Launching an Express Anniversary Review

This guide explains how to create, launch, and manage an anniversary-based performance review. An anniversary review is different from a date-based review in that the performance review cycle is triggered by each employee's hire date anniversary.

In this article:
What is an anniversary review?
Prerequisites
Reminders
Launching the Review
Confirming Review Subject Information Prior to Launch
Additional Resources

What is an anniversary review?

An Anniversary Review is meant for the entire employee population of the organization which typically runs annually, but instead of having all performance reviews go out at once, they are triggered on an individual basis for each employee based on their work anniversary.

Prerequisites

• Your organization is using Express Performance Reviews. To check out the differences check out this help center article: Performance Review Types.
• General review templates, workflows, workflow notifications, and submission terms are already set inside Setup.
• All employees who are to participate in the review have the Performance Management user permission.
• The organization’s org chart inside ClearCompany is up to date and maintained regularly.
• Employee work email addresses are properly configured.

Reminders

• You can save your progress and come back later by selecting ‘Save as Draft’ in the bottom tray of options.
• Performance Admins need notifications to regularly visit the active anniversary reviews to confirm assignments

Note:

Anniversary and Onboarding reviews are all "Event-based", which means they are reviews that trigger based on an employee event, sometimes with an offset of "X" amount of days.

Launching the Review

Getting Started

1. Choose Anniversary Performance Review by selecting the Get Started button.
2. Set the Title and write out the optional instructions.
3. Plan the “Schedule & Workflow” by selecting the “Review & Confirm” button.

Schedule & Workflow

1. Set the date for the anniversary review to become active by picking a date for the “When should this review open and go out?” field. The “When should this review be closed?” field will automatically update to represent a full calendar year to ensure all employees, will have their performance review triggered.
2. Choose from your list of Workflows to determine the stages. You can time how long each stage runs to give participants a deadline to complete their stage. If a participant completes their stage sooner than the allotted time, then the next stage will automatically advance ahead of time. (If no list is presented on the dropdown field, this means your organization only has one workflow and is already presented here.)
3. When choosing a workflow, performance admins should be cognizant of any workflow notifications associated with each stage (i.e. due soon and overdue notifications) and when they’re set to go out. They should compare the timing of those notifications with the length of the workflow stages.
4. Confirm the above changes by clicking on Confirm Changes above the dates.

Content

1. Plan the “Content” by selecting the “Review & Confirm” button.
   • Choose from your list of Templates to pick the right content for the review. You can preview the review items by scrolling through. (If no list is presented as a dropdown field, this means your organization only has one Template, and it is already presented here.)
   • Decide who can see the data from the review after it’s completed. By default, the system offers the typical participants: the Review Subject, the Review Subject’s Supervisor, the Review Subject’s Superiors, and the Performance Admins. Click the X next to any of these types of people to remove their ability to see a completed review’s data.
   • If your organization uses Performance Data Walls, those restrictions will apply to all Performance Admins. This means that Admins can only see the review data inside the Data Groups to which they have been granted access.
   • Confirm the above ‘Content’ changes by clicking on Confirm Changes above the data permissions.

People

1. Plan the “People” by selecting the “Set Up & Confirm” button.

2. When launching an Anniversary Review in the People Section, an admin can check the box to "Skip Assignment Confirmation." If the box is checked, review subjects will auto-confirm on the day before their review is set to launch. The checkbox will default to unchecked.

