7 Steps To Start The Review Process In Your Organization

  1. Create a cycle with timelines (a. Performance b. Administration c. Cycle Management)
  2. Set your rating scale (a. Performance b. Administration c. Cycle Management d. Create Cycle/Edit Cycle)
  3. Decide on template settings (a. Performance b. Administration c. Settings)
  4. Decide on Final Recommendation Questions by Managers and HR. Default questions are already given (a. Performance b. Administration c. Recommendation Questionnaire)
  5. Create templates for self-review and manager review (a. Performance b. Templates c. +New Templates)
  6. Assign templates to employees from the Org Dashboard (a. Performance b. Org Dashboard c. Template – Actions)
  7. Share templates to employees from the Org Dashboard (a. Performance b. Org Dashboard c. Status – Actions)

Creating A New Cycle

A cycle represents the performance review timeline. It covers the sequence of dates from assigning employees a review template to the time when HR and managers sign off and lock the reviews of all employees.

 

You can create as many review cycles as you want. Once you have decided upon the frequency of reviews you should go ahead and create those cycles.

  • Go to ‘Administration’ in the ‘Performance’ menu.
  • Click on ‘Cycle Management’
  • The ‘Cycle Management’ homepage shows you the list of existing cycles and the cycle statistics of the respective cycles.
  • Click on ‘+New Cycle’
  • Add cycle information like Add Title, Review Period, Dates by which Templates should be assigned to and be completed by the managers, direct reports and administrators.
  • You can also control whether employees can manage reviews upon completion. If you do not want employees to see manager reviews, then in Visibility Settings, select ‘NO’. The HR can change this manually later on. By default, the setting is selected as ‘NO’.
  • If you want to enable ‘Review Notes’, you can do so by selecting ‘Enable review notes’ under Other Settings.
  • Under Other Settings, you can also enable Secondary Reviewers by selecting ‘Enable secondary reviewers’.
  • You can also enable ratings, allow comments by managers and employees or make comments mandatory for both employee and manager.
  • Once you enable ratings, the rating scale and grade cluster will become visible. You are free to edit the rating scale according to what you think is appropriate. The grade cluster can also be adjusted accordingly to the rating scale by moving the slider up and down.
  • Additionally, you also have the option to enable Employee Potential by selecting Enable Employee Potential Measurement. Once selected, two options become visible, Enable Potential Rating and Enable Leadership Questionnaire. If you check Enable Potential Rating, a rating scale will appear right below it. This scale is editable and can be edited right there. If you check Enable Leadership Questionnaire, you can view the questionnaire. The questionnaire cannot be edited however.
  • There is also the option to allow employees to see their Potential ratings.
  • Once you are done filling in the Cycle information, click on SAVE and a new cycle will be created.
  • Additionally, the Cycle Management homepage allows you to restrict the visibility of the cycles to specific users.
  • Select ‘restrict visibility’ through the ‘actions’ drop-down menu on the bottom right corner of a cycle name and select names of the employees to whom you want the cycle to be visible.
  • You can also go to the ‘Org Dashboard’ directly through the cycle management page by clicking ‘Go To Org Dashboard’ beside the cycle name.

Engagedly’s Linear Cycle Workflow

 

  1. Managers Create & Assign Templates  
  2. Share templates with employees
  3. Employees finish Self-Reviews
  4. Managers complete their reviews of their direct reports
  5. HR oversees, signs and locks all completed reviews.

Users are encourage to create a cycle that follows a linear timeline. The information below further elaborates on the need for a timeline and what each section in a cycle accomplishes.

