Creating a Review Cycle (Review Process)

The Review Process page on Mesh is the centralized location to find the list of all your review cycles. You can locate the Review Process by going to Me > Settings > Reviews > Review Process

You can not only create review cycles from here but also edit them, put separate “Instance Names” for sub-cycles and also keep a check on the status of these cycles as scheduled, ongoing or completed.

Step 1: To create a new template, click on the blue “Create New Cycle” tab on the top right corner of the section. 

Step 2: Name.

Next, your review cycle name could be either mid-year or annual whereas your instance name could be anything as long as it doesn’t supersede your review cycle. Then select a review type and hit next.

Step 3: Reviewees.

Select an employee cohort wherein if it’s your first review cycle, you’ll have to create some employee cohorts. Checkout how to create cohorts and once done, select all the cohorts you wish to run the review cycle for.

You also have the option to upload specific employees lists here.

Step 4: Reviewers.

In any performance review, there are usually 4 types of reviewers that participate. They are, 

• Self review - where participants review themselves 
• Peers - where colleagues review each other but only when requested
• Managers (downward feedback) - where managers review their direct reports
• Direct reports (upward feedback) - where participants review their managers

On Mesh, you have the flexibility to select one or all of these participant groups for the given review cycle and can even assign the same or different review templates to each group via the dropdown. 

Step 5: Score Settings.

This section is about how you wish to distribute ratings to all the goals that a participant would have been involved with, within a certain duration. This duration setting is also available under this section itself. It’s a simple yes/ no form and the two questions that you’ll be required to answer include, 

• Time range
  This will dictate which goals to pickup in the review form. For example, if you select Jan 2022 - March 2022, goals ended on 31st Dec 2021 and Goals starting after 1st April 2022 will not be visible.
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• Score computation for goals
  While creating goals/ OKRs, there's an option to add weightage to every goal. So if you want to use goal-weights while computing average goal-score in the review then use "Yes". If you choose "Yes" then any goal without weight will not be included in the review.

• Auto compute score for each goal
  Putting a yes here means the system will automatically compute ratings for each goal based on their progress/ completion %. It will open the following screen wherein if allowed, users can change ratings or even add more.‍

Step 6: Review Settings. 

These are generic settings regarding the behaviour of peers and managers in the review cycle.

• Peers are nominated by
  This translates to "who gets access to nominate peers for individuals". Self allows Self and as well as manager to do nominations. Where as manager only gives the Manager the ability to nominate.
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• Auto accept peer nomination
  This gives peers option to reject the nominations. If you set auto accept as "Yes", you won't be able to make changes in the nominations. Once the nominations are accepted those can't be changed and you'll have to reach out to the CS team for changes.
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• Allow peers to view self review
  This will enable peers to see self evaluation comments against same question.
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• Number of peers employee will nominate
  This is to let the employees specify a range of nominations that they're supposed to do. On top of that, the admin can also allow them to pick certain nominations from higher & lower levels and inside & outside team.
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• Manager can start direct report review only after direct report has submitted self review
  Selecting "Yes" will ignore the start date for manager review and enable managers to review forms as soon as self reviews are completed. If you select 'no' manager can only start reviewing after start date setup for manager review. Under any setting, manager can't start the review before self review is completed.
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• Manager can publish their direct report's review
  If you select "Yes" when calibration is marked complete, manager will also have to publish the reports individually. If you mark No, all the reports will be published at once.

Step 7: Deliverables.

This section outlines the deliverables that will be shared with the reviewee, divided between self, manager and peer.

• Show average goal score - While filling up the performance review, actual ratings will be shown for the goals.
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• Show average competency score - While filling up the performance review, actual computed ratings will be shown for competencies.
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• Show overall score - While filling up the performance review, actual computed ratings will be shown.
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• Share manager answers - Allows individuals to see manager comments and selections, when reports are published.
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• Share manager score - Allows individuals to see final rating computed from manager review if marked as complete. In case of calibration, only calibrated ratings are communicated and not manager ratings.
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• Share peer answers - Allows users to see peer comments.
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• Keep peers anonymous - If above questions selected yes, and this question is also selected yes, user will see peer comments, but only in anonymous fashion. They won't be able to tell which comments are added by which peer.

Step 8: Timeline.

The timeline is where you’ll set the timeline for the entire review cycle for every group. The timelines will have to be set individually for every group and you can also enable auto submit for these groups, say once the deadline has approached but participants have yet to submit. This can be done by clicking on the “+” icon below every group.

Step 9: Reminders.

Reminders are exactly what they sound like. Send emails to participants to complete their reviews on-time. Apart from deciding on the number of reminder emails for every group of participants, you can also pick the number of days when the email should be triggered before the deadline, and can even decide whether you wish to send the reminder to just the reviewer or a summary email to the manager of reviewer.

Step 10: Validation.

This is more like a data check section which will flag employees if they are missing managers, don’t have goals or do not belong to any level/ hierarchy in the org chart. You can go back and add the requisite details for such employees otherwise they won’t be able to view the relevant questions under the said categories. 

Step 11: Summary.

The final step in setting up your review cycle is just to ensure that the configuration of the entire cycle has been done correctly and there are no inconsistencies. Once you find everything has been correctly set here, click on the blue “Create Review Cycle” button at the bottom to finalise the process.

Note: Admins have the option to archive the completed review cycles and these will then sit under the archived section of the review cycles under settings.