GDPR-Compliant Employee Performance Review Form

GDPR-Compliant Employee Performance Review Form Template

Managing employee performance reviews while maintaining GDPR compliance can be challenging for HR teams and managers across the EU. This GDPR-compliant employee performance review form helps organisations conduct thorough, legally compliant performance evaluations whilst respecting employee data rights and privacy obligations under EU law.

Why GDPR compliance matters in performance reviews

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), employee performance data is considered personal data that requires specific lawful grounds for processing. Performance reviews often contain sensitive information about an employee's competencies, development needs, and career progression—all of which must be collected, stored, and processed in accordance with data protection principles including transparency, purpose limitation, and data minimisation.

This template ensures your organisation meets GDPR requirements by capturing explicit employee consent, clearly explaining data processing purposes, identifying data recipients, and documenting retention periods—all essential elements of lawful HR data processing.

What makes this performance review form GDPR-compliant?

Our template includes built-in GDPR compliance features that protect both your organisation and your employees:

• Explicit consent capture with clear explanations of how performance data will be used
• Transparent data processing notices detailing who accesses the information and why
• Employee rights acknowledgement including rights to access, rectification, and erasure
• Purpose limitation statements ensuring data is only used for legitimate performance management
• Retention period disclosure so employees understand how long their data will be kept
• Secure data collection with SOC 2 Type II compliance through Paperform's infrastructure

The form collects essential employee information, performance ratings across key competency areas, goal achievement tracking, development needs assessment, and future objectives—all structured to support fair, transparent performance management.

Perfect for HR teams, managers, and European businesses

This template is ideal for:

• HR managers and People Operations teams conducting annual or quarterly performance reviews
• Line managers and supervisors evaluating direct reports in compliance with company policy
• European SMBs needing straightforward GDPR-compliant HR processes
• Multinational companies with EU employees requiring data protection compliance
• Consulting firms managing performance reviews for distributed teams
• Professional services organisations balancing thorough evaluation with privacy obligations

Whether you're a startup establishing your first formal review process or an established company updating systems for GDPR compliance, this template provides the foundation for legally sound performance management.

Streamline your performance review workflow with Paperform

Built on Paperform's flexible platform, this form template gives you complete control over your performance review process. The document-style editor makes it simple to customise competency categories, rating scales, and questions to match your organisation's unique evaluation framework and values.

Conditional logic tailors the review experience based on responses—for example, showing additional development planning questions when performance ratings indicate areas for improvement, or requesting specific examples when managers select certain competency levels.

Multi-page layout breaks the review into logical sections (consent, employee information, performance evaluation, development planning) making longer reviews feel manageable and ensuring employees aren't overwhelmed by a single scrolling page.

Custom success pages and email notifications can confirm submission to employees, alert HR teams to completed reviews, and trigger next steps like scheduling review meetings or creating development plans.

Automate post-review workflows with Stepper

Once performance reviews are submitted, the real work of performance management begins. With Stepper (stepper.io), Paperform's AI-native workflow automation tool, you can automatically orchestrate your entire post-review process:

• Route completed reviews to senior managers for approval before final filing
• Create individual development plans in your HR system based on identified growth areas
• Schedule follow-up review meetings by pushing calendar invites based on submission dates
• Update employee records in your HRIS with new performance ratings and competency scores
• Generate summary reports for leadership showing team performance trends and development needs
• Send automated reminders for 30, 60, and 90-day progress check-ins based on development goals

Stepper connects Paperform to your existing HR stack—whether that's BambooHR, Personio, HiBob, or custom systems—keeping employee data synchronised without manual data entry or spreadsheet juggling.

Secure, compliant infrastructure you can trust

Paperform takes data protection seriously. The platform is SOC 2 Type II compliant, ensuring enterprise-grade security controls protect sensitive employee performance data. With data residency options, you can ensure employee information is stored within the EU to meet data localisation requirements.

Role-based permissions let you control who can view, edit, and manage performance review data, whilst audit logs provide transparency about data access—essential for demonstrating GDPR accountability to regulators or during internal audits.

For organisations managing multiple legal entities or brands across Europe, Agency+ features allow you to maintain separate performance review forms for different subsidiaries whilst managing everything from a single dashboard.

Customise this template for your review process

Every organisation approaches performance management differently. This template is designed as a strong foundation that you can easily adapt:

• Modify competency categories to reflect your company values and role requirements
• Adjust rating scales from 5-point to 3-point systems, or use qualitative descriptors
• Add role-specific questions for different departments or seniority levels
• Include 360-degree feedback sections with peer and subordinate input
• Integrate goal-setting frameworks like OKRs or SMART goals
• Incorporate salary review or promotion consideration sections where appropriate

The document-style editor makes these customisations straightforward—no design skills or technical knowledge required.

Get started with compliant performance reviews today

Performance reviews are essential for employee development, organisational growth, and legal documentation—but they must be conducted within GDPR's strict framework. This template removes the complexity of building a compliant review process from scratch, giving you a professional, legally sound starting point that you can deploy immediately.

Start using this GDPR-compliant employee performance review form to conduct fair, transparent evaluations whilst protecting employee privacy rights and demonstrating your organisation's commitment to data protection best practices across the European Union.