by 2035. And research shows that 67% of Gen Z employees prioritize career development.

Broadly speaking, Gen Z and Millennials want to become more proficient in:

• Digital tools and technologies
• Data and analytics
• Management and leadership skills
• Design and creativity

Essentially, they’re looking to become well-rounded professionals who can tackle today’s challenges with creative solutions.

🔎 Bonus! There are many different kinds of performance reviews, and they all require a slightly different approach. But you’re in luck: our free, downloadable resource includes 18 performance review templates you can use to inform your performance management strategies.

6 areas of improvement examples for performance reviews 

Regardless of how your company structures performance assessments, these six focus areas are a helpful framework for evaluating and supporting development. Not every employee will need to improve in each area, but many performance gaps fall within these themes.

1. Industry knowledge & professional development

AI is a prime example of today’s development priorities. With 60% of executives expecting AI to disrupt core business operations and the employee experience, upskilling in AI is crucial for many of us. 

But “AI upskilling” isn’t one-size-fits-all — it can refer to anything from machine learning and NLP to generative AI and robotic process automation. Different tools use different technologies, and departments use them in distinct ways. For example, the top use cases for a customer service team won’t be the same for human resources or project management professionals. 

Before working on development plans, ensure leadership understands the AI skills most beneficial to the business — and how they’d apply to different departments.
 

Potential courses of action for improvement

• Use a learning platform to build personalized training & courses — A tool like Leapsome Learning makes it easy to create customized multimedia courses designed for different learning styles.
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• ‍Implement micro employee development plans — Long-term development plans can feel overwhelming and may be slower to show results. If the employee has a smaller or more specific growth goal, ask them to work with their manager and create a focused mini-plan that targets just that skill.

💬 As AI advocate and former Coca-Cola strategist Lauren Romero puts it, there’s never been a better time to help employees become less “hyper-specialized.”

“Strategic thinking requires exposure across disciplines and areas of knowledge,” she writes. “Just as the industrial age introduced machines to replace highly time-consuming manual tasks and fueled flurries of innovation, 21st-century technologies are again liberating us from time-consuming and unrewarding tasks. The result is an opportunity for people to engage more of their brains. With machines doing the menial mental and physical tasks, humans are granted abundant time to get better informed and think strategically.”

2. Teamwork & collaboration

An ideal work environment encourages people from diverse backgrounds to connect, collaborate, and share their perspectives. But this can also create awkwardness and tension. Consider the multigenerational workforce, where Gen Z and Millennial professionals work alongside Gen X and Baby Boomers, which many organizations rightly embrace as a strength. How, then, can you support team members from each generation in better communicating with and respecting their coworkers?
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Potential courses of action for improvement

• Do a little team building every week — Team-building activities don’t have to be full- or multiday commitments. Host virtual watercooler chats, start team meetings off with a brief activity, or encourage employees to check in with each other informally in dedicated Slack or Teams channels.
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• Encourage cross-departmental collaboration — As companies grow, silos tend to form fast. Pushing employees to collaborate beyond their immediate team exposes them to new perspectives and helps them build experience working across functions.
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• Embrace 360-degree feedback — When organizations develop sustainable cultures of feedback, team members will feel more at ease working together, sharing their perspectives, and finding solutions, even when they don’t see things the same way. Consider implementing processes that facilitate both 360-degree feedback and a 360-degree approach to performance management to that end. 
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3. Communication & feedback

Communicating honestly and being open to constructive feedback are critical interpersonal skills that take practice. The challenge is learning how to be candid yet respectful. How do you make that happen?

‍According to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, the answer is a concept she calls “Radical Respect.” That happens when team members integrate the following into their professional communications:

• Optimizing for collaboration, not coercion
• Honoring individuality rather than demanding conformity

💬 “Successful collaboration requires diversity of thought and lived experiences. Part of the benefit of collaboration is that ‘many hands make a light load.’ But the more important benefit is that diversity allows us to challenge each other because each of us has a different point of view and different life experiences. When we challenge one another, we improve one another’s work. That’s why feedback at work is so vital to our individual and collective growth and success.”

Potential courses of action for improvement

• Ask employees to reflect on their communication styles — Prompt team members to complete shareable profiles that outline their preferred communication styles during the onboarding process and probation period. Revisit these profiles when you run into communication or interpersonal issues.
   

• Have team members complete active listening training — Not everyone knows that active listening is more than listening without interruption. Consider providing dedicated active listening training that includes multimedia examples, making sure employees know to always seek understanding and ask clarifying questions when necessary.
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• Build asking for feedback into your culture — Feedback stops feeling uncomfortable when it’s part of your day-to-day life. Implement a tool like Leapsome Instant Feedback so employees can exchange feedback privately and publicly recognize quality work, wins, and milestones via the Praise Wall.
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4. Leadership & people management 

The most successful organizations proactively develop junior professionals into leadership roles — but leadership skills training is probably even more top of mind for them now. Why?

