Writing Reviews for your Direct Reports

Once an admin has earmarked you as a reviewer for your direct reports in the upcoming review cycle, it will appear in the review module of the dashboard under Pending Feedback and Reviews. Other details include review type, review cycle name and the deadline for its completion.

You can start filling out the review by hitting on “Start". However, something to note here is that you might not see the start option in case you've already opened the review form. In which case, start will get replaced by "Continue".

Once inside and before starting the review, you’ll see a header section that outlines all the important information about the reviewee. This includes,

• Goals (overall progress)
  
  
  
  
• Initiatives (overall progress)
  
  
  
  
• Competencies (number of praise/ advice received)
  
  
  
  
• Past 1:1s data (responses to 1:1 questions along with any comments) with you (since you're the manager)
  
  

‍The reason behind including all this information under the review screen is to make it easier for the reviewer to give informed and precise feedback to the reviewee, rather than going through multiple sections of the dashboard for checking these things.

Another important feature for helping managers give informed feedback is the panel at the right side of the questions. If the reviewee as well as their peers have completed their reviews then those will appear in this panel for the manager to consult. This is only visible to managers and serves the same purpose of giving managers all the information about their direct report, before they fill out the review.

Now, the review section is divided into 3 sub-sections,

• Goal Review

  This section consists of four distinct columns - Goal Name, Progress, Assessment & Comments. The idea is for the reviewer to rate the reviewee’s performance in correspondence to all the goals. The goal name and its latest corresponding progress are automatically pulled in from the system while the reviewer is supposed to fill in the assessment as well as the adjoining comments, if any, outlining the basis of their assessment.

• Competency Review

  ‍This section consists of the objectives/ competencies already setup by the admin and the reviewer’s job is to rate the reviewee’s proficiency level on each of these competencies. The ratings and what they mean in the proficiency level dropdown are also decided by the admins. Once the reviewer decides on a particular rating for a particular competency, they’ll then be expected to put down a comment, signifying the basis for their assessment.
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• Overall Questions

  This contains the three standard review questions of: Things associate should start doing, Things associate should stop doing and Things associate should continue doing

The comment boxes are equipped with all the basic formatting features of a traditional text editor such as bold, italics, underline, bullets, etc. The reviewer is supposed to give their feedback for all the three questions, put a checkmark on “I agree” and then hit submit.

Please note: None of the 3 sections of Goal Review, Competency Review or the Overall Review is a mandatory part of the review cycle and depends on whether the admin included it during the setup process or not.

As you can see, this same section also includes feedback requests, about which, you can read here.