How to evaluate remote employees fairly and on results.

Some of a company's strongest performers may be people that are rarely seen in person. As a result, those top performers can fly under the radar. Employees that are struggling might, too. When a manager sits down to review a remote employee, they often have less to go on than they realize. Maybe a few memorable calls, a general sense of how things are going, and whatever came up in the last check-in.

When managers can see who is producing the strongest work, they can direct promotions, raises, and development where they'll have the most impact, recognize top performers before a competitor does, and catch coaching needs early. A reliable evaluation process also makes remote work easier to sustain and expand, which widens the talent pool beyond commuting distance.

Below, we cover how to set clear goals and expectations, build a steady feedback rhythm, and keep ratings fair across remote and on-site employees.

Why remote employees are harder to evaluate.

In an office, a manager naturally forms an impression of someone's work based, in part, on who speaks up in meetings, who stops by with updates, and who seems busy at their desk. With remote and hybrid work now a stable share of the workweek, many managers have replaced those cues with digital ones, such as:

• A green status dot in the team chat
  
• How quickly someone answers messages
  
• Whether their camera is on during meetings
  
• How often they speak up on calls
• Keystroke counts or screenshots from monitoring software

Each of these tracks availability, but says little about the quality or volume of what someone produces. A manager who leans on these signals can end up rating the most visible employees highest, even when someone quieter is delivering more.

Leaders and employees also read performance differently from the start. In the Kelly Global Re:work Report, 89% of global executives said they understand worker performance, while 16% of workers said leaders don't see how hard they work. An evaluation process built on documented outcomes gives both sides the same evidence to work from.

Define performance metrics for remote roles.

Evaluating remote employees fairly starts with deciding what good work looks like.

Some of the employers Kelly works with have built their reviews around that principle. They stopped tracking when people are logged in, tied performance reviews to deliverables, and cut check-in meetings that mainly existed to confirm people were working. The change gives employees more of the week for the work itself, and a clear target to aim for.

Good work also covers how someone gets results, which means looking through more than one lens. Provide dual ratings on results and behavior, and consider 360-degree feedback from managers, peers, and direct reports and specific examples from the three to five people who work most closely with the employee.

Defining the work starts before the hire. A role described inaccurately in the job posting is hard to evaluate fairly later, which is why Kelly recruiters work with clients to revise job descriptions for remote roles before they go live.

Once the role has been filled, the right outcomes to measure depend on what the role is designed to deliver.

Roles with measurable output.

Customer service, data entry, claims processing, and similar roles already generate the data managers need. Tickets resolved, accuracy rates, customer satisfaction scores, and turnaround times are all recorded in the systems employees use every day. Pair each volume measure with a quality measure so speed doesn't crowd out accuracy.

Project and knowledge roles.

In project-based and knowledge roles, such as engineering, financial analysis, and marketing, output arrives unevenly, so a single week rarely tells a manager much. Evaluate these employees against deliverables and milestones agreed upon at the start of each review period.

Judgment matters as much as results here, including how someone scoped a problem, which risks they flagged early, and what they did when a plan changed. Ask for a short written update every week or two that covers progress, key decisions, and open risks, and keep those updates on file to draw from at review time.

Roles that support other people.

In support roles, such as executive assistants, project coordinators, and HR coordinators, the employee's work shows up in someone else's results. The most useful evidence comes from the people they support, who can speak to responsiveness, reliability, and how well the employee anticipates what's needed.

Before each review, ask two or three of those people for specific examples of where the employee saved them time, caught a problem early, or handled a request without being asked twice. When one employee supports several people, gather input from each of them so the review doesn't hinge on a single working relationship.

Set clear expectations for remote employees.

Clear expectations make a difference no matter where someone works, but in an office, a new hire can pick up a team's unwritten rules by watching the people around them. Since that isn't the case for remote roles, it’s even more important that any expectation a manager plans to evaluate is stated upfront.

Mismatched expectations often start before the first day. In the (Dis)honest Job Search survey, 76% of job seekers said they had experienced discrepancies in remote work expectations, and 67% of hiring managers said they frequently correct candidates' remote work expectations.

Unspoken expectations do the most damage to trust. A new remote employee may assume the manager trusts them from the start, so they work quietly and independently. The manager, meanwhile, believes trust has to be earned and is waiting for the employee to check in often and share progress. Neither one says so, and after the workload is handed over, the manager may rarely meet with the new hire at all. By the first review, the manager has read the employee's independence as disengagement, and the employee is being judged against a standard nobody explained.

