6 Tips for Smoother Performance Reviews With an AI Note Taker

The end of the year means it’s time for performance reviews and all the preparation that comes with them.

For managers, the pressure is on to fairly evaluate reports — both sharing positive feedback and asking questions to uncover areas for improvement. For employees, it’s an opportunity to showcase achievements and reflect on progress, while remaining open to receiving performance feedback.

No matter what side of a performance review you’re on, the process can often feel daunting. From preparation to organizing documentation to dealing with pre-meeting jitters, it’s a lot to contend with.

That’s where an AI note taker can make a big difference. By streamlining the admin work and ensuring every detail is documented, an AI note taker like Fellow helps attendees focus on what really matters: productive conversations and actionable outcomes. 

Let’s dive into 6 ways an AI note taker can make the performance review process smoother and less stressful.

1. Use AI to gather insights from past meetings

While preparing for a performance review, an AI note taker is the perfect place to start gathering insights. If you’ve been running one-on-ones with Fellow, you’ll have a catalog of recaps — including transcripts and recordings — to reference.

The best way to access those records is to simply use Ask Copilot, which is a chat interface in Fellow that answers questions about your meetings — just like ChatGPT, but for meeting insights. Ask Copilot has access to your past meeting data and can quickly pull together whatever information you need.

For example, you can ask:

• Based on my 1:1 meetings with my direct report over the past six months, what should we discuss in our performance review?
• What recurring challenges or feedback have been mentioned in our one-on-ones recently?
• What action items from my past reviews have been completed or discussed in follow-ups?
• What feedback have I received from my manager in our last five meetings?

Fellow can generate all the information I’m looking for in just a few seconds, saving hours of admin time looking through previous meeting recordings and agendas. 

2. Apply a performance review meeting template

Now that you have your insights to bring to the meeting, you need somewhere to put them. You can set your meeting up for success by applying a performance review agenda template to your meeting agenda in Fellow. Having a template is ideal because it gives your meeting structure instead of just showing up to the conversation with disjointed talking points. 

Fellow has over 500 meeting agenda templates in our library, including a collection of meeting templates for performance reviews. Have a browse and find the one that works best for you. 

As a manager, you can create sections in the agenda and use Fellow’s automations to show your direct report which areas they need to add their insights to. All of Fellow’s agendas are collaborative, so both a manager and their report can contribute to the agenda ahead of the performance review.

3. Create private notes just for you

While having all the info you need for a performance review documented in the agenda is great, there are always some things that you don’t necessarily want open in the agenda for everyone to see. 

For managers, that could be something like details on a promotion that you’re excited to announce to your report as a surprise, or knowledge of personal issues that might’ve impacted performance but don’t belong in the formal meeting agenda. It’s things like this that you want to have handy, but just not documented in the agenda. 

Private meeting notes are great because they appear right next to your Fellow agenda and are accessible during your call so you can refer to them whenever you need them. 

4. Record and transcribe your performance reviews

Having a clear record of your performance reviews benefits everyone involved. As a manager, you’ll have an easy way to look back on previous reviews and see how things have improved since the last one, and where there’s room for change going forward. As the person who is being reviewed, you have clear documentation on any tasks that come out of your review, and a record of your wins and achievements from the past year. 

Using an AI meeting assistant means you can be hands-off when it comes to documenting a performance review. In the past, you’d have to manually write everything down as the meeting happened, which added a ton of stress to everyone involved.

Now when you have your performance review with an AI note taker like Fellow on the call, you can just have a conversation without worrying about noting down the important points. You can have your meeting, discuss what’s on the agenda, and rest easy knowing everything is being recorded and summarized in the background while you chat.

5. Keep private conversations private

With performance reviews, a balance needs to be struck between properly documenting the process while also making sure any sensitive information is kept private. So, the first tip is to take advantage of privacy and security settings in your AI note taker.

With Fellow, all meeting recaps — including recordings, transcripts, and summaries — are only accessible to meeting participants. As well, Fellow allows attendees to pause and resume recordings at any time. When the meeting is over, participants can retroactively redact portions of the transcript and recording.

Whether you need to discuss something off the record or remove sensitive details, Fellow ensures privacy without sacrificing thorough documentation.

6. Automate post-review follow-up

One of the most time-consuming aspects of performance reviews is organizing follow-up tasks and documentation. Fellow simplifies this with a comprehensive meeting recap delivered to all attendees.

The recap includes:

• Recording: Rewatch the full meeting or create clips.
• Transcript: Searchable meeting minutes for full context.
• Summary: A concise, AI-generated overview for a quick glance.
• Chapters: Your meeting is organized into segments based on the topics discussed.
• Action items and decisions: Pre-assigned and determined automatically.
• Meeting stats: Insights into participation and engagement.

With all that data automated, Fellow makes sure nothing falls through the cracks and that referring back to what was discussed can be done in a snap.

Make this year’s performance reviews the easiest and most impactful yet

With an AI note taker like Fellow, performance reviews don’t have to feel overwhelming. From preparation to follow-up, Fellow’s AI-powered features make the process smooth, allowing you to focus on what matters most — productive conversations and professional growth.

Ready to simplify your performance reviews? Get started with Fellow.