Effectively track and manage performance evaluations across your organisation using Performance review cycles in Humaans. Request and collect structured feedback through self reviews, manager reviews, peer reviews, and upward reviews as part of a one-time, recurring, or milestone-oriented schedule.
This guide explains how performance cycles work and who can do what.
Video overview of performance
Review schedule types
A performance review may be a single instance or recurring cycle. Choose how often you want the cycle to run by setting the schedule to one of these three options:
One-time: Set a performance review to occur once on a specific date
Recurring: Repeatedly run the same review on a chosen cadence, from monthly to yearly
Milestone: Continuous reviews that run in alignment with employee milestones and growth
Milestone reviews
Things to consider when creating a milestone review:
Deadlines are specific to each cycle participant and based on individual anchor dates. They are not shared across all participants as is the case for other review schedule types.
Enrolment filters remain editable after activation for milestone cycles.
The dashboard differs for milestone cycles. They only show the Reporting tab (no overview dashboard with rating distribution).
To learn more, see Milestone performance review cycles.
Performance review types
Performance cycles can include up to four types of reviews:
Self review: A moment for employees to reflect on their own performance, goals, and development.
Manager review: The employee's manager provides feedback on their direct report.
Peer review: Through a process of nomination, colleagues provide feedback on each other.
Upward review: Direct reports provide anonymous feedback on their manager.
Performance cycle statuses
A performance cycle has several stages indicated by different statuses:
Draft: the cycle is a work in progress and not yet scheduled.
Upcoming: the cycle is scheduled to start on a future date.
Active: the cycle is in motion. Reviewers receive tasks reminding them to submit their reviews.
Completed: the cycle has been closed by an admin. No further reviews can be submitted. Feedback can then be published to reviewees by clicking Publish feedback.
Cancelled: at any point, an admin can cancel a cycle, which prevents further submissions.
Who can do what
Role | Permissions |
Owner and Admin | Create, manage, and complete cycles, view all reviews, delete review instances, request changes, add reviewers, publish feedback, export data, duplicate review cycle, edit review template |
Manager | Complete reviews for direct reports, nominate or approve peers, view all review responses, request changes, view cycle settings |
Employee | Complete assigned reviews (self, peer, upward), nominate peers, view their feedback once published |
Feedback visibility
A cycle's visibility settings control when reviewees and managers can view submitted feedback. Depending on how the cycle is configured, feedback may be visible immediately after submission or only after an admin publishes it.
Note: For upward reviews, visibility works slightly differently. The reviewee is the manager (the subject of the review), and the manager is the manager's manager. This type of review is useful when a manager is a cycle participant.
Peer nomination
There are two options for peer nomination, either the reviewee or their manager can select the peers who are requested for a review.
You can set a minimum (1) and maximum (20) number of peers to be selected per reviewee.
Duplicating a performance cycle
To duplicate a performance cycle, click the three dots icon beside the chosen cycle, click Duplicate. You’ll be immediately redirected to the new copy of the cycle where you can start editing its settings.
Deleting a performance cycle
There are several ways to permanently delete a performance cycle:
You can remove a drafted, scheduled, completed, or cancelled performance review cycle, by clicking the … icon beside the specific cycle listing, followed by Delete.
You can also open the specific cycle, click the … icon in the top-right corner, followed by Delete cycle for all cycles, unless active.
Lastly, you can remove a cycle in the Details tab whilst editing it. Click Delete at the bottom of the section.
Note: By confirming deletion, you’ll permanently lose the performance cycle’s questions and configuration.
Performance ratings
Within each review type (manager review, upward review, etc.), you can add a performance rating section.
Adding a performance rating gives teams a consistent, comparable data point alongside written feedback. This makes it easier to track progress over time and inform decisions around compensation, promotions, and development.
Adjusting performance ratings
You can change the number of ratings used across your performance review cycles. The minimum number of ratings is two and the maximum is five. You can also edit the text used for each rating.
Follow these steps to edit performance ratings:
Click Settings, followed by Performance.
Click Edit beside Ratings.
Increase and decrease the number of ratings as it suits using the + and - symbols in the bottom-right corner.
Click the text fields to change the rating title.
Click Save.
Note: Edits made to performance ratings won’t apply retroactively to past or ongoing cycles. They will only apply to future cycles after edits are saved.
AI summaries
You can choose to display performance review AI summaries in an employee’s user profile and within their performance review cycle pages.
Overview
Over time, as employees receive feedback across several performance cycles, AI summaries will highlight notable keywords, improvements, trends, and areas for improvement. These are accessible in the Performance section of user profiles.
Within an employee's performance review packet, the AI summary gives a consolidated overview of all feedback visible to the employee in that cycle.
Enabling AI summaries
To enable or disable AI summaries, follow these steps:
Click Settings, followed by Performance.
Beside AI summaries, click Edit.
Select either to enable or disable the feature.
Click Save.
Viewing an AI summary report
Cycle participants can view an AI summary of all their past cycles in a report. This summarises their key strengths, growth areas, and achievements. To access this:
Open the user profile.
Click Performance.
Select Humaans AI.
Click See more.
Things to consider
The AI Summary never includes employee self reviews
Manager, peer, and upward reviews are only included by AI summary if the reviewee has access to those reviews as per the feedback visibility settings of the cycle.
Reviews will only be included by AI summary once they become visible to the reviewee, which will depend on if Once published by admin or Immediately after submission is enabled. If the former is enabled, the reviews won’t be included for summary until the admin publishes the feedback.
Any feedback fields that have Hidden from reviewee enabled won’t be included by AI summary.