Create and launch a performance cycle for your organization to include Peer & Upward Feedback, Peer Nominations, and Manager Reviews. 

• Overview of the Performance Review Cycle
• How to launch a cycle 
• How to manage a cycle
• How to enable sharing
• How to close a cycle
• Notifications
• Admin settings
• FAQs
• Resources 

TIP: Want to include self-reflections? Learn how to launch a self-reflection cycle alongside your Performance Review Cycle

Performance Review Cycle

As an admin, you can create and launch a single performance review cycle with Peer & Upward Feedback, with the option for Peer Nominations to allow employees to nominate who will give them feedback, and Manager Reviews.  

Peer & upward feedback 

Peers and direct reports give feedback on how an employee is doing and how they can improve.

How it works: 

1. Admins create question sets, one for peer feedback, and another for upward feedback. When the manager selects employees to provide feedback on their direct report, the proper question set is automatically delivered to the reviewer based on where they sit in the organizational hierarchy. 
2. Admins set the launch and communicated closure dates for managers selecting reviewers and for employees completing requests.

A few things to note:

• The communicated closure date is not a hard deadline. Managers can continue to request feedback, and employees can continue to complete feedback past this date. 
• Once step 2 of the peer and upward feedback portion of the cycle opens (Managers select people to ask for feedback) both Managers AND Performance Administrators will have the ability to send the peer and upward feedback requests. 
• Upward feedback question sets are delivered to the direct reports or any indirect reports of the employee who feedback is being completed about. 
• Peer & upward feedback can be shared along with the review, directly with the subject, but only questions selected to be shared prior to cycle launch, can be included. 
• Users providing peer or upward feedback will see a notification for the questions that have been marked as shareable within the feedback forms.
• In order to share any collected peer and upward feedback with the subject, a Performance Administrator must also enable the allow sharing feature in this portion of the cycle. This action does not automatically share the feedback with the employee but at this point, managers can choose to share the peer and upward feedback with the subject. 

Peer nominations

Optional for Peer & Upward feedback, you can allow employees to nominate who will give them feedback. 

How it works: 

1. Admins set the launch and communicated closure dates for peer nomination timeframe
2. Employees submit peer nominations that can be a combination of peers and direct reports 
3. Once peer & upward feedback opens, managers can choose to request feedback from the peer nominees selected, other colleagues, or a combination.

A few things to note:

• Once an employee submits nominations, the selections cannot be edited. 
• We recommend scheduling the nominations to occur prior to kicking off the subsequent steps of requesting feedback.
• Employees can nominate past the communicated closure date.
• There is no limit to the number of nominations that an employee can add. It is up to the Manager to either send the feedback requests to these nominated reviewers or edit the requests and add new reviewers of their choice.

Manager reviews

Managers assess their direct reports, reviewing past performance, and providing suggested areas for future growth. 

How it works: 

1. Admins create a set of questions for the manager review.
2. Admins decide which questions can be shared back with direct reports once sharing is enabled. 
3. Admins set the launch and communicated closure dates for manager reviews. Similar to peer nominations and peer & upward feedback, the communicated closure date is not a hard deadline. Manager reviews can still continue after the communicated closure date. 

What's not currently included in the Early Access Program release 

• Self-review unit

How to launch a cycle 

Step 1: Choose your performance units 

Name the cycle and select what performance units to include, choosing from peer & upward feedback with the option to allow employees to nominate who will give them feedback (or what we call peer nominations), and manager reviews. 

Step 2: Add questions

What questions do you want to be included in the performance units you selected for your cycle? You'll add all question sets during this step. A few things to note:

• Peer & upward feedback should have different question sets, one for peer feedback and another for upward feedback. 
• The peer feedback template is used if the manager wants to get feedback on how their direct reports are doing as an individual contributor outside of managing people. The upward feedback template is used if the manager wants to get feedback on how their direct reports are doing as a manager. 
• Admins can always edit the questions, but only while the cycle is in draft state or scheduled. Questions can no longer be edited once the unit goes live. 
• Only admins can edit the questions, managers cannot edit questions during any part of the review cycle. 

Step 3: Select which questions will be shareable

What answers and feedback responses do you want managers to be able to share with their direct reports once they have completed their reviews? Select those questions during this step that will be shared. Not sure which questions to share? Check out our guide. 

A few things to note:

• You will still need to enable sharing, which you can do in the Admin settings once the cycle is in session or has closed. 
• Share settings are configurable for manager reviews, for peer, and for upward feedback individually. 
• Only the admin can select which questions can be shared and enable share settings for the cycle.

 

Step 4: Preview the cycle

Preview your design before selecting which employees to add. At this stage, you can review the performance units selected, question sets for each of those performance units, and which questions you selected as shareable for the manager review unit.

Step 5: Add employees

Choose which users to include in the cycle. 

 

Step 6: Schedule the cycle

In this final step, select a launch date and a communicated closure date for each of the performance units.

1. Employee nominations
2. Managers select people to ask for feedback
3. Completion of feedback
4. Manager reviews
   
   

We recommend scheduling these events in a sequence, where the previous step ends one day before the next step starts, to create a streamlined and intuitive process for participants, as visualized below. Sequenced scheduling reduces process anxiety and creates clear timeline expectations. Nominations have been submitted when managers go to request feedback, and all requests have been submitted when reviewers are first requested to provide feedback.

