Your company is about to launch a Best-Self Review® cycle, or maybe they already have, and you've been notified that you are a cycle collaborator! This article walks through what a review cycle looks like for you, a cycle collaborator, from start to finish. Check out the additional resources in each section for walk-throughs and context.
This article includes...
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Best Self Review® cycles.
👥 This article is relevant to cycle collaborators.
📦 This feature is available in the Perform and Total Platform pricing packages.
Role Overview
While you have similar permissions as review admins in the cycle, there are a few minor differences. Here's a breakdown of each role, as well as the main differences between the two:
Review administrators: Can manage company settings for review cycles, create review cycles and question templates, manage active review cycles, delete review cycles, and, importantly, view all submitted reviews. Review admins can also manage peers for participants and share/finalize review results with participants.
Cycle collaborators: Can complete cycle setup, monitor review progress through reporting, edit review cycle settings, manage peers for participants, share & finalize review results on behalf of managers, and lock/unlock the review cycle they're assigned as a cycle collaborator for. Cycle collaborators cannot create review cycles from scratch, create/edit question templates, or delete review cycles.
Before the Cycle Begins
The review cycle may already be active when you are added as a cycle collaborator, but if you were added prior to the start of the cycle, you can help complete the cycle setup!
In collaboration with the review admin(s), you can help finalize the creation of the Best-Self Review by following the steps in our "Create a Best-Self Review® cycle" Help Center article.
Featured Help Center article (linked above) 💡: Create a Best-Self Review® cycle
Video 🎥: Configure a Best-Self Review cycle (10 min)
During the Review Cycle
You launched your review cycle- now what? This section walks through scenarios and logistics that may prove helpful as your team completes the review cycle.
Add or remove a participant
If you find yourself in a situation in which you need to either add or remove participants to/from an active review cycle, you can do so by following the steps in our "Add or remove a review cycle participant" Help Center article.
Featured Help Center article (linked above) 💡: Add or remove a review cycle participant
Manage who is responsible for writing reviews about a person, or edit participant settings
At any point during a review cycle you can change who is responsible for writing reviews for a participant, or add a "read-only" review viewer for an individual (so someone other than a person's manager can see their review results). Check out the "Manage review cycle participants and settings" section of our Help Center for articles that walk through how to manage participant settings during an active review cycle.
Nominate peers for a participant
This is only relevant if peer reviews are included in a review cycle. While the review cycle participants themselves and their managers typically nominate peers for a participant, review admins and cycle collaborators also have the ability to do so.
Help Center article 💡: Manage peer nominations for a review cycle participant
Help Center article 💡: Peer reviews: participant initiated vs peer-initiated
Send review reminders (we call them "nudges")
If you want to remind your team and gently nudge them to complete a review, you have the ability to "nudge" them, and 15Five will send them an email notification.
Help Center article 💡: Send nudges during an active cycle
Report on a cycle's progress
At any time during a review cycle, a review admin or cycle collaborator can run a progress report. The report includes all participants, a participant’s peers, a participant’s direct reports, submission dates, a participant’s answers, and multiple other fields.
Help Center article 💡: Download review cycle progress
Or, check out what additional reports are available on the Best-Self Review reporting Help Center page.
Create calibration sessions
15Five's Calibrations feature helps HR leaders and managers make more fair, objective, and transparent assessments of performance and talent decisions with ease. In calibration sessions, calibrators can see the distribution of review ratings across team managers and adjust those ratings in real-time. If you're planning to include calibrations in your review cycle, it's best to work with the review admin(s) to create the sessions and assign contributors prior to all results being in— so that contributors have more time between the manager due-by date and the calibrations window to spend actually holding the calibration sessions.
Check out the "Create a calibration session" section of our Help Center for more information.
The results are in...
When do reviews become visible?
Visibility is always a sensitive subject, especially when it comes to reviews. What reviews are visible? To whom? At what time do they become visible? These are all valid questions that vary from review to review. Check out our "When do reviews become visible to others?" Help Center article for all of your visibility questions.
Featured Help Center article (linked above)💡: When do reviews become visible to others?
Note
The level of visibility will depend on the review settings that were in place before the cycle began.
Hold and lock calibration sessions
15Five's Calibrations helps HR leaders and managers make more fair, objective, and transparent assessments of performance and talent decisions with ease. Calibrations in 15Five make it easy for calibrators to see the distribution of review ratings across team managers and adjust those ratings in real-time.
Check out the "Hold a calibration session" section of our Help Center for more information about calibration sessions and how to hold a calibration session. Once you've held the calibration session, you should lock the session.
Share and finalize review results with participants
Once a participant's manager completes their review summary, they will schedule a final meeting with them to discuss review results, share review results with them, hold the meeting, make any desired edits to the summary, then finalize review results. This process is typically handled by managers, but as a cycle collaborator, you also have the ability to share and finalize review results.
Help Center article 💡: Complete, share, & finalize summaries
Unshare/reopen review results
Once review results have been shared with a participant, edits to previously submitted reviews can no longer be made. However, if edits do need to be made, as a cycle collaborator, you have the ability to unshare/reopen their review results, so that the necessary individual can edit their review, and then re-submit the updated review. Review admins and the participant's manager can also complete this action.
Help Center article 💡: Undo shared and finalized reviews
Report on review results
Holding a review cycle is only part of the equation...now it's time to report on results and use them to guide conversations and promote organizational change. Check out the "Report on review results" section of our Help Center for a list of all reports you can run in a review cycle.
After the Cycle
Lock a review cycle
Locking a review cycle means that users will no longer be able to submit reviews or edit any details within the cycle. This should only be done when the review cycle is fully completed and all summary meetings have been held.
Featured Help Center article (linked above)💡: Lock or unlock a review cycle
Tip
To confirm the cycle has been locked, go back to your ‘Reviews’ tab and check for a lock icon next to the cycle.
Download or print review details (for specific employees)
If you would like to view and analyze review data for specific employees, you can download or print the results from within their specific review page after the results have been shared and finalized. Check out our "Download my company's review results" Help Center article for instructions on how to do so.