  • Title & Description: This is the name of your cycle (e.g. Q1 2015, Jan – Jul 2015, Annual Performance Review – 2015)
  • Performance review period: This information will be used in all notifications to employees and will help them give feedback accordingly. E.g. For the 2015 Annual Review, the period of review could be Jan 1st 2015 – December 31st 2015.
  • Performance template should be assigned to employees by: Assigning templates is the process by which relevant templates are matched with relevant employees. This refers to the date by which HR or Managers should have created templates and assigned them to all employees. Prior to this date, a reminder notification is sent to HR.However, you can continue assigning templates beyond this date too.
  • HR should share the template with the employee by: Sharing templates implies that employees get notified that their review templates are ready and they can view it. This is the date by which the HR should have shared templates to all relevant employees. Prior to this date, a reminder notification is sent to the HR. However, you can continue sharing templates beyond this date too.
  • Employees can start their self-reviews on or after: Self-review is the process where employees can rate/add comments about themselves in the performance areas provided in the template. On and after this date, employees can start entering their comments and ratings. On this date, a reminder email is sent to all relevant employees who have templates assigned to them.
  • Employees should submit their self-reviews by: A reminder email is sent to all employees prior to this date. However, even after this date, employees will still be able to submit self-reviews.
  • Managers should finish reviewing their direct reports by: A reminder email is sent to all managers prior to this date. However even after this date managers will still be able to submit reviews.
  • HR managers should finish reviewing and lock all appraisals by: A reminder email is sent to all HR managers prior to this date. However even after this date managers will still be able to manage reviews.
  • Visibility Settings: Enabling this feature ensures that an Employee sees manager comments & ratings instantly upon manager submission.
  • Other Settings:
  • Enable review notes: Enables employee, manager & HR to write notes with respect to the review, such as one to one meetings minutes, individual development plans etc.
  • Enable secondary reviews: People other than managers can also be invited to comment on the review form.
  • Allow rating: Selecting this enables employees and managers to rate each topic in the review template. The rating scale is usually set when a cycle is being created.
  • Enable overall rating: Selecting this enables employees and managers to give overall ratings.
  • Allow managers to comment: This setting opens a comment box for managers to comment on each of the topics in the review template.
  • Allow employees to comment: This setting opens a comment box for employees to comment on each of the topics in the review template.
  • Are comments mandatory for employees and managers: This setting forces users to add some comment in each of the relevant comment boxes. Empty submissions are not allowed.
  • Allow employees to provide overall remarks: This setting provides a comment box for employees to write overall comments in a review.
  • Allow manager to provide overall remarks: This setting provides a comment box for manager to write overall comments in a review.
  • Allow HR to provide overall remarks: This setting provides a comment box for hr to write overall comments.

Performance Rating Scale:

In this section, users can enable and edit the performance rating scale. They can edit the Grading scale as well.

Employee Potential:

In this section, administrators can enable employee potential measurement and use either the Potential Rating option or the Leadership questionnaire option to measure employee potential.

Editing An Existing Cycle

  • Go to ‘Administration’ in the ‘Performance’ menu.
  • Click on ‘Cycle Management’ and you will see a list of cycles that have been created.
  • Each cycle has a menu of actions. To edit a cycle, select Edit from the list of actions.
  • You will be redirected to the Edit Cycle page.
  • Make your changes and click ‘Save’

Template Settings

  • Click on the ‘Settings’ tab in the ‘Administration’ section of the ‘Performance’ menu.
  • This tab allows you to change the template and available resources settings.

Templates

 

Show Template Library to All: The HR can create and push templates to a common library which can be accessed by other managers across the organization. By default, Engagedly restricts access only to the HR.

 

Allow all employees to create templates: The ability to create templates is by default available only to the HR. You can change this by giving all employees the ability to create templates. If you want line managers to be able to create templates, this can be a useful feature. Use this feature with caution.

 

Resources accessible while writing a performance review:

 

Engagedly allows you to access employee feedback, their job description and goals (If the Goals module is enabled) while writing reviews. This will help you write a comprehensive review based on past achievements and feedback.

 

Advanced Settings:

 

Display “Level” in dashboard: This setting is useful for organizations which identify people based on Levels (not to be confused with designations). Some examples of Level nomenclature are L1, L2, L3, M1, M2 etc.

 

Enable Goals In Performance Review Template: Once this setting has been enabled, you can add the goals through the review template when creating it.

