What can I learn from this page? | An overview of the Performance Review Cycle process for Managers |
Who is this guide for? | Managers |
The Performance Review Process (Managers)
Depending on how your People team set up the performance review process you may be asked to:
Request feedback about your direct reports:
You will receive an email as well as a task in your Performance Task list.
If your company’s process includes nominations, you will be able to see if your direct report has completed their nominations in the Nomination column.
If they have, you can manually send the feedback requests to their nominated reviewers or you can edit by removing their nominations and adding new reviewers of your choice.
If they have not, or nominations are not part of your process, you’ll be able to search for colleagues to add.
Click Send Requests to complete. Depending on how your People team has set up the process, your requests may be sent immediately or scheduled for when the feedback stage starts. You can come back to this page and send more requests, in case peers have declined feedback, up until the end of the feedback stage.
While there is no limit to the number of feedback requests that you can send, it is important to keep the same things in mind as you did if you nominated colleagues for yourself. Mainly:
Request from colleagues you know have worked closely with your direct reports
Make sure you have representation across the important projects your direct report worked on in the review time period
If your direct report is also a manager, be sure to request from their direct reports
Consider who may have perspective that you’re not privy to
The cycle can be set up to allow employees to nominate employees to provide feedback, if this option is selected a participant (reviewee) can provide nominations, though this needs to be approved by their Manager and will be outlined in the cycle schedule.
If no nominations are made by a reviewee, the Manager or Admin can still send out requests for feedback.
Feedback request types
The type of feedback requested will either be Peer or Upward feedback, and this depends on how the cycle was set up.
Upward feedback questions will be shown to those that are below the Manager being reviewed in the hierarchy (direct and indirect reports).
Peer feedback questions will be shown to those who are not direct or indirect reports, to the person being reviewed. The platform will ascertain this from the hierarchy that has been imported to your account which is based on the Manager Email demographic.
Reviewing upward feedback requests in a cycle with automation
If your company’s process includes upward feedback and automation of requests, you will be able to see the feedback requests that have been automated for your direct report.
When the cycle is launched, the feedback requests will be in a Scheduled state. If they are not withdrawn by the Provide Feedback phase, they will be sent.
During the Provide Feedback phase, the feedback requests will be in a Complete or Incomplete state, depending on the progress of the feedback provider.
Throughout both phases, you or your Culture Amp Performance administrator can choose to withdraw a feedback request. You or your Culture Amp Performance administrator can also choose to re-select manually a direct report of the subject to provide feedback after they have been withdrawn.
Write reviews about your direct reports
With input from peer feedback and your direct report’s self-reflection (if those are included in your company’s process) you will then write your review.
Click View and Complete from your performance Task list.
Your direct reports will appear on the right of your screen, along with the ability to view each employee's profile. Use the side panel to reference previous feedback, self-reflections, reviews, goals, or your private notes about them.
Your review responses are auto-saved as you write. You can jump to another review and respond in any order if you wish.
Until your administrator closes the performance review cycle, you can edit your responses even after you submit your feedback.
Questions that will be shared with the individual when you or your administrator chooses to share reviews are marked with Will Be Shared.
💡 Tip: Watch these video lessons to learn how to prepare for your review, how to avoid the biases that can affect them and tips for delivering your review live.
Note: Your account may be hosted on our EU server, if so you will notice ".eu." at the start of your account URL. For customers on our EU server, please use the following link to access these video lessons.
Once you have reviewed your team, you will have the opportunity to see all employees reporting to you if both direct and indirect reports are included in the cycle.
If only indirect reports (no direct reports) are included in a cycle, the Manager Review can be viewed via the Employee Directory on the Home page once the cycle has closed.
Add Collaborators:
Need help completing a review? Culture Amp lets managers collaborate with another person on the review to ensure feedback is timely and actionable. Both Administrators and Managers can add a collaborator to a review once the scheduled Manager Review component has launched.
To add a collaborator:
Go to Performance > Reviews and select the current cycle.
Under the Your Direct Reports section, select View and Complete Manager Reviews
Find the individual review you would like to add a collaborator to > click the Three Dots Icon and select Manage Collaborators.
Here, you can view current collaborators and search for new users to add.
Finally, click Update Collaborators to save your changes.
You can also add a collaborator using the Manage Collaborators option on an individual direct report’s review
In order for collaborator notes to be visible to the manager and admin, the collaborator must select Share Comments at the bottom of the review form
Once new collaborators are added:
They will receive notifications via email and in their Culture Amp platform tasks list.
A collaboration request will appear as a task in the Your Overview section of their homepage, displaying the number of pending collaboration tasks and their completion progress.
During the live cycle:
Collaborators can action these tasks and review completed ones.
They can access the manager's review and comment on each question. However, these comments are only visible to the employee's manager.
