Reviews happen inside a cycle — a named period everyone is reviewed within, so reviews are comparable rather than scattered through the year.
Review Cycles
A cycle has a name, a type, a start and end date, and a status. Types let you run different rhythms — an annual cycle alongside quarterly check-ins.
Run everyone in a cycle together. Reviews spread across the year cannot be compared, and a manager reviewing one person in March and another in September is applying a different standard whether they mean to or not.
The Review Record
Each review belongs to a person and a cycle, and tracks both sides separately:
- Self assessment completed — the employee's half
- Manager review completed — the manager's half
- Overall score and overall rating — the number and the band
- Manager comments and employee comments — kept apart, deliberately
- Status, and who finalised it and when
Keeping the two sets of comments separate is the important design choice. A review where the employee's own words are preserved is a record of a conversation. One where only the manager's view survives is an assessment being done to someone.
Finalising
Finalising records who did it and when. Do it once both halves are complete — finalising before the self-assessment is in makes the exercise a formality, and people can tell.
Scores And Ratings
The overall score comes from KPI achievement weighted by the weights set at assignment — which is why weights matter and why they should be set at the start of the period rather than adjusted at the end. See KPIs and Goals.
The rating is the band the score falls into. Bands are a judgement about your organisation, not arithmetic — decide what they mean before the cycle, and apply them evenly.
Performance Improvement Plans
A PIP is a structured plan with a reason, a start and end date, milestones, an owner, a status, and a link to the review it came from.
Milestones are what separate a plan from a warning. Specific, dated, achievable checkpoints give someone a route back; a plan with vague expectations and a deadline is a countdown.
Visibility is a field on the PIP for good reason. These are among the most sensitive records in the system — restrict them to the people who need them.
Caution
A PIP has legal weight in most jurisdictions. Dates, milestones and outcomes should be recorded accurately and at the time, not reconstructed later. The record is what will be read if the employment relationship ends badly.
Running A Cycle
- Create the cycle with its dates.
- Check KPI assignments are in place with targets and weights before the period starts.
- Score KPIs for the period, with comments.
- Open self-assessments, and give people real time — a week, not a day.
- Managers complete their half, reading the self-assessment first.
- Hold the conversation. The record supports it; it does not replace it.
- Finalise, then agree goals for the next period.
Common Questions
Someone joined mid-cycle. Review them on the period they were present for and note it. A partial period scored as a full one is unfair in both directions.
Can an employee see their review? Their own comments are theirs. What else they see is your policy — but a review the person cannot see is not a review.
Does a PIP always follow a review? The record can link to one. In practice a PIP that arrives with no prior review conversation is a surprise, and surprises are what get challenged.
Who can see PIPs? Restrict by visibility. Default to the fewest people who can act.
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