To start, recent layoffs at the top have forced middle managers to fill the gap, with six out of ten managers reporting they feel more overwhelmed than they did a year ago. And with numerous companies undergoing restructuring and other significant shifts, many have open leadership roles to fill.

How, then, can today’s organizations train aspiring leaders and set themselves up for future success?
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Potential courses of action for improvement

• Help the employee choose measurable leadership development goals — These objectives should allow the aspiring leader to practice skills like data-driven decision-making and creative problem-solving. They should also be relevant to big-picture organizational targets, connecting to current company initiatives and giving employees experience with big-picture business planning.
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• Give the employee the opportunity to lead a project or solve a complex problem — Allow the aspiring leader to step into the leadership role they’d like to work toward as much as possible with the mentorship of a leader or trusted senior colleague.
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5. Time management skills

People exist on a broad spectrum when it comes to time and energy management. For instance, people with ADHD may struggle with time perception, which means they might have trouble estimating how long it takes to complete a task.

And in a world of a million and one distractions, even those who don’t have significant time management issues may still find it difficult to prioritize where and how they spend their time and energy. Sure, they might meet major project deadlines and attend most meetings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re achieving the work-life balance they need to avoid stress and burnout.
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Potential courses of action for improvement

• Provide resources on popular time management techniques — Strategies like the Pomodoro Technique or the “Eat the Frog” approach can help people better prioritize their work and accomplish more with the time they have.
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• Encourage, but don’t enforce, coworking — Whether virtual or in-person, coworking can be effective for professionals who struggle with distractions and need to “body double” or work alongside another person.
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6. Conflict resolution & problem-solving

Conflict is inherent to the way humans work. “Conflict is the friction needed in relationships and organizations to move things forward,” says Lisa Daniels, author of The Human Edge Advantage: Mastering the Art of Being All In. “Without conflict, we can quickly stagnate and get stuck in our worldviews or approaches.” 

That’s to say, eliminating all conflict from the workplace shouldn’t be the goal, and you shouldn’t encourage employees to avoid conflict outright, either. Instead, encourage leaders and team members to learn how to navigate conflict in a healthy, respectful way — and try these approaches to conflict resolution and problem-solving.
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Potential courses of action for improvement

• Propose models & approaches for handling conflict — Frameworks like the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Management Model and the Interest-Based Relational Approach can help team members in disagreements take a few steps back, assess the situations from a birds-eye view, and work together to find a solution.
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• Practice empathy mapping — This popular UX technique helps people visualize what others say, think, do, and feel. It’s a useful tool for opening up dialogue between employees with different personalities or communication styles.
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Make your performance reviews more impactful with Leapsome

Highlighting areas of improvement in performance reviews is key to helping employees grow, but giving specific, constructive feedback takes time, especially when you have several direct reports.

‍Leapsome Reviews simplifies this process. It leverages AI to suggest tailored feedback based on each employee’s areas for improvement and can even help generate action plans to support development. When used with Competency Frameworks, it can build structured growth plans for every team member.

And our Instant Feedback tool means team members can give and receive input anytime, making feedback continuous — not just tied to reviews.

Leapsome doesn’t just save time. It helps you build a culture of feedback and development across the entire organization.

🪴 Help employees explore their potential & grow

Use Leapsome Reviews to whip your performance management system into shape with science-backed templates, workflows, automations, and integrated people analytics. 

👉 Request a demo

FAQs about examples of areas of improvement in performance reviews

Why should you include areas of improvement in performance reviews?

It’s important to include areas for improvement alongside positive feedback in performance reviews so the employee can work to overcome the challenges that impact their and their team’s performance. Doing so can also help them identify relevant learning and development opportunities, grow as professionals, and understand how their role contributes to the broader team and organization. 
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How can you identify areas of improvement for performance reviews?

You can identify areas of improvement for performance reviews by monitoring employee performance throughout the performance management cycle. You should also gather feedback from multiple perspectives — for example, the employee’s direct manager, reports, peers, other supervisors, and even clients, and ask them to self-asess. 

What makes for a good performance review?

A good performance review should focus on:

• Achievement & development — Highlight accomplishments while also identifying areas for growth.
  
• Fairness & accuracy — Base evaluations on facts, data, and clear examples rather than assumptions, generalizations, or bias.
  

Creating opportunities for conversation — When discussing performance with your direct report, employ active listening tactics and ensure they feel psychologically safe enough to share honest feedback and collaborate with you on their developmental goals.