In the Employee Profile view, they can see sections based on their permissions, such as goals the employee has made visible to them, and any continuous or peer feedback they've provided for that employee.
Important limitations for collaborators:
They cannot directly view or comment on the employee's self-reflections.
Collaborators do not gain additional access to view the full employee profile unless they are the employee's manager.
Additional notes:
Managers retain the ability to add or remove collaborators until the cycle concludes. When removed, collaborator comments persist, but their access to the review ends.
Collaborator notes are visible only to the collaborator, manager, applicable skip-level managers, and the performance administrator. Direct reports won't see these comments if the review is shared with them.
Collaborator feedback profile view:
Collaborator goal profile view:
Export reviews to PDF:
As a manager, you can export your direct or indirect report's review to PDF at any time.
There are two ways of exporting to PDF:
On the list of direct reports under your manager review (Share manager reviews tile), click on the Three Dots Icon and select the Export PDF option for the associated row
When viewing details of a direct report’s manager review, select the Export PDF option
Share your review and feedback:
If your People team has enabled the ability to share, wait for guidance from your People team on when to share. Typically this is done following a calibration session, to ensure the final review is shared.
Share reviews and their received feedback with your direct reports using the steps below:
Find any reviews by navigating to Performance > Reviews
Select a review under either the Current or Past sections
You can start to share your review by selecting the Share Manager Reviews tile or share feedback that a direct report has received by selecting the Share Feedback tile.
Employee Preview
Managers can use the Employee Preview mode within Manager Reviews to facilitate discussions with their direct reports by sharing their screen.
The Employee Preview option opens a new page (typically a new tab in most browsers) specifically showcasing responses that can be shared with a direct report.
This profile view:
Shows only the responses intended for sharing and omits those not configured to be shared.
Remains accessible for both incomplete and completed manager reviews.
Cannot be accessed by direct reports; the URL is restricted from their access.
Is accessible to both Managers and HR Administrators.
Sharing feedback from others:
Share feedback that a direct report has received from others by first selecting the Share Feedback tile by navigating to the review landing page (Performance > Reviews > select Current or Past review). You can then either share feedback individually per direct report or bulk share for all direct reports.
To share feedback per direct report, select the Share Review button against the associated row or the Share Feedback option when viewing a direct report’s feedback.
To share all feedback with all direct reports, select the Share all Reviews option
Note: You may notice a yellow icon under the shared column of your cycle. This indicates that feedback has already been shared with the individual but there are still pending feedback requests. All of the users with the yellow icons are able to see the shared feedback and may receive more feedback if the pending feedback requests are answered by reviewers.
Sharing manager review feedback:
Share your feedback with your direct report by first selecting the Share Manager Reviews tile by navigating to the review landing page (Performance > Reviews > select Current or Past review). You can then either share feedback individually per direct report or bulk share for all direct reports.
To share feedback per direct report, select the Share Review button against the associated row or the Share Feedback option when viewing a direct report’s feedback.
To share all feedback with all direct reports, select the Share all Reviews option
Once shared, your direct report will receive an email allowing them to access each of the questions from the review marked as May be Shared and/or any feedback marked as May be Shared if feedback is included.
If Review Acknowledgements have been included in the performance review cycle, your direct report will also be able to mark their review as acknowledged following the review conversation they have with you. It’s important to note that the ability to acknowledge a review is only made available if the review has been shared with the employee.
Note: Currently there are no notifications sent out when your direct report marks the review as acknowledged, this will instead populate as Complete in the column 'Review Acknowledged' on the Manager review page.
FAQs
Why is the submit button greyed out for my feedback and/or reviews?
If you are not able to click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of your feedback and/or review page, this indicates that you have left a question blank. Please review your page and fill out any unanswered questions - if you have skipped a question as you do not have a specific answer to give in response, please put ‘N/A’, ‘No Comment’, etc., and this will allow the Submit button to populate.
Why can’t I see my direct reports’ reviews?
If you are unable to see your direct reports’ reviews, they may not currently be assigned as your direct report within Culture Amp. To verify your direct reports, head into the Direct Report tab on your homepage:
If you are missing a direct report, please reach out to your internal Culture Amp admins (on your People/HR team) to let them know this information needs to be updated in the platform.
If all direct reports are showing as expected, the missing user may not be a participant within the current review cycle - please reach out to your internal Culture Amp admins (on your People/HR team) to confirm their participation.
How can I view my indirect reports' Performance Reviews?
To view your indirect reports Performance Reviews, navigate to your Direct Reports Manager Review dashboard and select Indirect from the Group dropdown:
All completed Manager reviews within your reporting line will be available to view within this dropdown (Note: you will not have editing privileges for any indirect reports’ reviews).