Who can use this feature?
Available on:
All Culture Amp subscriptions that include Performance.
Understand Probation Reviews
Probation reviews help assess how new employees are settling into their roles and culture during their early months at a new organization. They provide valuable insights into progress, fit, and areas for growth—critical for long-term success.
Using the Unified Performance Cycle, you can streamline this process by combining self-reflections and manager reviews into a single workflow—tailored for new hires.
In this article you'll learn how to:
Use the Unified Performance Cycle to run probation reviews
Choose the right feedback types (e.g., self-reflections and manager reviews)
Customize questions and sharing settings
Add probationary employees using filters or CSV upload
Maintain the cycle over time using ongoing updates or duplicating
Tailor communications for a probation-specific experience
Tip: New to performance reviews or need a full walkthrough? Check out the Launch a Performance Review Cycle and Admin Guide to Tracking and Managing a Performance Cycle for step-by-step guidance and best practices.
Before You Begin
The Unified Performance Cycle is designed to simplify performance management by combining all feedback types—self-reflections, manager reviews, peer, and upward feedback—into one workflow. For probation reviews, you can simply choose to include self-reflections and manager reviews only.
Note: While there's no automation to trigger probation reviews based on start date, this guide outlines a practical workaround using filtered participant lists or CSV uploads.
Why Include Self-reflections?
Having employees complete a self-reflection gives them the chance to evaluate their experience, highlight achievements, and reflect on their growth. This sets the stage for a more meaningful manager review and helps create a complete picture of probation performance.
Set up a Probation Review Using the Unified Performance Cycle
Step 1: Create Your Cycle
Go to Performance > Admin: Performance Cycles.
Click Create Cycle.
Name your cycle (e.g., “Probation Reviews – June 2025”).
Select only the Self-Reflection and Manager Review performance units.
Tip: You can include Peer or Upward Feedback if you’d like broader input, but these are typically not required for probation reviews.
Step 2: Customize Questions and Preview
Customize the question sets for each unit:
Self-Reflection: Let employees reflect on achievements, challenges, and areas for improvement.
Manager Review: Add questions to assess performance, growth potential, and cultural alignment.
Use open-ended and rating scale questions to gather balanced, actionable feedback. You can also enable Manager Prompts to guide managers when reviewing employee self-reflections.
Once you’ve customized the questions, click Preview to see how they will appear to both managers and employees.
After reviewing, click Next to move to configure your sharing settings.
Step 3: Configure Sharing Settings
Decide and select which manager review questions will be visible to the employee when shared.
Once you finalize and launch the cycle, question-level sharing can’t be changed—so review these settings carefully.
Step 4: Add Probationary Employees
Select the employees you’d like to include in the probation review cycle.
You can:
Use filters to find and select employees. Only the following filter options are available:
Employee status
Business unit
Country
Department
Division
Gender
Job title
Level
Location
Manager
Has direct reports
Started before
Preferred language
Upload a CSV with employee details.
Once you’ve selected the right employees, check the box to add them to the cycle.
Click Next to continue scheduling your cycle.
Step 5: Schedule Your Cycle
Set the timezone and choose launch and closure dates for each performance review step.
Click Next to review and customize your communications.
Step 6: Review and Customize Communications
See a summary of notifications that will be sent to employees and managers throughout the cycle.
Customize performance review cycle email communications as needed to tailor the experience for probationary employees.
Click Schedule to launch your cycle.
Maintain the Workflow Over Time
Option 1: Ongoing Cycle with Monthly Participant Updates
Because performance cycle invites can’t be automatically triggered by employee start dates, you’ll need to manually add employees once they complete probation. The best way to manage this is to keep a single probation review cycle open and update the participant list each month as new employees become eligible.
This flexible approach works well for organizations with frequent new hires.
To add new employees:
In your cycle, click the dropdown next to the cycle name.
Select Edit Participants.
Add employees using Filters or Upload CSV.
Adjust communicated end dates and times for the new additions.
Click Save to update the participant list.
Note: Participants added after the cycle launch will not receive an initial email invite but will still get an in-platform notification and any subsequent email and in-platform reminders to complete tasks.
Option 2: Duplicate Cycle for Each New Group
If you'd like clearer separation by cohort, you can duplicate the cycle each month.
To do this:
Once a group completes their probation review, close the current cycle (Performance > Admin: Performance cycles > dropdown next to the cycle name > Close cycle).
Click the dropdown again and select Duplicate cycle.
Update the participant list with the next cohort and adjust cycle dates as needed.
Launch the cycle.
Note: Duplicating the cycle each month ensures consistency in questions and makes tracking probation groups easier.
FAQs
Can I automate adding employees to the probation review cycle?
Not yet. You’ll need to manually identify employees based on their start dates and add them to the cycle.
Will employees receive email invites if they’re added to the cycle after launch?
No, employees added after the cycle has launched won’t receive the initial launch email. However, they’ll still get a platform invitation and any subsequent email and in-platform reminders to complete their tasks throughout the cycle.
Can I edit performance cycle communications?
Yes! You can customize the email communications sent during the performance review cycle. Before launching your cycle, you'll see a summary of all automated emails. From there, you can edit the email content to better fit your tone or tailor messages for probationary employees.
Related pages:
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