The Risk view on the Trajectory tab is the cross-cycle counterpart to the Reviews > Risk lens. Reviews > Risk shows you a single cycle’s signals; Trajectory > Risk shows you who’s getting worse — declining trajectory, increasing risk indicators, skills that used to be strong but aren’t any more.
What this page answers
Who’s deteriorating across cycles? What new concerns are emerging that didn’t exist before? Where are skills regressing? Who’s the immediate priority for intervention?
What’s on the page
Four headline KPIs
Risk Increasing — Count of employees whose risk trajectory is “increasing”
New Risk — Count whose risk trajectory just appeared this cycle
At Risk — Count meeting at-risk criteria (see below)
Skill Regressions — Count of employees with at least one regressing skill
Risk trajectory
A bar chart of the count of employees by risk direction:
Increasing — Risk getting worse
Stable — Steady level of risk (could be high or low)
Decreasing — Risk getting better
New — First-time appearance
None — No meaningful risk signals detected
Top emerging concerns
A bar chart of the most common new concerns across the cohort — concerns that just appeared in the latest cycle. Common patterns:
Collaboration issues — Friction with colleagues
Accountability gaps — Missing commitments, not following through
Engagement decline — Reduced motivation or involvement
Communication breakdown — Issues with team or manager
Career stagnation — Stuck, not progressing
The exact set varies — Compass identifies concerns from review text without a fixed taxonomy.
At-risk employees
A table of employees flagged as at-risk. Columns:
Name — Clickable
Department
Trajectory — Direction
Archetype — One of the eight archetypes
Risk Trend — Increasing / Stable / Decreasing / New
Concerns — Comma-separated list of new concerns Compass identified
Skill regressions
A table of employees whose specific skills have weakened cycle-over-cycle:
Name
Department
Skill — The skill that’s regressed (e.g., “leadership”, “technical depth”, “communication”)
Change — A textual description of the change (e.g., “Strong → moderate”)
Trajectory
Where the data comes from
The page is built from several signals in each employee’s trajectory synthesis:
Risk direction — whether risk is increasing, stable, decreasing, or new
New concerns — the concerns that have just appeared
Archetype — Particularly the “at risk” archetype
Trajectory — Particularly “declining”
Plus the skill-regression signals Compass records when a specific skill weakens between cycles — these feed the skill regressions table.
Who counts as “at risk”
An employee appears on the at-risk table if any of these is true:
Trajectory = Declining — Performance trending down
Risk trajectory = Increasing or New — Risk indicators getting worse
Archetype = At Risk — Compass classified them as at-risk overall
This is OR logic, not AND. Someone with a Stable risk trajectory but a Declining performance still appears. The table is sorted by risk trend — Increasing first, then New — with Compass’s confidence breaking ties.
How to read it
Read the four KPIs first. They give you the headline risk volume.
Risk Increasing + Skill Regressions together is the most concerning combination. A specific skill weakening and the overall risk picture worsening is a strong “act now” signal.
Top emerging concerns tells you the firm’s “what’s going wrong this cycle?” story. Aggregate concerns across the cohort point at systemic issues — if “engagement decline” is suddenly common, something happened at firm level.
The at-risk table is your follow-up list. Click into each name, read the underlying reviews, decide on intervention.
Tips
Skill regressions are quieter than performance declines but often more diagnostic. A skill regressing is often the first sign before overall performance falls.
New concerns deserve immediate read. Anything that just appeared is by definition a signal Compass hadn’t seen before — worth understanding why.
Decreasing risk is good news; celebrate it. People moving from elevated risk to “decreasing” are recovery stories — recognise the managers and circumstances that helped.
Compare to last cycle. A single cycle’s risk count doesn’t mean much; the change in risk count tells you whether the firm’s overall picture is improving or deteriorating.