A review cycle sets how a type of review works: who gives input, which questions there are, whether there is a final assessment, when the reviews start and which employees take part. Every review in the cycle follows those settings.
As an admin, you add a review cycle via Performance > Reviews. Team leads and employees can't add a review cycle.
Choose a template
Go to
Performance > Reviews.Click
Add review cycle.Choose
Customto start from scratch, or choose one or more templates.Click
Add.
If you choose one template, the review cycle opens right away. If you choose more, they are all added as drafts and you find them in the overview. If you choose Custom, you first select who gives input: Employee, Manager and/or Peers.
There are eight templates. Each template already has questions, a schedule and deadlines, which you can change afterwards.
Performance review: the annual conversation about performance, with input from the employee, manager and peers and a final assessment.
Goal-setting review: agree on goals every year, with input from the employee and manager.
Probation review: decide at the end of the probation period whether the employment continues. You start this review yourself.
Onboarding evaluation: evaluate the first period of a new employee. You start this review yourself.
Half-year review: a short check-in every six months.
Quarterly goals review: discuss progress on goals every quarter.
Goals evaluation: assess every year whether the goals were met.
Performance improvement plan: record the progress of an improvement plan every month for three months.
Set up the review cycle
The review cycle has five sections. Click a section to expand it.
General: the name, the icon and the description. Check
Review cycle is default for new employeesif new employees should be added to this cycle automatically.Input: who gives input and which questions they get. If you choose
Peers, you also set who selects the peers. Read here how to set up the questions.Assessment: a final assessment the manager gives, for example a score from 1 to 5. This section is optional. Read here how to set up a final assessment.
Timeline: when the reviews start and when the input and the conversation must be done. See below.
Employees: the employees who take part, with one or more managers per employee. See below.
Set up the timeline
Under Cycle schedule, fill in the Cycle start date. Under Repeats, choose how often the review comes back, for example Every year or Every 3 months. With Ends, you stop the repetition on a set date or after a number of times. If you choose Does not repeat, you start the reviews yourself. Read here how to start a review manually.
Then you set two deadlines, counted from the start date:
Input deadline: the date by which all input must be in. Three days before, everyone who still has to give input gets a reminder.
Review deadline: the date by which the review conversation must be done.
For example: with an input deadline of 2 weeks and a review deadline of 1 month, the input must be in two weeks after the start, and the conversation one month after the start.
Add employees and managers
Click Add employees and choose the employees. For each employee, use Select manager to choose one or more managers. If you select several employees, you assign the manager in one go.
By default, the employee's team lead is the manager. If the employee has no team lead or more than one, the field stays empty. Read here who can be a manager.
Save and activate
Click Add or Save. The review cycle now shows as Draft in the overview. No reviews start yet, and team leads and employees can't see the cycle yet.
Click Activate to start the review cycle. You can only activate it once the timeline is complete (start date, input deadline and review deadline) and the cycle has at least one employee. If something is missing, you see which sections you still need to fill in.
If the start date is today or in the past, the first reviews start as soon as you activate.
Note: Do you change a review cycle after reviews have started? Then the changes only apply to new reviews. Reviews already in progress keep the questions and settings from the moment they started.
Related keywords: add review cycle, create review, set up appraisal cycle, review template, set up performance review, activate review, cycle schedule, review deadline.