How does the Leadership Questionnaire work?

 

Each question has a YES or NO option. Managers get to rate their direct reports. Each YES answer yields one point and each NO answer yields to zero points.

 

Reviewees scoring 0-3 points will be deemed to have Low Leadership Potential
Reviewees scoring 4-7 points will be deemed to have Medium Leadership Potential
Reviewees scoring 8-10 points will be deemed to have High Leadership Potential

This survey is based on the Harvard Model of Leadership and is an indicator of potential. However, we urge reviewers to exercise their own judgement when looking at the results.

Recommendation Questionnaire

Click on Performance and then Administration. On this page, click on “Recommendation Questionnaire” and you will be able to view it.

 

Reviews in general serve two purposes: 1.) To give feedback for employee to improve and 2.) For organizations to identify future plans for employees.

 

Engagedly has a questionnaire builder for this which surveys manager and HR intentions (these are optional). The default questionnaire asks some simple, yet pertinent questions which can help HR get some great analytics.

 

The Manager Recommendation Questionnaire will be available for managers to fill for their direct reports.

 

The HR Recommendation Questionnaire will be available for HR to fill for all employees. Craft HR questions which help you collate final recommendations for the organization to use.

Creating New Review Template

Understanding Templates:

 

Templates house the main review questions or areas that employees and managers rate and comment on. One can create unlimited templates. Many organizations usually have one performance review template per “role”. However you can also (if desired) use one standard template for all employees.

 

Attached to each template are “weights” for weighted averages across sections and the “Leadership Questionnaire”.

 

Creating a new template

 

  • Go to ‘Templates’ in ‘Performance’ menu.
  • Click on ‘+New Template’ and fill in the details like template title and review sections.
  • Add the ‘Performance Review Sections’
  • You can choose to add Competencies to a template as well through the Search & Add button. However, this is only possible if you have added competencies to the Org Library from the main Settings page. [ Settings > Content Manager >Competencies]
  • To ensure that goals can be added to the final review template, select the setting ‘Enable Goals’.
  • In the Goals section in the template, administrators can decide who all can rate and comment upon the Goals by clicking on the Settings icon. Administrators can even give weights to goals, relative to other performance areas.
  • Click on ‘Save & Next’. You will be redirected to the ‘Weighting’ page.
  • By default weights are selected but you can disable it. Remember, if you use weights the total should tally up to 100%.
  • It is possible to give some Performance Areas weights and leave the others as they are.
  • For instance, if there are 3 performance areas in a template, an  HR administrator can choose to add weights to only two performance areas. In the 3rd one, they can add 0% as the weight, so that the field is not left blank.

Here’s a list of things that you can do in the ‘Templates’ tab after creating a template. These are useful for advanced users. If you are starting now, you can skip this section and head straight to Assigning Templates.

 

    • Assigning Templates – Click on the ‘Assign’ button on the template name that you want to assign. Select the employees to whom you want to assign the template to and select the cycle. Click ‘Submit’
    • Distributing Templates – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Distribute’. Add users and click ‘Submit’.
    • Discussions On Templates – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Discuss’. Add users and click ‘Submit’
    • Publishing To Library – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Publish To Library’. Click ‘Ok’. Once a template is published to the library, it cannot be recalled.
    • Changing Ownership – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Change Ownership’. Select user and click ‘Submit’
    • Export To PDF – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Export To PDF’
    • Preview – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Preview’.
    • Edit – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Edit’.
    • Delete – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Delete’.
    • Copy – Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Assign’ button and select ‘Copy’.

 

Adding Employees To A Cycle

When a new cycle is created, by default, there are no employees who are part of the cycle. Administrators will need to add employees to the cycle. This is done through the Org Dashboard.

 

If all employees are part of this cycle then you can add all of them in one click with the ‘Add All Employees’ action.

 

If your organization runs parallel cycles with different sets of employees you can search select and add employees with the ‘Search & Add Employees’ action.

Add All Employees – When you click on this, all the employees in an organization will be added to a cycle.

