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  3. Best-Self Review®
  4. Role-based guides

What to expect: I'm a review admin

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Kristin Reynolds

It's time for your team to participate in a Best-Self Review cycle! This article walks through what a review cycle looks like for you- a review admin- from start to finish. Check out the additional resources in each section for walk-throughs and context.

If you're a review cycle participant or manager, check out these additional resources ⬇️:

Before the cycle begins: set the stage

Before you create a review cycle there's some behind-the-scenes work you, a review admin, are responsible for.

Best-self kickoff & Career Hub

Appoint administrative roles for your review cycle

Various administrative roles exist for Best-Self Review® cycles, and it's important to make sure the right people are appointed to those roles to ensure a successful and easeful review experience. 

Notable administrative roles include...

Review administrators: Can manage company settings for review cycles, create/manage review cycles and question templates, and, importantly, view answers on all submitted reviews. 

Cycle collaborators: Have visibility and cycle editing rights for only the cycle(s) that they are added as a collaborator for. Cycle collaborators can help finish setting up a cycle, manage peers for participants, download reports, edit settings for an active cycle, share and finalize results on behalf of managers, and lock/unlock a cycle.

Custom roles: 15Five gives you the ability to create custom administrative roles that give individuals only the permissions they need. Maybe you’re holding a review cycle with every department in your company, but you want to grant someone visibility into only one group’s review results. Or perhaps you don’t want someone to have full review admin visibility into review cycles, but you want them to be able to manage review settings and cycle participants. Whatever your use case, custom roles can help you tailor review permissions in a way that works for your organization. Custom roles can be assigned at any point during a review cycle.

Manage review settings

Your company's global review settings dictate default settings for all review cycles you create. Check out our "Manage company review settings" Help Center article for steps on how to manage review settings, as well as context regarding what each settings entails.

Manage review-specific email notifications

Doing reviews at a company can feel like directing an orchestra—there are a lot of moving parts and people to manage. To take the burden off of review admins, we automatically inform review participants of important milestones, remind them when something is due, and send emails that are action-based (meaning when someone takes an action, the email is triggered). While most of our emails are automated, we do allow review admins to manage some review emails from the company notifications page. Additionally, here's a full list of email notifications that may be sent out during a review cycle.

Create question templates

Once you've set up your company's review settings, the next step towards launching a review cycle is to create question templates for your cycle.

Each review type - self/manager, peer, and upward - needs it's own question template, meaning that there can be up to three different templates in any given review cycle. You can either use our default 15Five question templates or you can create custom templates with your own questions. If you are using the default 15Five question templates, you can proceed to the next step in this article as you don't need to create a question template- you will simply select the default templates when creating your cycle.

Check out this article for steps on how to create a question template, as well as some example questions to use in your Best-Self Review® cycle!

Create a Performance Ratings+ template, formula, and rubric

Performance Ratings+ enables a holistic measure of performance, based on aggregate scores from self and/or manager review answers. Start making performance decisions at scale without the endless hours manipulating spreadsheets...all while reducing bias!

Performance Ratings templates are applied to question templates. Check out the "Performance Ratings+" section of our Help Center for details about the what and the how of Performance Ratings+.

Create the review cycle

Your company review settings are in order and you've created the question templates you're going to use for your upcoming review cycle- great success! Now it's time to create your review cycle by following the steps in our "Create a Best-Self Review® cycle" Help Center article.

During the review cycle- it's show time!

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

We understand that changes happen. 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 additional manager 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.

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 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 in the "Check review cycle progress" section of our Help Center.

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 a calibration session

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 create and hold a calibration session.

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 an ended 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.

If you need to unlock a locked review cycle, check out our "Lock or unlock a review cycle" Help Center article.

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.

To download or print an employee's final data:

  1. Click on Best-Self Review® in the left navigation of 15Five.

  2. Click on the cycle that applies.
  3. From the 'Overview' tab, you will see 3 filter options: My reviews, My team, and Reviewer drill-down.
  4. Click the My team, Reviewer drill-down, or Whole company option; whichever applies.
  5. Scroll down to 'Review progress' for your selected group, click the ... next to the person whose review info you want to download, and then click View.
  6. There will be a gear icon towards the top right of the page, across from their name. Click the gear icon and either Download summary as CSV or Print. 

Help Center article 💡: F.A.Q. Best-Self Review™ and 360 reviews 

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