Managing an open performance review cycle

On this page we show how HR admins can get a quick overview of the status of staff performance reviews and keep the process moving forward, using tools to increase opt-in. 

Topics covered in this guide

Getting Started

Navigate to the Company view in your lefthand menu, tab to Reviews, then click the arrow icon to dive into the overview screen for the review cycle you want to work from. 

You'll be taken to the overview screen which displays the status of all reviews in the selected cycle. It will default to the most current, but you can toggle between review cycles via the drop-down menu right above the cycle. 

  1. Cycle drop-down: If your company has already gone through more than one review cycle (or if you're running parallel cycles), the drop-down at the top right lets you jump between review cycles.
  2. Company Graph: For ease of use, we've provided you with a quick link to the 2D graph reporting (If you've elected to include the option in the review cycle you are running of course). 
  3. Notify Staff: A crucial part of the process, use this menu to inform all reviewees and their managers about the start of a review, as well as bulk reminder emails about steps of the process participants might need to complete.
    1. Please note: if the option to notify cycle admins is greyed out then a notification was sent to employees once within the last 24 hours. These 24 hours will need to pass before you can send notifications again. 
  4. Cycle Administration: Click into the Admin menu to access useful options for making adjustments to a review cycle, moving the process along, and exporting information for your records. 
  5. Add Reviewees: Use this button if you've decided to create the cycle and add the participants at a later date. Remember, you'll need to notify new people after they've been added to an existing cycle.

  1.  Edit Cycle Settings will allow you to adjust the timeline, questionnaire, and additional options. 
  2.  Share all self-assessments a shortcut to force-share all employee's self-assessments on their behalf, cannot be reversed.
    1. Complete all reviews:  you may want to mark a review as not-modifiable even before the time is up or the sign button clicked. Use this option to lock down all reviews in the cycle from further editing or signing. 
    2. Reset Reviewers: reset all the currently set managers or reviewers in the entire cycle to the current manager. 
  3. Export: You can export all reviews to PDF, or Excel. 

Status, Ratings, and Trends

Next up are some handy tabs to filter users based on status and ratings (if you are using overall ratings in a cycle), as well as a trend view to analyze participation over time, and an info tab containing high-level information about the review cycle. 

  • Status & Ratings: In each of these tabs you'll find clickable pie-charts that will filter your view of participants in the list view, based on your selection. Use the "Status" tab to find users at varying stages of completion (employing color coding for ease of use), and use the "Ratings" tab to sort by the customizable overall ratings potentially used in a cycle. 
  • Trend Analysis: This will reveal a historic trend for the chosen chart. For instance, you can see how the employees worked on their performance review self-assessments, and you can make an educated guess whether the deadlines will be met and if usage is accelerating or slowing down. 
  • Info: Use this tab for a quick reminder of high-level review information: Cycle description, timeline, and customized questions. There is also a clickable visual timeline, and shortcuts to edit or preview a cycle. 

List View

  1. Power Search: use the search bar to find reviews by a participant's name, even cross-referencing them against all column headers in the list view using the filter icon. 
  2. Color-coding: reinforced from the pie chart, the list of statuses are color-coded for ease of use when locating reviews at different stages. All the reviews start out red, turn yellow once the writing is in progress, become light green once they've been shared, finally becoming dark green once signed. 
  3. Nudge people into action: hover your mouse between the manager and employee columns to reveal "nudge" buttons, which let you send quick one-off reminder notifications to people who have fallen behind schedule. (Yes, you can customize those emails)
    1. About Nudging: Nudging people is useful for the administrator, but it can be daunting to get nudged more than once. We recommend you first speak to people in person, and nudge them only if they still haven't responded. 
    2. To prevent double-nudging, the application prevents you from nudging people more than once every 24 hours. If you nudged someone recently, then the nudge button will be greyed-out and disabled. This will also happen when you use the bulk nudge buttons.
  4. Ratings: if you use a "ratings-based" approach (e.g. if you included an "overall rating" drop-down in the performance review), those numbers will also be displayed in the overview table. The reviewee's self-rating is on the left, and the manager's rating is on the right. 
  5. Additional sorting options: you can filter reviews just by whether or not they are completed, sort by title, department, team, and location. 
  6. Actions: there are two action buttons at the end of the row, and you can use it to perform convenient actions. Use the "eye" icon for a quick overlay view of the review. Click into the downward-facing arrow to find options like completing the review, navigating to a printable version, and most importantly revoking a signature. 

( Note: You can also view the reviews in the context of the reporting structure by clicking into the reporting tab)

Other Considerations

Important differences between managers and HR staff: Only HR staff may delete reviews. Only HR staff may force-complete a review, or reopen a review that has already been signed. Managers can only see and edit their own evaluations, while HR staff can edit the manager's side of every review. This is useful if a manager is absent for some reason, for example if they are on vacation or taking sick leave.

HR staff can also see managers' assessments before they've been shared with direct reports. This also applies to overall ratings and placement on the 2D performance review chart we'll discuss on the next page. But don't worry! -- no one will be able to see an employee's self-assessment or ratings before they're shared, HR included.

Next up: 2D chart reporting

It's important to track not just the status of a performance review cycle, but the results as well! If you've chosen to use the 2D behavior/results graph as a part of your performance reviews, you can see use the company-wide 2D performance assessment chart to see the results (once they're in) of all the performance reviews on a single graph.

Preparing for performance reviews: Gathering 360 degree feedback
Learn how to turn the results of a performance review into goals and objectives
Writing your own performance review

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