This guide covers how to schedule, start, and manage an active performance review cycle.
Scheduling an upcoming performance cycle
If you’re ready to schedule your performance review cycle after editing, click Schedule in the top-right corner. This will change the status of the cycle from Draft to Upcoming.
You will be redirected to the review cycle dashboard. You can still edit the template while it’s scheduled by clicking Edit template in the top-right corner.
To return an upcoming cycle to draft mode, click the three dots icon, and select Return to draft.
Note: Scheduling a cycle for a future date does not mean it will start automatically. You must manually click Start cycle on the day. This applies to recurring cycles as well.
Starting the performance cycle
When you're ready to begin, click Start cycle on the cycle's dashboard. Even if you've set a scheduled date, you'll need to manually start the cycle. The scheduled date is used as a reference point for configuring the cycle's timeline and notifications, but it won't activate the cycle automatically.
Once you confirm, reviews are sent out to participants immediately. Some configuration settings can no longer be edited, including the schedule, audience/enrolment filters, review scope types, and performance rating scale once the cycle’s started.
To learn more, read Editing an active cycle's settings for details on what can still be changed.
What happens after starting the cycle
Once you click Start cycle, the following happens immediately:
Cycle participants are assigned their review tasks.
Review tasks appear in each reviewer's My tasks section.
Notification emails and Slack messages are sent to each participant (depends on their settings in Manage notifications).
For recurring and one-time cycles, the dashboard will display a rating distribution graph, a Your review tasks section, a list of participants, their progress, and ratings, along with a Reporting tab.
For milestone cycles, only the Reporting tab will display.
The cycle’s status changes to Active.
Editing an active cycle’s settings
Once a cycle has started, you are limited in terms of what settings can be edited. Here is a list of the settings that can be changed after a cycle is activated:
Cycle title
Feedback visibility
Deadline days
Add long and short text fields to feedback questions
Add performance rating field
Edit and remove certain aspects of existing questions and text areas
Add styling elements to feedback questions
For milestone cycles, enrollment filters can still be adjusted after activation.
Changes to an active cycle don't auto-save. Click the Save button in the top-right corner to apply them.
Once a cycle has been activated, you can’t add new or edit existing single-choice, multi-choice, or scale fields.
Important considerations
Deleting a feedback field will remove all responses to it in any submitted or in-progress reviews.
If you change a feedback field to required after some participants have already submitted their reviews, this won't apply retroactively. You'll need to request changes from those participants so they can resubmit.
If a feedback field is changed to Hidden from reviewee, it will change both submitted and ongoing reviews within an active cycle.
Dashboard overview
Once a one-time or recurring cycle has been started, you will see the performance cycle dashboard populate. The dashboard consists of several panels and two tabs, Overview and Reporting.
After feedback is published, the Rating distribution graph will display based on performance ratings received.
Monitoring cycle progress using the Reporting table
The Reporting table allows you to track the progress of cycle participants and download feedback when completed through the following views:
Overview
Self reviews
Manager reviews
Peer reviews
Upward reviews
Overview tab
In this tab, you will see a list of cycle participants (this will depend on your permission level). Click an employee’s listing to open their review packet. Depending on the type of review, you will see a previous and current rating where available, and the progress of each employee.
Reporting tab
The Reporting tab provides several table views for reviewing cycle data: Overview, Self reviews, Manager reviews, Upward reviews, and Peer reviews.
As with Humaans' Tables feature, you can filter, sort, search, add or remove columns, and reposition them by dragging and dropping. To export the data, click Download CSV.
Overview table
The Overview table includes the following columns: Progress, Feedback status, Feedback published, Previous manager rating, Manager rating, Self rating, Confidence, and Average upward rating.
The data in the Confidence column is based on the difference between the reviewee's self rating and their manager's rating.
There are three ratings:
Aligned: self rating equals manager rating
Overconfident: self rating is higher than manager rating
Underconfident: self rating is lower than manager rating
The Average upward rating column is an average of all performance ratings from upward reviews for that person.
The Previous manager rating is the most recently released manager rating for that employee.
Review tables
The Manager, Self, Peer, and Upward table views each include columns for their respective feedback fields, along with the performance rating where relevant.
Downloading review questions and responses as a sheet
In any Reporting tab view (Overview, Self, Manager, Peer, or Upward), click Download CSV to export the data currently shown as a spreadsheet. The export includes:
One column per review question (using your question titles as column headers).
One row per reviewee (or reviewer/reviewee pair for peer and upward tables).
All responses entered for each question, including written feedback and numeric ratings.
Use the column picker to add or remove columns first if you want to shape the export. Filters and sorts are also applied to the download, so you can narrow to a single team, reviewer, or status before exporting.
The download respects your permissions — you can only export data for reviews you are allowed to view.
Making changes to active performance cycles
Once a cycle is started, there are a range of actions that can be taken to change its settings, add participants or new reviewers, request changes be made, or cancel the cycle. These are covered in detail below.
Adding people to an active cycle
You can add additional participants after a cycle has started:
Open the active cycle.
Click the three dots icon on the right-side, followed by Add people.
Search for and add any extra employees.
Confirm the addition by clicking Add person.
New review instances are created for the additional employees, and reviewers are assigned based on the cycle's scope.
Adding a reviewer to a person's review packet
Particularly useful if a manager is away, additional reviewers can be included in an ongoing cycle, by following these steps:
Open the cycle and click on the employee's name.
Click Add reviewer.
Select the review type and choose the reviewer.
Note: When adding a manager to a review, the average of their performance rating and the original manager’s rating will be calculated and used by the system.
Requesting changes to a submitted review
If a reviewer needs to revise their submission, follow these steps:
Open the employee's review packet within the active cycle.
Select the submitted review.
Click Request changes.
Confirm the action.
The reviewer can edit and resubmit their review through My tasks. They will need to resubmit the review for it to become visible again.
Completing a cycle
To complete a cycle, click Complete cycle. Once the cycle is completed, no further reviews can be submitted by reviewees.
After completing a cycle, you'll still need to publish feedback separately for reviewees to see their reviews. To learn more about publishing feedback, read Publishing performance feedback.
Canceling a cycle
If you need to terminate a cycle before completion, you can cancel it by clicking Cancel cycle.
Cancelled cycles cannot be reactivated. Consider duplicating a cancelled cycle if you need to start over.
Deleting a review
To delete a review, follow these steps:
Open the employee's review packet in the active cycle.
Select the specific review.
Click Delete review.
Confirm the deletion.
Note: Once deleted, this review cannot be recovered.