Launching an Express Date-Based Reviews

This article explains how to create, launch, and manage a date-based performance review. A date-based review is different from an anniversary-based review in that all employees will be reviewed at the same time with the same deadline (whereas with an anniversary review, each employee will have their review trigger when they reach their start date anniversary).

In this article:
Prerequisites
Reminders
Launching a Review
Reviewing Active Cycle
Rejecting a Stage
Additional Resources

Prerequisites

• Your company 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 permission.
• Your company's org chart inside ClearCompany is up to date.
• Employee work email addresses are properly configured.

Reminder

You can also save your progress and come back later by selecting ‘Save as Draft’ in the bottom tray of options.

Launching a Review

Launching a review will consist of 3 sections, Schedule & Workflow, Content, and People. Start with the review Schedule & Workflow.

Getting Started

1. Choose Date-Based 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 date-based review to become active by picking the date from the ‘When does this review start’ field. The end date of this review is determined by the length of each workflow step. The review will launch at 12 pm EST on the date selected, this is the system time.
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 (but the overall deadline for the review cycle stays the same for all participants). If no list is presented as a dropdown field, this means your organization only has one workflow, and it is already presented here.
3. Confirm the above changes by clicking on Confirm Changes.

Content

1. Plan the “Content” by selecting the “Review & Confirm” button.
2. 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.
3. 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. This can be updated if you would like to make changes after the review is live.
4. If the organization is using 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.
5. 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. 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 get this review.
   • Alternatively, if you are filtering employees, you can also add individuals by using the dropdown list under “Individual Employee Selection.”
   • There’s a “Reset All” button if you need to start over.
   • If there’s an employee in the “Included Employees” list that needs 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.
3. 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.
4. If there is a red dot with a number on the ‘Show Assignments’ button, this means there are a number of employees missing a supervisor and these need your attention. Typically you will not see a red dot if the org chart was updated.
   • After selecting the Show Assignments button, you will see the Alerts tab. This tab showcases any employee currently missing a supervisor.
   • To fix a manager assignment, select the ‘No Assignee’ dropdown to pick a person to serve as the supervisor 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 manager assignment.
   • Select ‘Hide Assignments’ once all employees have been assigned to a supervisor.
5. Confirm the above ‘People’ changes by clicking on Confirm Changes above the data permissions.
6. If there are employees missing a manager assignment, the system will ask you to confirm that you still want to proceed.
7. Once you have completed the steps, you may launch your review by selecting the ‘Launch’ button in the bottom tray of options.
8. 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.

Reviewing Active Cycle

Review Actions

1. Select a review at any time to see progress, take special actions mid-review, and see completed review results.
2. The Overview tab displays data about each stage of the review process.
   • Under the ‘Review Actions’ tab, you can:
   • ‘Copy the Review’ in case you need to clone the review and use it again. This feature proves helpful in special scenarios when you need to move certain employees to a new review (perhaps because they suddenly have a new manager).
   • ‘Edit Cycle Settings’ to make certain mid-review changes. Once a review is past its completed date, you can see the review settings but they cannot be changed. The available in-flight changes include:
     • Edit the end date of the review.
     • Add or remove employees to the review.
     • The workflow and review content cannot be altered.
3. You can click on ‘Does this data look outdated?’ to see the time stamp of the last time the data was updated in the visualizations. The data on this page is updated every 3 hours.
4. The page will open to those ‘In Review’ (you can ignore the ‘In Queue’ list as this is functionality for Anniversary-based reviews).
5. The review workflow steps are visualized at the top of the table. You can select a stage to see the list of review subjects’ review in this stage.
6. You can add people to the review who are not listed in the In Review tab.
7. New users can be added if you go to Edit Cycle Settings (under the Review Actions dropdown). This will open the Create Performance Review screen where you can select Set Up & Confirm under the People section. There, add specific employees through the search option. After you’ve found the people to add, select Confirm Changes under the People section, and then close the window by selecting Save Changes.

Bulk Actions

There are several ‘bulk actions’ you can take from the ‘bulk actions’ dropdown (make sure you have selected specific people first before taking a desired action).

• You copy these employees’ email addresses to your computer’s clipboard. This feature will prove helpful if you need to send an email to these people manually.
• You can mark these employees’ reviews as complete or delete the review altogether. These features will prove helpful if you need certain reviews to end early or restart the survey for specific people. Reasons you may need certain reviews to end early or delete reviews include:
  • You need a create a new review for individuals who had a manager who is no longer available to participate in the review and you will assign a new manager to review these people.
  • Employees who were termed during the review period.

• You can export the current results of the review. This feature will prove helpful when you need to preserve the data and feedback for a review that will be deleted or left incomplete.

Individual Users

At any stage, an admin can click on an individual to see their review (assuming you have the permissions and – when applicable with Performance Data Walls turned on – access to the individual’s Data Group).

• The phone and the envelope icons reveal, when selected, the employee’s phone number and email address.
• The 3 dots icon reveals the option to print the review. You can use your system print dialog to create a PDF of the review as an alternative.
• The ‘+ Add Review Files’ provides the option to upload documents to associate with this review for historical records. This option is helpful when someone submits a paper review where the data gets translated into the system.
• The ‘Notes & Feedback’ opens a tray that is private to the specific admin and provides the opportunity to make private notes about this individual review subject. These notes are not available to anyone besides the author of the notes.
• The ‘Unlock Review’ allows an admin to unlock a specific performance review to send it back to any stage (like the review stage or approval stage). This option is helpful when an admin needs an employee to edit the responses they submitted. Performance admins cannot edit a response on behalf of anyone. It has to be the person who submitted the response.
• The admin will choose the stage to revert the review and can leave a note to document this action.
• The employee will get an email notification that their review was unlocked (the email is called Review Unlocked by HR and can be edited under Performance Settings).
• Everyone who participated in any stage after the employee’s stage would then have to re-confirm what they submitted as well. The same email notifications that went out for the cycle (if any) would go out again for each stage to notify people for any remaining stages.

Rejecting a Stage

Reject

Rejecting a stage is necessary when the reviewer must change their scoring or comments.

• • If an approval stage is added, the user that has to approve a stage will get a notification and a task assigned alerting them to Approve a Review.
  • When they click on the task, they will see the review and can look over it to see if they would like to Approve or Reject.
    • Approvers rejecting the review should leave comments for the user who needs to change their response in the dialogue box that appears when rejecting. This will get sent to the User they are rejecting the review back to.
    • 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 is designed to be fully part of the review, and is not designed for rejection comments.

Additional Resources

Introduction to Performance
Performance Testing
Launching an Express Anniversary Review
Managing Express Reviews
Organizational Structure Audit