 

Search & Add employees – When you click on this option, you be redirected to a new page where you can see a list of all the employees in your organization. There is a checkbox next to each employee’s name. Select the employees you want to add to the cycle, and then click on Add. They will appear in the Selected Employees column.

You can also remove employees from the Selected Employees column If you have selected a few employee by mistake or decide that you do not want to add an employee to the cycle.

 

Once you’ve finalized the list of selected employees, click on Save. You will now be redirected to the Org Dashboard page where you can see all the employees who are a part of the cycle.

 

Note: Blocked users will still remain in the cycle. They can be identified by a small icon next to their name and the fact that their complete row is a different colour from the rest of the page.

Note: Adding users or deleting users do not generate any notifications.

How To Add Secondary Reviewers

In an organization, different people work on different projects. People who might have worked together at one point of time might now be working with different people.

 

So, when reviewing the performance there might be a need to gather inputs from different users.

 

Engagedly allows administrators to add secondary reviewers to contribute to the performance review of users in their organization.

 

You can find a new column ‘Secondary Reviewers’ in the ‘Org Dashboard’/ ‘Team Dashboard’ (If Enabled).

 

Clicking on this column against the username, will take you to a page where you can add multiple secondary reviewers.

 

These secondary reviewers can only contribute to the review by adding a comment. They cannot modify or delete the comment once submitted.

How To Respond To Secondary Review Request

Go to ‘My Dashboard’ through ‘Performance’. On this page, under ‘Secondary Reviews’ is the list of requests for secondary review.

 

To contribute to a review request click on it and add your review as comments in the form. Click submit. Your secondary review will be contributed.

Removing Employees From A Cycle

To remove employees from a cycle, hover on the gear icon next the Employee title and click on ‘Remove from cycle’. Select the employees you want to remove from the cycle and click on Remove.

Tip: If you want to exclude just a few employees from a cycle you can add all employees and then remove the employees you want to exclude.

Assigning Performance Review Templates

Go to ‘Org Dashboard’ and select a cycle. A list of employees who have been selected for that particular cycle will be shown.

 

You can either assign templates to employees all together or individually. To assign templates individually, click on Assign in the Template column, next to the employee’s Job Title.

A light box opens up and here, you will be able to search for and select a template for the user. Once you are done selecting, click on Submit. Once a user has been assigned a template, a green check mark will be shown in the place of Assign.

To assign templates at one go, in the Template drop down menu, click on Assign. All the employees to whom you have not assigned templates will be shown with a check box next to their name.

 

To select all employees, click on the checkbox which is next to the Employee title. This will automatically select all the employees, which you can see because the checkboxes next to their name will have a check mark.

 

You can alternatively also select only the employees you want by selecting the checkboxes next to their name.

Recalling or Retracting Templates

You can recall templates by selecting Recall from the Template drop down menu. Clicking on the Recall action will make checkboxes appear next to all the users who have been assigned templates. Check the boxes next to users from whom the template needs to be recalled and then click on Recall.

 

Note: Once a template has been locked by the HR, it cannot be recalled unless the template is unlocked first.

Sharing Performance Review Templates

Once you are done assigning templates, the next thing you need to do is share them. This you can do by clicking on the Share action under the Status column.

 

You can share templates individually or you can also share templates with employees at one go by selecting Share in the Status drop down menu and selecting the checkbox that appears next to the Employee title.

 

Note: Once a manager or HR assigns a performance review template to his direct reports, it reflects on the direct report’s dashboard only after the HR shares it with the direct report.

After the performance review is completed by both the direct report and the manager, the administrator can lock it.

Org Dashboard

Note: All the columns in the Org Dashboard can be sorted which makes it easier for administrators.

 

An administrator can perform various actions on the ‘Org Dashboard’. They can change the ‘Status’ of a performance review template; they can either ‘Share’ a template with a user or ‘Recall’ an already assigned template. They also have an option to filter the users based on their departments.