At minimum, managers should spell out four expectations in the first week of a remote role:

• Availability. Set the core hours when the employee should be reachable and how quickly they should respond to messages, emails, and calls.
  
  
• Time zones. For distributed teams, name the overlapping hours, the meetings everyone needs to attend, and how work gets handed off across time zones.
  
  
• Tools. Explain which platform to use for which purpose, such as chat for quick questions, the project tool for status updates, and video calls for anything sensitive.
  
  
• Independence. Describe what initiative looks like in the role, including which decisions the employee can make alone and which need sign-off.
  

Put those expectations in writing, then revisit them at the first monthly check-in, before anything gets rated.

Build a performance review schedule for remote employees.

Remote employees miss most of the informal feedback on-site colleagues pick up between formal reviews, so managers have to put it on the calendar. Being nearby makes feedback easier to ask for. In a study of software engineers, sitting near teammates increased the feedback engineers received on their code by 18.3%, and the gains were largest for newer and younger employees.

But how often feedback happens matters more than where. Among employees who get meaningful feedback every week, 80% are fully engaged, regardless of how many days they work in the office.

A review rhythm for remote employees can work in four layers:

• Weekly or biweekly check-ins of 15 to 30 minutes that cover work in progress, blockers, and priorities for the coming week
  
  
• Monthly goal reviews that compare progress against the outcomes defined for the role and adjust targets when priorities shift
  
  
• Formal performance reviews two or three times a year. Kelly often uses this schedule with remote placements so small issues get addressed long before an annual cycle
  
  
• A career conversation that maps where the employee could be in 12 to 18 months, which later reviews can measure progress against

Each layer gives the next one something to draw on. Notes from weekly check-ins feed the monthly goal review, and a year of monthly reviews turns the formal review into a summary of work that's already on record. Pairing that rhythm with regular team engagement activities gives remote employees the informal contact a review schedule can't.

Avoid proximity bias in performance reviews.

Many remote employees work on teams that also include hybrid and on-site colleagues. In those mixed teams, managers can end up unintentionally holding people to different standards. Proximity bias tends to favor the people a manager sees most, even when the work doesn't support it. In a 2024 experiment with 937 managers, those reviewing hypothetical employee profiles were 11% less likely to promote someone who worked entirely from home than someone who was fully office-based, and 9% less likely to give them a raise. When a remote employee's rating trails an on-site peer's, the manager should be able to point to the work that explains it.

Three practices help keep ratings tied to performance.

Use the same criteria for everyone in the role.

Remote and on-site employees in the same role should be measured against the same outcomes and targets. Remove criteria that only reward being seen, such as presence in the office or availability at a desk, unless the job itself requires physical coverage.

Base every rating on documented work.

Each rating should point to specific deliverables, metrics, or examples from the record built through check-ins and goal reviews. When a rating rests on an impression, like someone seeming more engaged, ask the manager which work supports it.

Compare ratings across managers before they're final.

In a calibration session, managers review ratings side by side and explain the evidence behind them. Sorting results by work arrangement shows whether remote employees cluster lower than on-site peers with similar measured output. When they do, the review process needs another look before any ratings go out.

How to evaluate remote workers from a staffing agency.

When a staffing agency hires the remote worker, evaluation becomes a shared job, and both sides need to know from the start who handles what. The same applies when an entire remote function runs through business process outsourcing.

In most arrangements, the responsibilities are divided into three parts.

1. What the client's manager owns. The manager directs the daily work, defines the outcomes the role should produce, and gives feedback on deliverables, since they see the work firsthand.
   

2. What the staffing partner owns. The partner holds formal performance conversations, plans the worker's development, and stays the consistent point of contact for both the worker and the client throughout the assignment.
   

3. Where the two connect. A partner who talks regularly with both sides can spot an expectation mismatch early, such as a concern the manager has raised with the partner but never with the worker. Setting up a direct conversation between them can clear up the mismatch before it reaches a review.
   

A clear division of evaluation duties becomes more important as remote teams grow. When dozens of remote workers report to different managers, each manager may define good performance a little differently. A staffing partner that holds performance conversations with every placement can apply the same standards across all of them and show the client which employees are excelling and which need support.

Keep your best remote employees with fair evaluations.

A fair evaluation process helps employers hold on to the remote employees producing results, and it gives every employee a clear picture of what success looks like in their role. Kelly has placed remote talent since 2009, and today supports remote teams of all sizes, from 29 fully remote employees supporting executives at a pharmaceutical company to more than 300 remote and hybrid employees at a Fortune 50 company.

If you're building or growing a remote team, Kelly workforce solutions can help you find the right people and keep evaluations consistent across every placement.