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360 Feedback: Nominating and Approving Reviewers

Reviewer selection, approvals, and proactive feedback

There are several ways to structure the nomination and approval of reviewers in a 360 Review cycle. This article walks you through your options, from initial nomination settings to post-approval adjustments.

Nominating reviewers

The first decision is who gets to nominate reviewers. You have three options:

HR Admins only

Only HR Admins can assign reviewers. This works well for targeted cycles, such as an upward manager review.

Managers and HR Admins

A slightly more expanded process. Managers and indirect managers can assign reviewers to their direct reports. This is a good fit for targeted cycles where manager involvement adds value.

Employees, managers, and HR Admins

The most open nomination process. Employees can choose who they would like to receive feedback from, and you can give them the option to include a personal message with their nominations.

Limiting or suggesting a number of reviewers

You can set a maximum number of reviewers to help employees focus on the most relevant people and to prevent nomination overload. You can also set a suggested minimum to make sure everyone nominates enough people.

Note: You cannot limit the number of times a single person can be nominated. If a reviewer could only be nominated a set number of times, the first employees to request their feedback would claim those slots, even if others would benefit more from their input.

Assigning reviewers

As an HR Admin, you can assign reviewers directly. To assign a reviewer to an individual employee, use the Actions menu to expand the reviewer list for that employee.

You can also assign all employees as reviewers of their managers in bulk.

The approval process

For managers

If you want managers to have final sign-off on who provides feedback for their direct reports, you can require manager approval of nominees. If not, nominees are approved automatically.

When setting up the cycle timeline, you can choose to have the approval notification sent automatically.

If you disable this setting, you will need to send the notification manually.

Managers will see their approval requests on their homepage, or by going to Team > 360 Feedback and selecting the cycle.

They can start approving at any point during the open approval window, even before the employee has finished nominating.

To reject a nominee, managers can click the X next to that person's name. They can also add additional reviewers at this stage.

For HR Admins

If managers and HR Admins are both assigning reviewers, the approval process still applies. HR Admins can also approve reviewers in employee-nominated cycles.

HR Admins can approve reviewers in bulk, which is useful when the HR team is handling reviewer assignment.

You can also approve reviewers for individual employees from the cycle administration page.

Adjusting reviewers after approval

Whether employees can edit their reviewer list after submission depends on your cycle settings:

  • If manager approval is required, employees can update their nominees until their nominations are approved.

  • If no approval is required, employees cannot change their list once it has been submitted.

Managers and HR Admins can always adjust a reviewer list on behalf of an employee. Go to Team > 360 Feedback (managers) or the cycle administration page (HR Admins), then click Manage Reviewers next to the relevant employee.

You can add or remove reviewers.

Or take other actions, such as removing them.

Proactive 360 feedback

Proactive 360° Feedback lets employees give feedback to reviewees in a cycle, even if they have not been nominated or approved. To enable this, select Allow proactive 360° feedback during cycle creation.

Proactive 360° Feedback can run alongside a standard nomination process, or you can use it on its own for a free-for-all cycle where each employee chooses their own reviewees.

Employees will see a To-do item on their Home screen that lets them select the people they want to give feedback to. This option is available from the cycle start date through to the cycle end date.

The To-do item also works as a small control panel, showing employees who they have already chosen in the Proactive Feedback process, and letting them jump directly to the feedback form or edit and delete feedback they have already written.

Managers and HR Admins can see on their Cycle Overview screens which employees participated as regular nominees and which joined as proactive reviewers.


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