 

The administrator can also enable or disable Leadership Potential (LP) for employees. There’s a column called LP, next to the Status column. Here, administrators can use the Enable or Disable action to alter the leadership potential for employees. Disabling LP will show as a red ‘x’ mark for employees.

 

Note: The Leadership Potential column will only show on the Org Dashboard if it has been enabled during Cycle creation. The LP column can be enabled/disabled even after cycle creation by the HR administrator by editing the Cycle where you want the column to be enabled or disabled.

 

The administrator also has the power to unlock the performance review of an employee or a manager. You can unlock a signed review by selecting ‘Unlock’ under the ‘HR’ dropdown menu and selecting the user name that you want to unlock it for

 

How To Add Goals To A Review Template

Goals can be added to a review template once the template has been assigned to and shared with the employees.  But if you want employees to rate and comment on the goal, then it is necessary to add the goals before employees begin their reviews.

 

To add goals to the review template, click on ‘Shared’ under status, in either the Org Dashboard or Team Dashboard. This will open up the review template. Clicking on ‘Import Goals’ allows managers to add goals that need to be reviewed. Just remember to add goals that relevant to the current review cycle.

How To Notify Employees and Managers About Pending Reviews?

Site administrators can notify employees and managers of pending or incomplete reviews by using the Notify feature in the Employee and the Manager columns.

 

When you click on the drop down menu, you can see Notify as one the actions that can be performed. When Notify is selected, checkboxes will appear next to employees who have yet to complete their reviews. Site administrators can choose to send individual  notifications or send mass notifications at one go. To send a notification to an individual, site administrators just need to select the checkbox next to the individual’s name,  after which a Notify message appears on the top of the page. To continue, click on ‘Notify’.

 

Once you click on Notify, a pop-up box appears. Here, you can customize your review message for the individual and then notify them.

 

In case you want to notify a numbers of individuals at one go, select the checkbox that appear next to the  heading ‘Employee’ in the employee name column. After this, site administrators need to click on the Notify message which appears at the top of the page.

 

Once you click on Notify, a pop-up box appears. Here, you can customize your review message for the group and then notify them.

Site administrators can also export a copy of all the goals that have been added for users in performance review templates.

If during Cycle creation, you set Visibility Settings (Employee sees manager comments & ratings instantly upon manager submission.) as NO, then you will also see two more actions in the Org Dashboard.

 

These are:

  • Show Manager Review To Employees
  • Hide Manager Review From Employees

 

When you select these actions, you can either make manager reviews visible to employees or hide them.

Alternatively, administrators can also change the setting manually. Click on a preview of the manager review from the Org Dashboard. You will be able to make the change there.

The ‘Org Dashboard’ can be viewed in both list view and hierarchy view, you just have to click on which view you prefer at the top of the list.

Download Performance Reviews

Consolidated Employee Reviews

Administrators can download combined employee performance reviews from the org dashboard or they can download employee performance reviews individually.

 

If you want to download employee performance reviews for a number of employees at one go, go to the Performance Org Dashboard and hover on the Export menu. You have the option to download reviews for all the employees who are a part of the current cycle, or you can download the reviews of a select few employees from the current cycle.

To download reviews for a select number of employees, select the option ‘Select & Export to PDF’. You will then see checkboxes next to employee names. Once you have selected the employees, click on Export. The download link will then be sent to your email id (the one you use for Engagedly account.)

To download reviews for all employees, select the option ‘Export all to PDF’. A download link with the reviews will then be sent your email id.

HR administrators can now download an excel sheet which contains data from all the Performance Areas in the templates that have been assigned to employees during a particular cycle. They can also download an excel sheet contains the Nine Box Analytics.

Both the Performance Areas and the Nine Box Analytics excel sheets can be downloaded from the Org Dashboard as well. Just clicking on the options automatically downloads them to your system.

When broken down, the Performance Areas excel sheet contains the employee name, the manager name, the overall ratings from a self review by an employee, the overall ratings from a manager review, a self review average and a manager average for each section ( each performance area) and individual ratings for each question.

