Conducting A Performance Review

When you click on a Performance Review to begin the process, or updated one already in progress, you will be taken to the Performance Management view screen which will look similar to the following:

At the top, is a header showing you the employee being reviewed, as well as the type of review being conducted, and some information on when the review was created and when it is due.  There is also a Status indicator, which can be one of:

• Scheduled - The review is some time in the future and no activity has been started against it yet
• In Progress - The review has some activity on it already (i.e. some forms have been fully or partially filled)
• Completed - The review has been marked as completed and locked
• Cancelled - The review has been abandoned for some reason

There is also an ' Action' button with various major actions that can be carried out for this review.  

This menu will change depending on what stage the review is in.  Here are some of the options that you will see:

• Mark Review Completed - this will close and lock the review and prevent any more changes from being made.
• Mark Review Incomplete - this will only show when the review is complete, and will let you reactivate it again.
• Schedule Next Review - this will only show when the existing review is complete, and will allow you to schedule another future review just like this one.
• Change Due Date - this will allow you to change the due date of the review in case you need to move it forwards or backwards.
• Add Another Reviewer - this will allow you to add other people to the review panel and allow them to leave feedback on the employee.
• Cancel Review - this will mark the review as being Cancelled and prevent any more changes from being made.
• Delete Entire Review - this will permanently delete the review from our system.  Please note that we do not recommend doing this as any feedback, attachments and comments etc. will also be deleted.  We much rather you mark the review as cancelled and start a new one.

Underneath the header, are tabs showing the different sections of the review that you can access.  

Employee Info

The first tab is some basic employee information which may be useful to the person holding the review.  It contains the employees start date and working location etc., as well as the person they report to, and the people reporting to them.  It will also show their last 3 position/salary entries so you can see their recent career progression.

Forms

The next tab along is probably where you will spend the most time, as it is the section containing the forms that the various review participants will have to fill out.

Along the left are a series of tabs showing all the participants in this review panel, and their relationship to the employee.  Clicking these tabs will open the forms so you can see their answers and quickly jump between the forms.  You can also see which people have started filling in the forms (In Progress) and who has completed then (Completed).  You can also see which forms are visible to the employee themselves.  Not all forms will be visible to the employee being reviewed as per the permission rules set up in the Performance Template being used.

As the admin user, you have access to a menu to the right of each form.

This menu will allow you to:

• Reactivate Response Form - if a participant has filled and submitted their form too quickly, and they want to be able to make changes, then you can use this option to reactivate their form again.  This option is only visible if the form has the 'Completed' status.
• Remove This Reviewer - this will remove the current reviewer (and their form) from this current review altogether.  Please consider using this option carefully, as once removed, their information is lost and cannot be recovered.

Please note that when submitting your own form response, you have the option of saving your current entries and coming back to them later, or else saving them and marking them as completed, which will lock the form against any further changes (unless unlocked by an admin as described above).

Some feedback forms can be very long, and will take several days to complete, so we offer the facility to save as you go, and come back to make more edits later.

Goals

The next tab shows the employee's current goal and objectives.  Please note that this tab may not be visible for everyone, as you can set a flag on the performance review template as to whether you wish to see Goals as part of the review.  Also, your company may have the Goals module disabled company-wide, in which case you won't be able to see this information.

Admin users will be able to update employee goals from here, or have this screen open while discussing the review with the employee

Comments

The comments area lets everyone on the review panel leave messages for each other.

You can also @tag other people in the review panel in your comments, which will send them an email notification, and you can also mark whether the comments made here are visible to the employee or not.  Sometimes, you might want to make comments that are private in nature and not for the employee's eyes, so you can manage that here.

Files

This area contains file attachments that are relevant to this review, for example, letters of recommendations or other supporting documentation that the panel needs to look at.

Any files uploaded here will be visible to the employee as well, and will be added to the employee's File Attachment area when viewing their record later.

History

This tab shows any past and future reviews for this employee, so you can open them up quickly to track their progress over the years.  You can also schedule another review for them from this screen at any time.

Employee Viewpoint

Employees (as well as their direct managers and co-workers) will be able to participate in a review from their ESS portal.  They will get a reminder just before the review date, and they will also see a widget on their dashboard to prompt them to jump into a review that they belong to in order to complete it.

They will also see a 'Performance' menu option on the left hand menu of the ESS portal which will allow them to see all their own reviews, as well as any other reviews they are a part of (as a manager or co-worker).

Employees get a much more basic view of the review.

They will only be able to see the response forms that they are allowed to (based on the performance template settings), and comments that they are allowed to see.  They can see attachments as well, but they cannot schedule new reviews etc. as only admin users can do that.