A well-structured review cycle is a cornerstone of continuous improvement, enabling individuals and teams to assess progress, refine strategies, and achieve their goals with clarity and focus. Creating a systematic review process ensures that efforts are aligned, feedback is actionable, and progress is measurable.
Check the video guide
Check the video guide
Configure permissions
Configure permissions
First, you must have permission to access performance reviews and create review cycles at least.
Access review cycles
Access review cycles
To access review cycles, go to Performance > Review > Company. Here, you can see a list of all cycles within the company, manage them, and create new ones.
In the My tab, you can access reviews you participate in.
Create a review cycle
Create a review cycle
To add a new cycle, click + New review cycle, enter its name, and click Next.
A review cycle consists of 5 stages (tabs) described below.
Details tab
Besides the name of the cycle, at this stage, you must specify the employees (participants) who will be evaluated.
Using conditions, you can filter employees by various parameters to ensure maximum flexibility in selecting the subjects of evaluation. You can mention concrete employees or use departments, positions, divisions, locations, employment types, and other parameters to determine who to include or exclude from the list for evaluation.
For example, you want to conduct a review for a specific department, but excluding senior employees.
When adding multiple conditions, you can choose the 'Operator and' option to narrow the selection, as all your conditions must work together. Otherwise, select the 'Or' option to select employees to whom either one condition or the other applies.
💡 The system automatically counts the employees to whom selected conditions are applicable.
You can also include employees’ objectives (OKRs) in a review cycle to evaluate progress as part of the performance review. When setting up the cycle, enable Include objectives and select the objective period you want to review.
🗒️ For a full walkthrough, see Create a performance review with OKRs.
Reviewers & templates tab
At this stage, you must select parties to give feedback and answer questions about previously chosen employees. For each review party, you must apply a proper question template.
To add a party to review, click + Add reviewer and select the appropriate variant.
You can add up to 6 review parties from the list of available:
'Self' option is designed for situations when employees need to provide self-assessment.
'Manager' option is for managers' evaluation of their subordinates. In the review visibility section, you can direct and indirect managers to view their reports’ review results after they are shared or once answers are submitted. You can also allow managers to share review results and comments with employees.
'Upward' option is for reviews when subordinates evaluate the performance of their manager.
'Team lead' option is useful when it is necessary to review team members by their leader.
The 'Custom' option is intended for cases when employees have a custom field, such as a mentor. You select the Employee reference field, and the participant will be evaluated by the employee from the corresponding field of the participant's profile.
🪄 For more about custom fields, see How to create custom fields.
'Peer' option is for colleague assessment. When creating the review cycle, you must set the minimum and maximum number of colleagues for one employee evaluation.
In addition, you need to select how peers must be nominated:
Employee themselves nominate colleagues who will review them. You can enable obligatory confirmation of nominated peers by the employee's manager or review creator (considered as HR)
Only the employee's manager or review creator (considered as HR) assigns peers
Only the review creator (considered as HR) appoints peers
🪄 See Nomination and approval of colleagues for peer review for more details.
Depending on the purpose, the review can include one, several, or all parties. For example, when conducting a 360 review, you need to include self-assessment and feedback from managers, peers, and upwards.
At this stage, you can also enable sharing review results and comments with employees when the cycle is completed. You can make the names of peer and upward reviewers anonymous for the reviewee's manager by enabling the corresponding option. So, the manager will not see the reviewer's name, only the provided feedback.
If you want peer and upward feedback to stay anonymous for employees, too, you can enable the Share results anonymously option. So, the employee will only see the results without knowing the names of other reviewers. Otherwise, reviewers' names and shared results will be displayed.
Templates
For each review party, you must apply a proper question template.
🪄 For more info regarding question templates, see Dealing with question templates.
The Self & manager question template works for both self and manager reviewers when you want to use the same questions for employees and their managers.
The Self question template applies to self reviewers only.
The Manager question template applies to manager reviewers only.
The Private manager assessment template also applies to manager reviewers only.
The General question template can be used for upwards, team leads, peers, and custom reviewers.
Scoring tab
This tab is applicable only when managers review the competencies of their subordinates. For all details about this section, check the Performance score and competency weights.
Milestones tab
In this section, you must set the following parameters:
date of review cycle start
date by when peers must be nominated
final date for receiving responses (at this stage, managers should summarize the responses and share them with employees for discussion)
date when the review cycle is finished and all results are discussed
the period over which employee performance is evaluated
Kick-off tab
Here, you can edit the subject and the content of the email about the review. All participants (except for peers, as we nominate them later) receive this email and notifications on the platform on the date your cycle starts. You can create a separate email for each party.
You can set reminders before the deadline for peer nomination and review submission.
As mentioned earlier, you must have the appropriate permission to create and manage reviews. If you have them, you can access all review cycles across the company. If you want some to be able to access only one cycle, you can add them as Collaborators.
The review cycle is ready! 🎉 Don't forget to save and publish the cycle to start the evaluation. The automatically calculated number of participants in the cycle helps you understand how many employees must be evaluated. If participants do not have a manager and are included as reviewers, the system proceeds to the next party without a manager review.
Review and edit participants before the cycle starts
Review and edit participants before the cycle starts
After you create a review cycle, you can review and adjust the list of participants as long as the cycle has not started yet.
To check participants before the start date:
Go to Performance → Scheduled → Reviews.
Open the review cycle you created.
In the cycle view, you can:
see the full list of employees included in the cycle;
verify that the selection matches your conditions;
add or remove participants before the review begins
This allows you to clean up and confirm the participant list without creating a new cycle.
Manager replacement during an active review cycle
Manager replacement during an active review cycle
You can now change the manager during an active review cycle if the manager’s review cycle has not been finalized. When you replace a manager, the new manager can continue the review from where the previous manager left off.
What happens to the previous manager’s answers:
If the previous manager started the review but did not submit it, the new manager will see the saved draft answers, can edit them, and then submit the review.
If the previous manager already submitted the review, the answers will remain in the review. If the editing period is still open and the manager is changed, the review will move back to Draft status. The new manager will be able to review and update the answers if needed.
After checking what the previous manager submitted, the new manager will need to submit the review again to finalize it.
If the previous manager did not write anything, the new manager simply starts the review.
How to replace the manager
Open the Review and go to the Overview tab.
Find the manager you want to change.
Click the arrow icon next to the manager’s name.
In the sidebar that opens, click the three dots and select Replace.
In the pop-up window, choose the new manager.
You will also see an optional setting “Delete previous manager’s answers.”
If selected: all previous answers are removed and the new manager starts the review from scratch.
If not selected: existing answers remain, and the new manager can review or edit them.
6. Click Save.
