Initiate Probation Reviews with Performance Cycles

What can I learn from this page?	Guidance on how to set up Performance Cycles for conducting Probation Reviews
Who is this guide for?	Performance Administrator

Understanding Probation Reviews

Probation reviews play a crucial role in assessing employees' performance during their initial months at Culture Amp. They provide valuable insights into their integration and performance within the company.

Before You Begin:

While Performance Review Cycles are a valuable tool for evaluating employee performance, they aren't specifically designed for probation reviews. This means there are some limitations to be aware of, such as the inability to customize default communications. However, we've come up with a workaround solution within our current framework. This allows you to conduct probation reviews using the Performance Review Cycle, providing a practical approach to managing probationary periods effectively within Culture Amp.
This option is available to those with the Performance product in their subscription.

Enhancing Insights

To gain a comprehensive understanding of employees' performance during their probation period, we recommend two key actions:

Setting up a Self-Reflection and
Setting up a Performance Review Cycle

A Self-Reflection enables employees to evaluate their progress and identify areas for improvement. Meanwhile, a Performance Review empowers managers to assess the employee's performance comprehensively. Together, these cycles offer a holistic view of employee performance during their probation period.

While automation of probation reviews isn't currently supported, we've devised a workaround using the Performance Review Cycle to address this need. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up probation reviews within our existing framework.

To set up probation reviews:

Start by creating a new Self-Reflection and/or Performance Review Cycle.
Launch them for employees who've completed their probation.
Filter your account user list by start date to find those who started three or six months ago, depending on your probation duration. This helps you know who to add to the cycle/s.
At the end of the month (or when you choose), add the new set of participants either by uploading a CSV file or using the filtering option.
Repeat this process monthly or as needed.

We'll guide you through each step below.

Self Reflections

Go to Performance > Admin: Self-Reflection Cycles.
Click on Create Self-Reflection and give your cycle a name.
Customize your questions by rearranging, editing, or adding them as needed.
Configure Manager Prompts to help guide managers on what to do when reviewing their employees' self-reflections.
Preview the cycle from both employee and manager views.
Assign employees who have reached their probation mark by selecting them based on Filters or uploading a CSV File.
Schedule the Launch and Communicated Closure dates along with the timezone.
Click Finish to finalize and launch the cycle.
When ready to assign your new batch of employees, go to Performance > Admin: Self-Reflection Cycles, click the drop-down arrow next to the cycle name, then select Edit Participants. You can select the new batch of employees based on Filters or upload a CSV File.
Click Save to update the participants list. Before adding them, consider adjusting the communicated End Date and Time for the cycle

For full set up instructions, follow the guidance provided here.

Note:

Employees can't be automatically added to the cycle when their probation ends.
Unfortunately, editing communications for performance-based cycles which includes both a self-reflection and performance review cycle isn't an option. However, you can check the list of communications sent for a performance review cycle here and a self-reflection cycle here.

Note that the self-reflection cycle is separate from the performance review cycle. However, information gathered during self-reflection is visible to managers when they complete their review form in the performance cycle.

Performance Reviews

Go to Performance > Admin: Performance Review Cycles.
Name your cycle and select the type of feedback you want, like peer feedback, upward feedback, or manager reviews. If you only need the manager's perspective for the probation review, select Manager Review only.
Determine the Questions for manager reviews and customize question sets for peer and upward feedback separately.
Decide which responses managers can share with their direct reports after completing reviews. Admins can configure Sharing Settings.
Manually add the same employees from the self-reflection cycle to the performance review cycle when their probation period ends. You can select employees based on Filters or upload a CSV File.
Set Launch and Closure dates for each performance unit. Schedule events sequentially for a streamlined process.
Review the Cycle Summary for accuracy before finalizing. Edit any steps if needed before launching the cycle.
When ready to assign your new batch of employees, go to Performance > Admin: Performance Review Cycles, click the drop-down arrow next to the cycle name, then select Edit Employees. You can select the new batch of employees based on Filters or upload a CSV file.
Click Save to update the participants list. Before adding them, consider adjusting the communicated Closure for the cycle.

For full details on setting up the Performance Review Cycle, check out the guidance here.

Note: If you add new employees to the performance review cycle after it's launched, managers won't get the initial email invite. However, they'll still receive notifications within the platform and any follow-up reminder emails to complete their manager review. This is different from the self-reflection cycle, where added employees still get the initial email invite if added after the cycle has launched.

💡Tip: If this poses an issue, you might want to consider duplicating both the self-reflection and performance review cycles on a monthly basis and add the new batch of employees who pass probation to these duplicated cycles. This way, you'll have a fresh cycle each month or at your preferred frequency as new employees complete their probation.

Optional Workflow: Close and Duplicate Cycles for Each New Cohort

If you prefer to manage separate cycles for each new group of employees completing probation, you can close and duplicate the cycles on a monthly cadence (or as needed).

To close and duplicate cycles:

Once employees finish their self-reflections and managers complete their reviews, close both the Self-Reflection and Performance Review cycles. Go to each cycle in the Admin view, click the drop-down arrow beside the cycle name, and select Close Cycle. Once closed, all content becomes read-only.
Duplicate both the Performance Review and Self-Reflection cycle each month (or as needed) and add the new cohort of employees. This ensures consistency by using the same questions while updating participant lists.
To duplicate, go to each cycle in the Admin view, click the drop-down arrow beside the cycle name, and select Duplicate Cycle.