Step 7: Review the cycle

The final step before you select “Create” is to review the Cycle Summary. This step includes all the information you provided during the previous steps in a simple and visual summary. You have the ability to view, preview and edit each step if you find something that needs tweaking after review.

 

We recommend scheduling these events in a sequence, where the previous step ends one day before the next step starts, to create a streamlined and intuitive process for participants, as visualized below. Sequenced scheduling reduces process anxiety and creates clear timeline expectations. Nominations have been submitted when managers go to request feedback, and all requests have been submitted when reviewers are first requested to provide feedback.

TIP: Send your managers and employees to this article that covers their performance review experience.

 

How to manage a cycle

As an admin or HR business partner, you have access to in-app dashboards for peer & upward feedback and manager reviews, as well as exports of all nominations, feedback, and manager review data.

 

 

From the in-app dashboards you're able to:

• Track progress of feedback requested by managers and feedback completed by reviewers
• View the number of nominations submitted and received by each employee, as well as how many requests have been both requested about and from that individual
• Easily sort columns to understand how nominations and feedback requests are distributed across your employee population
• Identify who hasn't yet submitted nominations, requested or completed feedback in order to follow up with them or their manager as the cycle progresses

• Search for individual employees to dig into their feedback requests, withdraw any pending requests, or request feedback on behalf of their manager. When you request peer or upward feedback on behalf of the manager, the Requested by field as seen by the reviewer will display the current manager’s name.

How to enable sharing

In order for feedback to be shareable once it's been completed, you'll need to enable sharing in the Admin settings. You can enable sharing once the cycle is in session or closed.  Click into the Sharing tab and the toggle(s) will be made available. 

The questions you selected as shareable during the launch design can now be shared by managers, Admins, and HRBPs. To view the questions enabled for sharing, click the Edit Cycle > View Sharing drop down that is available in the top right hand corner of your screen. Not sure which questions to share? Check out our FAQs. 

Once enabled, feedback and reviews can be shared from the Sharing tab in the cycle by clicking the Share drop down (if you're a manager) or the ellipsis (3 dots) (if you're an Admin/HRBP) and selecting what content to share from the options.
Note there's also a 'Share all' option in the top right hand corner

Manager view:

Admin/HRBP view:

 

How to close a cycle

Your communicated closure date does not automatically close the self-reflection or review cycle. After the due date has passed, employees will still have the ability to submit until you manually close the cycles. 

Close both the self-reflection and performance cycles by visiting each and clicking Edit Cycle > Close Cycle. Once closed, all of the content will become read only and employees will no longer be able to submit or update their self-reflections or reviews.

Admin Settings 

Admins have the ability to create and manage the configurable details of the performance review cycle at all stages of the cycle. The following configurations are possible when cycles are in draft, scheduled, live, and closed states: 

Draft 

• Edit cycle
• Duplicate cycle
• Delete cycle

Scheduled

• Download CSV
• Edit name
• Edit questions
• Edit sharing
• Manage users
• Edit schedule
• Duplicate cycle
• Delete cycle

Live (in session) 

• Download CSV
• Edit name
• View questions
• Manage sharing
• Manage users
• Edit schedule (communicated closure dates)
• Duplicate cycle
• Close cycle
• Delete cycle 

Closed Cycles

• Download CSV
• Edit name
• View questions
• Manage sharing
• Duplicate cycle
• Reopen cycle
• Delete cycle

Notifications

What's the notification?	Who receives it?	When	Task List	Email
Participants nominate peers	employees included in cycle	launch date + time scheduled in cycle	🔔	📨
Managers select peer reviewers	managers of employees in cycle	launch date + time scheduled in cycle	🔔	📨
Reminder for manager to select peer reviewers	managers of employees in cycle	7 and 1 day prior to close date		📨
Reviewers complete feedback requested of them	selected reviewers	launch date + time scheduled in cycle	🔔	📨
Reminder for reviewers to complete feedback requested of them	selected reviewers	7 and 1 day prior to close date		📨
Managers review direct reports	managers of employees in cycle	launch date + time scheduled in cycle	🔔	📨
Reminder for manager to review direct reports	managers of employees in cycle	7, 3, 2, 1 day prior to close date		📨
Reviewers have completed feedback requested of them	managers of employees in cycle	batched email delivered following morning, real-time app notification		📨

Nominate Peers

Employees receive a notification to nominate peers for feedback. 

Request Feedback

Managers receive a notification to select reviewers for their direct reports. 

Managers receive a reminder to select reviewers for their direct reports. 

Complete Feedback

Reviewers receive a notification to complete feedback.

Reviewers receive a reminder to complete feedback.

Managers receive a notification that feedback was provided about their direct reports. 

Complete Manager Review

Managers receive a notification to complete the manager review for their direct reports. 

Managers receive a reminder to complete the manager review for their direct reports.

FAQs

I created a test draft and had my direct report submit peer nominations. Where do I see these? 

A manager can see the submitted peer nominations from a direct report when they go to review that employee. This can be done once the peer & upward feedback process launches. There is no notification or approval process before then.

Resources

Send your managers and employees to our Performance Review Cycle Guide for Managers and Employees article.

Learn about the rationale behind each component of the performance review process (self-reflection, peer and upward feedback) in our Science behind the performance review templates article.