Creating a performance review

A performance review is a performance evaluation exercise, run over a defined period with a start date and an end date, that involves managers and their workers. It relies on input from the worker, who completes a self-review, and their manager, who then completes a review of the worker. Additional managers can also participate in this process if necessary.

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Performance reviews are available under Workbench > Performance Management > Performance Reviews > Performance Review Templates. Access to Workbench depends on your role within the platform. This feature is available for users with the Reviews professional role.

Step 1 - Performance review details

To create a review, proceed as follows:

1. Click Create performance review in the upper-right corner of the Performance Review Templates page. The review creation form opens at the first step, Performance review details, as shown below:

   

   

   Sections of the Performance review details step

2. In the Basic information section, fill in the details of the review:

   • Select the type of the review from the Review type drop-down list.

   • Enter a title of the new review in the Title field.

   • Enter a description for the review in the Description field. We recommend that you state the purpose of the review in this field to avoid any confusion if you are creating several reviews in your system.

   • Check Goal setting template to prepopulate the review stages with a single step, Manager review.

   • Select your default language from the Choose a default language drop-down list.

   • If your company uses several languages and you want to translate the review, select the additional language from the Translations drop-down list, and then enter the corresponding Title and Description. Repeat this for every language you want to support in your performance review.

3. In the Suggested agenda section, check the box to let workers and managers use the “Suggested agenda” widget during the review. Click the Add agenda point button to add one or more discussion topics; remove a topic by clicking its icon.

4. In the Review periods section, under Goal period, select the Start date and End date of your review. All the goals that were created with a due date or a deliverable date within this period will be included in the performance review. If the review period should differ from the goal period, enable the Review period is different from goal period toggle, and then set the Start date and End date to be displayed under Review period to be displayed. This is a read-only, display-only setting and does not affect the goal period itself. You can also check Hide the goal period from the review form if you do not want it shown at all.

5. In the Add review owners section, use the Review owners field to select all the people who should own this performance review.

6. In the Plan transmission section, you can check Send performance review PDF to Documents and then select the communication round it should refer to from the drop-down list.

7. In the Score calculation section, you can check Enable total score calculation to have the system automatically calculate a total score at the end of the review form; you will define which sections contribute to this score later, in the Custom section step.

Click Next in the progress widget to move to the next step of the review creation process: Population.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation of the review later on. In this case, the review is saved as a Draft.

Step 2 - Population

Once you have entered the basic information for the review, you need to define its target population; in other words, the workers and managers who will be able to use this review.

The following figure presents the Population step of the review creation process:

Defining a population

To define the target population of a review, proceed as follows:

1. In the Select population section, open the Population drop-down list and check the box next to each population you want to apply to this review. You can select more than one population; the resulting group of workers and managers is the union of all the populations selected.

2. Optionally, use the Role drop-down list to further filter the selected population(s) by role: choose Worker or Manager to include only people with that role within the population(s) selected, or leave it set to All roles to include both. For example, selecting the "All company" population with the Manager role applied restricts the review to managers within that population.

3. To include or exclude specific individuals, in addition to or regardless of the populations selected above, go to the Manual worker selections section and click Manage workers. Then, select Include worker or Exclude worker from the drop-down list.

4. In the pop-up window, use the search bar to look up workers by name or worker ID, check the box next to each worker you want to include or exclude, and click Include selected or Exclude selected.

5. The workers you added are then listed in the Manual worker selections table, along with their worker ID, organization, country, and status (Included or Excluded). Use the Search bar to find a specific worker in this table, or remove one by clicking the three-dot icon next to their name and selecting Delete.

Click Next in the progress widget, on the right side of the form, to move to the next step of the review creation process: Review stages.

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Once you publish the review template, the Population step behaves differently:

• You can still add new populations, but you can no longer remove a population that was already part of the setup at the time of publication.

• You can still manually include additional workers, but you can no longer exclude workers or delete an inclusion or exclusion that was made before publishing. Because of this, the Manage workers button is relabeled Include workers once the review has been published, and the three-dot icon is not available for any entry made prior to publication.

Step 3 - Review stages

After defining the population, you can configure the stages of the review by changing the state of the toggles described below. As you configure them, the Preview of the performance review timeline panel on the right updates in real time to show the resulting sequence of stages for the review, from Start through Worker sign-off:

• Moderation stage: after activating this option, you choose between:

  • Moderation led by the manager: Managers will be able to complete the moderation process and advance the review to the next stage via the review form. The professional review role will still have access to monitor, manage, and intervene if necessary via the portal.

  • HR-led process: Managers will not be able to complete the moderation stage or move the process forward via the review form. The professional review role will manage the process via the portal. Selecting this option also lets you toggle Manager can edit their inputs during HR-led moderation, which allows managers to edit their ratings and comments during the moderation stage; disable it to keep reviews frozen in read-only mode during moderation.

