Who can use this feature?
Performance full permissions, Managers.
Available on:
All Culture Amp subscriptions that include Performance.
Overview
Highlights and Opportunities is an AI-powered feature that helps managers quickly understand an employee’s performance by summarizing feedback into clear themes. Instead of reading through every piece of feedback, managers get a concise overview showing up to three Highlights (strengths) and up to three Opportunities (growth areas).
How Highlights and Opportunities Work
Highlights and Opportunities uses AI to give managers a clear, data-driven view of key strengths and growth areas. It helps you save time, reduce stress, and make reviews more objective by summarizing recurring feedback trends from multiple sources.
Differentiating Feedback Types
The AI is trained to distinguish between purely positive recognition and constructive feedback. Recognition, like “great job on that presentation,” supports motivation and confidence, while constructive feedback points to areas for improvement. This differentiation ensures that Highlights focus on strengths and Opportunities focus on actionable growth areas.
Identifying Themes
The AI analyzes feedback from multiple sources, including self-reflections, peer and upward feedback, manager reviews, and Shoutouts, to surface recurring themes. Recognition from Shoutouts is only included when it reinforces themes found in other feedback, giving you a holistic view across the entire performance period.
Transparency and Trust
Managers can click on any Highlight or Opportunity to see the exact feedback excerpts behind it. You can verify the AI’s suggestions, provide thumbs up or down to flag accuracy, and maintain full control over how insights are interpreted and applied.
The Benefits
Save time and reduce stress: Quickly see patterns in your team’s feedback without reading every comment.
Gain a holistic view: Pulls together insights from past reviews, self-reflections, and Shoutouts to ensure fairness and balance.
Support richer conversations: Provides a data-driven foundation for actionable, growth-focused discussions.
Reduce cognitive load and bias: Highlights key trends while mitigating the effects of recency or reciprocal peer feedback.
Access and Settings
Who can use it: Managers and admins (when AI settings are enabled at the performance cycle level). To check or enable: go to Performance > Admin view
Performance cycles > AI settings, then toggle AI settings on.
When it’s available: Automatically enabled in any active or draft cycle with AI settings turned on. The feature appears immediately once enabled, even mid-cycle.
Where to find it: Once activated, both admins and managers can access it in the editable Manager Review form under the Highlights and Opportunities section within the employee profile.
Settings managers can adjust: Time frame of analyzed data (3, 6, 9, or 12 months, default is 12).
Data refresh: Summaries are cached and only update when new feedback is submitted.
Accessing Highlights and Opportunities
Admins:
Go to Performance > Admin view > Performance cycles.
Select the relevant cycle and open the Manager Review tab.
Managers:
Go to Performance > Reviews > Your team.
Open the relevant Performance Review Cycle and select View and complete manager reviews.
From this point, the experience is the same for both roles:
Select a direct report to open the editable Manager Review Form.
Click on the Highlights and Opportunities section in the employee profile.
(Optional) Adjust the time frame filter to refine the summary (3, 6, 9, or 12 months, default is 12).
Click any highlight or opportunity to:
Read supporting feedback excerpts
View the full feedback source
Visibility
A minimum of two feedback sources is required to generate a theme.
Employees cannot see their own highlights and opportunities. Only direct managers and admins can view them.
Indirect managers do not have access unless they also hold admin permissions.
Highlights and Opportunities are only visible in the editable Manager Review Form, not in other views.
Using Highlights and Opportunities with Confidence
Highlights and Opportunities gives managers a powerful, time-saving overview of key strengths and growth areas. To get the most out of it, here’s a few things to keep in mind:
Balanced insights: The summaries reflect trends across multiple feedback sources, so occasional individual opinions or peer reciprocity may appear, giving you a broader view of performance.
AI as a guide: The tool interprets feedback to surface themes, but your judgment is still key. Drill down to the original excerpts and refine action plans using your expertise.
Ongoing improvement: Feedback you provide on summaries (thumbs up/down) helps the AI learn and improve over time.
Multilingual support: Highlights and Opportunities works across multiple languages, though accuracy may vary as we continue evaluating and improving multilingual capabilities.
Think of it as a smart assistant: it speeds up prep, highlights key patterns, and supports fair, data-driven reviews, while you remain in full control.
FAQs
What if the AI misinterprets sentiment?
What if the AI misinterprets sentiment?
Our system is built on transparency to ensure trust. Managers can easily verify the AI's suggestions by clicking on any highlight or opportunity to drill down to the original feedback source. This allows them to see the exact excerpts that the AI used to form its summary, giving them full control to manually verify the accuracy. Feedback icons (thumbs up/down) allow managers to flag accuracy, which helps improve the model.
What happens if a manager gives a thumbs-down on a summary?
What happens if a manager gives a thumbs-down on a summary?
That feedback is sent to the product team and used to improve the model.
Can managers control what feedback is included?
Can managers control what feedback is included?
Managers can adjust the time frame (3, 6, 9, or 12 months) of the feedback being taken into account. Filtering by feedback source (peer, upward, Shoutouts, etc.) is not currently available but may be added later.
What happens if an employee leaves the company?
What happens if an employee leaves the company?
Their feedback remains available in the platform unless a GDPR deletion request is made.
If a manager edits the review or exits the page, will the highlights and opportunities change?
If a manager edits the review or exits the page, will the highlights and opportunities change?
The generated summary is cached and won't change unless new feedback is submitted. This ensures a consistent view for the manager.
Do Highlights and Opportunities replace manager judgment?
Do Highlights and Opportunities replace manager judgment?
No. The feature supports, but does not replace, a manager’s own discretion.
💬 Need help? Just reply with "Ask a Person" in a Support Conversation to speak with a Product Support Specialist.