🔐 Who can use this feature?
Subscriptions: Any Performance package with performance cycles
What counts as a custom demographic
Any demographic already on your account, standard or custom, now works the same way inside Performance. Previously, Performance only recognized a fixed set of around ten standard demographics, such as Department, Job title, Location, Gender, Business unit, Division, Country, and Employment type.
Now any other demographic you track, like Cost Centre, Territory, or Agency, works exactly the same way as those original fields.
Standard demographics: keep working the same way they always have. If you'd already given one of them your own label, Performance now shows that label instead of the original Culture Amp name (keeping the old name as a reference), and you may see a one-time notice about this change.
Custom demographics: don't replace or rename your standard demographics. Both are available side by side.
Every demographic appears under the label you gave it. Culture Amp doesn't map it into one of the original standard names for you.
Where you can use custom demographics
Use any account demographic in three places across Performance Review Cycles:
Cycle setup and participation rules: decide who's included in a review cycle or probation review process.
Manager-review filtering: narrow the list of manager reviews you're looking at.
Manager-review columns: display a demographic's value alongside each row in the manager-review list.
ℹ️ Note: Calibration views don't support custom demographics yet. They still work from the original standard performance demographic list only. Performance Insights already lets you filter and group by any account demographic. That's a separate, existing capability and isn't covered in this guide; see Performance Insights for details.
No extra setup needed to use a demographic in Performance
A demographic becomes available in Performance as soon as it exists on your account with values assigned to employees. There's no separate mapping step to complete before you can use it here.
To create a new custom demographic or check how your employee data file should be formatted, see Create Your Employee Data File.
For general guidance on choosing and importing demographic fields, see Import and prepare demographics to include in surveys and cycles.
Set up participation rules with any demographic
Build participation rules for a review cycle or a probation review process from any account demographic, not just the original standard list.
In cycle setup (or probation review setup), go to the step where you define who's included.
Click Add filter and choose the demographic you want to use, for example Location or a custom field like Territory.
Select one or more values for that demographic.
Add another rule for a different demographic if you want to narrow the population further.
Selecting more than one value within the same demographic works as OR. For example, Location = APAC or Location = EMEA includes employees who match either value.
Selecting values across different demographics works as AND. For example, Location = APAC and Department = Engineering only includes employees who match both.
Combine the two: Location = APAC or EMEA, and Department = Engineering, includes employees in Engineering who are based in either region.
This applies to probation review participation rules as well as standard review cycles.
Filter the manager-review list by any demographic
Use the filter bar above the manager-review list to narrow which reviews you're looking at, using any account demographic.
Open the filter bar on the manager-review list.
Choose the demographic you want to filter by.
Search or scroll to find the value or values you want, then select them.
The same combination logic described above applies here: selecting more than one value for a single demographic broadens your results, while adding a second demographic narrows them.
Add and sort demographic columns in the manager-review list
Standard demographics are always available as columns in the manager-review list, whether or not you've filtered by them.
A custom demographic works differently: it only appears as an option in the Edit columns menu once you've applied it as an active filter with at least one value selected. Remove that filter, and the column disappears too.
Filter the manager-review list by the custom demographic you want to see as a column (see above).
Open Edit columns and add it to your view.
Sorting a standard demographic column: always works, whatever else is filtered.
Sorting a custom demographic column: only works while that column is visible, which means while its filter is still active. Try to sort by one that isn't currently visible, and the list falls back to sorting by employee name instead.
Search inside a demographic's own value picker supports type-to-search, for example typing "Eng" while choosing a Department value. The manager-review list's own search box searches by employee name only, not by demographic value.
Things to know about custom demographics
Sensitive demographics: hidden from filtering and columns for any role that isn't permitted to see them, and excluded at the source rather than just hidden visually. Mark or unmark a demographic as sensitive from your account's employee data settings, not from inside Performance; see Setting up Sensitive Demographics in Culture Amp.
Exporting the manager-review list: you can filter the exported rows by any demographic, but the exported file's own columns only include standard demographics. A custom demographic you filtered by won't appear as its own export column.
Demographic changes after a cycle launches: enrollment is fixed at launch, so updating an employee's demographic value afterward doesn't add or remove them from an already-running cycle or probation process. Manager-review filtering works differently: it reads each employee's current value live, so filter results update immediately when a value changes.
Renaming a demographic: rules and filters reference the demographic itself, not its label, so renaming it later won't break anything you've already set up.
Troubleshooting
A demographic isn't showing up anywhere in Performance
Confirm your account has this capability enabled and that you have access to Performance Review Cycles. Open a Support Conversation to check.
A custom demographic appears, but its dropdown has no values
Check that the underlying employee data actually has values assigned for that demographic.
A demographic exists in your employee data but doesn't show up in Performance
This is usually because the capability hasn't been enabled for your account yet, or because it can take a little time to appear after being enabled. Open a Support Conversation to confirm.
One user can see a demographic that another user can't
Check whether it's marked sensitive, and whether the second user's role is permitted to see sensitive demographics.
A demographic change isn't reflected in an existing cycle, process, or Calibration view
For a cycle or probation process, this is expected: enrollment is fixed at launch and doesn't re-evaluate later demographic changes (see Things to know above). For Calibration views specifically, it isn't a delay: custom demographics aren't supported there at all yet.
➡️ Next steps
💬 Need help? Open a Support Conversation to speak with our Product Support team.