 

Since, in a performance review cycle, different templates can be assigned to different employees, the data within the sheet is also broken down template wise.

Administrators can now also download an excel sheet contain the Nine Box Analytics Data for all the employees in review cycle. Here, the data is broken down in terms of potential and performance, with colour coding to help administrators identify where each employee falls.

Recommendation Analytics – Manager Recommendations Export

 

Administrators can even download an excel sheet containing all the Manager Recommendations data for a cycle. This can be done from the Recommendation Analytics tab. This will give administrators a complete breakdown of how an employee’s manager has answered each recommendation question.

Individual Employee Reviews

To download individual employee reviews, click on either the employee, manager or HR ratings of the employee.

The employee’s performance review opens up. When you hover on the ‘Export as PDF’ option, you see the different versions of the review that you can download.

You can download a review that contains the complete review or you can download versions that do not have the HR Recommendations or the Manager Recommendations.

Adding Review Notes

Review Notes are only accessible by clicking on an employee’s review form. Once the review form is opened, you can review notes at the bottom of the form.

 

To add a review note, click on “+Add Note” and share what you have to say. You can even add attachments to a review note. Managers and HR administrators can also restrict the visibility of their notes from the employee when creating/editing notes.

The other two tabs in the ‘Org Dashboard’ menu are‘Recommendation Analytics’ and Performance Insights’.

 

The recommendation questionnaire is added to every review template and the manager gives a response when he reviews it. ‘Recommendation Analytics’ shows you the graphical representation for the same.

 

The ‘Performance Insights’ tab allows the HR to view how ratings are distributed across a review cycle.Users can even click on each bar in the graph to view which employee or manager has used that rating.

 

The 9 Box Analytics allows HR to view leadership potential of all the employees who have been given the Leadership Questionnaire. The leadership potential of employees can be viewed based on review cycles. If the questionnaire has not been enabled for a review cycle, then the 9 box analytics will not show up.

After the due date for the performance review has passed, the administrator can lock it. Select ‘Lock’ under HR actions and select the users whose performance review you want to lock and then click on ‘Lock’.

Performance Review Form

  • Go to Org Dashboard from Performance and click on either employee rating or manager rating.
  • The performance review form opens.
  • You can edit manager review visibility for an employee.
  • Click on ‘Change’ beside Visibility under the employee name and edit the visibility of manager reviews.
  • This page also shows you employee and manager reviews on various sections like ‘Performance areas’ , ‘Manager recommendations’ and ‘Employee Potential’
  • You can fill in the HR remarks in the form and ‘Save’ it.
  • You can also fill in ‘HR Recommendations’ and ‘Lock’ it. Or you can save it and lock it later from the ‘Org Dashboard’

Resource Center

The expandable ‘resource center’ bar on the bottom of the page helps you quickly go through the reviewee details like

 

Job Description – Here you can see the job description and responsibilities of the reviewee

 

Goals – This section shows you the active and archived goals of the reviewee from previous six months to the current date. You can also use the date picker to find goals from a particular date and search bar for easy search.

 

Feedback- This section shows you the feedback received by the reviewee from previous six months to the current date. You can also use the date picker to find feedback from a particular date and search bar for easy search.

 

Notes – This section shows you the notes where the reviewee has been mentioned from previous six months to the current date. You can also use the date picker to find notes from a particular date  and search bar for easy search.

 

Documents – This section shows you the documents that are uploaded by the manager/admin for the reviewee from previous six months to the current date. You can also use the date picker to find documents from a particular date  and search bar for easy search.

You can also download the documents by clicking the ‘download’ icon beside the document name.

 

Past Reviews – Here you can see the archived performance reviews of the reviewee from past six months. You can also use the date picker to find performance reviews from a particular date  and search bar for easy search.

 

360 Feedback – Here you can see the multi-rater feedback received by the reviewee in past six months. You can also use the date picker to find multi-rater feedback from a particular date  and search bar for easy search.