   
3. Use the “Search & Filter” to set the criteria for who will be pulled into an anniversary review. As you choose filters, you will see employees added to the table under the “Included Employees” tab. Employees who have not been selected will reside in the “Excluded Employees” tab.
   • An easy option is to simply select “Include All Employees” to ensure all employees with hire dates get this review.
   • Users without hire dates will be added to the “Excluded Employees” table. If a user without a hire date is selected to be included from the “Excluded Employees” table then their review start date will default to the cycle open date. This date can be changed before their assignment is confirmed to be launched.
   • Note: New hires joining the organization throughout the review period will not automatically get pulled into the review.
4. Alternatively, if you are filtering employees, you can also add individuals by using the dropdown list under “Individual Employee Selection.”
5. There’s a “Reset All” button if you need to start over.
6. If there are one or more employees in the “Included Employees” list that need to be removed, select the box next to their name and use the “Exclude Selected Employees” button to move these employees to the “Excluded Employees” list. Or select the “x” at the end of the row to move an individual employee to the “Excluded Employees” list.
7. Use the ‘Show Assignments’ button to see who will perform each individual’s manager evaluation and other people who will be assigned to participate, along with the review start date based on the employee’s anniversary date.
   • If there is a red dot with a number on the ‘Show Assignments’ button, this means there are this number of employees with workflow stages missing users and/or missing a role if there’s a role competency section. These need your attention. Typically you will not see a red dot if the org chart was updated and all users have an active role.
   • After selecting the Show Assignments button, you will see the Alerts tab. This tab showcases any employee with workflow stages missing a user and/or a role. For missing users, these users could be a supervisor or an approver.
   • To fix a missing assignment, select the ‘No Assignee’ dropdown to pick a person to serve as the assignee (like a supervisor assignment) for the review period. The change will automatically save.
   • If you picked the wrong person, find the employee in the ‘All Assignments’ tab and pick a different user for the assignment.
   • If the review template includes a role competency section and the review subject did not have a role during that review period, it will display ‘Missing Role’.
   • To fix a missing role, select ‘Missing Role’ to pick a role. If no role is selected, the role competency section will not be displayed in the review.
   • If the review subject held multiple roles during the review period then a flag will be displayed next to the role.
   • To change the role, select the flag to pick a new one.
   • Select ‘Hide Assignments’ once all employees have been assigned to a supervisor.
8. Confirm the above ‘People’ changes by clicking on Confirm Changes.
   • If there are employees missing a user (like a supervisor) or role assignments, the system will ask you to confirm that you still want to proceed.
9. Once you have completed the steps, you may now launch your review by selecting the ‘Launch’ button in the bottom tray of options.
10. You will be returned to your menu of Active Reviews of Performance Reviews in the Review Cycles table. You need to refresh your browser screen to see your newly launched anniversary review listed in these active reviews. We will show how many total employees are assigned to each review on this screen.

1.  

Note:

If Skip Assignment Confirmation is enabled, the steps below do not apply.

Confirming & Rejecting Subject Information Prior to Launch

Guide

Once an Anniversary Review is launched, users will be added to a queue where you can verify workflow assignments. In order for a review to be initiated on someone's anniversary date, the users must be confirmed.

1. All confirmed and unconfirmed users will remain in the queue until their review launch date.  If managers (supervisors) are updated in the system while a review subject is yet to have their information confirmed, the changes will automatically be reflected in the In Queue table. If the review subject already had their information confirmed, then information like the review subject's manager will not update. 
2. In your Review Cycle, click In Queue.
3. Select the user(s) you would like to confirm or reject by checking the box to the left of their name(s). From the drop-down, select Confirm Selected or Reject Selected.
4. Confirmed users will have a green checkmark appear beside their name, and rejected users will be removed from the list. 

Note:

• Approvers rejecting the review should leave comments for the user who needs to change their response in the dialogue box that appears when rejecting. The review and comments will then be sent back to said user.
• Comments left by the Approver in the actual review will not be visible until the next approval stage(s) if there is/are one(s) or when the review is fully completed.
• The rejection dialogue box is not to be confused with the comment box on each question in an Approval Stage, which is designed to be fully part of the review and is not designed for rejection comments.

Additional Resources

Introduction to Performance
Performance Testing
ClearCompany's Performance Review Best Practices
Managing Express Reviews
Managing Anniversary Review
Organizational Structure Audit