• Conversation & publication: Enabling Skip the “Conversation & publication” results stage publishes the review and makes it visible to the worker as soon as the manager submits their review, skipping this stage entirely. beqom recommends keeping the conversation and publication results stage. This setting cannot be changed after the review form is published.

• Worker self-assessment: Enabling Skip worker self-assessment means only managers are required to provide input. Workers will not be able to view the questions or respond to them.

• Challenge process: Enabling the Enable challenge process option allows workers to either request a follow-up conversation with their manager or challenge their review with the line manager above their manager reviewer (LM+1). When this is enabled, the overall performance widget must be included in the template in step 4, Review form components; otherwise you will not be able to save the review template.

• Worker sign-off comment box: Enabling Include a comment box for the sign-off processes adds a comment box for workers to fill in as part of the completion process.

• Final validation: Enabling the Enable final validation step option adds an additional validation step where the review is forwarded to a higher-level manager (LM+1) for final approval, after the worker and their line manager have completed the review process.

See an example of the configured review stages:

Configuration of the review stages

Click Next in the progress widget, on the right side of the form, to move to the next step of the review creation process: Review form components.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation of the review later on. In this case, the review is saved as a Draft.

Step 4 - Review form components

In step 4, Review form components, of the review creation form, you select the elements that make up the final review form, using the following permissions table:

Assignment permissions for a review

Each row represents a configurable element, and the Self-review, Manager review, and Additional review columns let you turn that element on or off, or configure it, independently for each type of reviewer. A column shows N/A when a setting does not apply to that reviewer type.

1. Allow additional managers to be invited: Enable this for Manager review to allow additional managers to be invited to the review. You can then set a Limit for additional managers (from 1 to 10), and decide whether an additional manager can see the worker's self-review.

2. Enable goals: Enable this to add goals to the form for the corresponding reviewer type. Then, select one or more goal types from the Select goal types drop-down list, or click Add all goal types to select them all at once. You can also toggle Enable rating for each goal and Enable overall rating for goals, and for each, choose an Answer type (Comment only or Rating and comment), select a Rating scale, and decide whether a rating and/or a comment is mandatory. Clicking Select scale opens the Rating scales pop-up window. Under All rating scales on the left, select the radio button next to the scale you want to use; the Selected scale preview panel on the right then shows the Scale items that make up that scale. If your organization uses several languages, use the Translations drop-down list to preview the scale in a specific language. Click Select to apply your choice, or Cancel to close the pop-up without making changes.

3. Enable behaviors: This works the same way as goals, letting you add behaviors to the form, rate each behavior individually and/or overall, and configure the answer type, rating scale, and mandatory settings for each.

4. Enable overall performance: This lets you add an overall performance rating to the form, with the same Answer type, Rating scale, and mandatory options as goals and behaviors. If you enabled the Challenge process in step 3, Review stages, the overall performance rating for Manager review cannot be disabled, since the challenge process depends on it.

5. Enable useful information for self-reviews and manager reviews: Enable this to display supplementary information to workers and managers as they complete their reviews.

Click Next in the progress widget, on the right side of the form, to move to the next step of the review creation process: Custom section.

Step 5 - Custom section

In step 5, Custom section, of the review creation form, you can define one or more custom sections, if your review form requires them; at least one question is mandatory per custom section.

To define a custom section, proceed as follows:

1. Click the Create custom section button. A new card is displayed, as illustrated in the image below:

   

   Custom section

2. In the Settings subsection, choose the Response permission (Worker and/or Manager) and the Response visibility (for instance, Worker & manager) from their drop-down lists. Choose where the section should appear in the form from the Widget placement drop-down list (Top of the form, End of the form, or Above the overall performance). Add a name for the section in Widget title and, optionally, a Description. Enable Editable after result publication if you want to allow edits to this section after the review results are published.

3. If your company uses several languages, use the Translations drop-down list to add translated versions of the section, the same way you would in step 1, Performance review details.

4. In the Question subsection, enter your Question and select the Answer type (Comment only, Rating and comment, or Rating only) from the drop-down list. Enable the Mandatory toggle if workers and/or managers must answer this question. You can duplicate a question or delete it by clicking the and icons in the upper-right corner of the Question subsection.

5. Click Add question to add another question to this section. To remove an entire custom section, click the three-dot icon next to Collapse and select Delete.

6. If you enabled total score calculation in step 1, Performance review details, the following additional section called Sections weights appears:

   

   Sections weights section

   You must assign a weight to each section (for example, 33.3% for each), and the total weight for all sections must equal 100%. The system validates this total before you can publish the template.

Click Publish in the progress widget, on the right side of the form, to publish your performance review.