Upward reviews within a Best-Self Review® cycle are reviews in which employees provide feedback to their managers. As the writer of an upward review, you will be asked questions about your manager’s performance and development. The goal of an upward review is to help your manager grow and develop into a better coach and leader with a highly engaged and high-performing team. Upward reviews are a chance to share feedback about your manager's growth and development, as well as where you would like to see them grow.
In this article, you will learn...
- How to complete an upward review
- How to edit a submitted upward review
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Best-Self Review®.
👥 This article is relevant to Upward reviewers (people whose managers are participants in a review cycle)
📦 This feature is available in the Perform and Total Platform pricing packages.
Write an upward review of your manager
- Click on Best-Self Review® in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation bar.
- Click on the name of the review cycle you want to write a review in.
- You're now on the review cycle's overview page. From here, open the 'Write reviews' tab at the top of the page.
- Click on the name of the person whose review you want to open using the "Reviews" bar on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Now it's time to write up the upward review. Fill in all fields with your feedback.
Tip
As you write your answers, we recommend using objective language, focusing on observable behaviors, and providing specific examples. Check out our "9 Tips For How To Give Effective Employee Feedback" blog post for tips on how to give great feedback.
- Click View resources in the top, right-hand corner of a question section to see 15Five data for your manager that you can use to inform your review answers (including High Fives, Objectives, Past Check-ins, Feedback, and their Career path).
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Refer to the "Review details" box on the left-hand side of the screen to see transparency settings.
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Once you're done, click Submit at the bottom of the review.
Edit my submitted upward review
If you left out a piece of important feedback, or simply want to change one of your answers, you can edit a submitted review you wrote about a review cycle participant. A review that has been reopened for editing will temporarily be unavailable for anyone besides the review author to view. The review will reappear when resubmitted by the review writer.
- Open the review, then click Edit review in the top, right-hand corner of the page.
- If the person's manager has already seen your upward review, you will see a button that says Request to edit review. In this case, the person's manager must first approve your editing request before you can edit the review. You will receive an in-app notification when your request is approved.
- Make desired changes. When you're done, click Resubmit at the bottom of the page.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
You will only be asked to write an upward review in a Best-Self Review® cycle if 1) the review cycle includes upward reviews, and 2) your manager is a participant in the review cycle.
Yes. You can draft your review and return to it at any point— your changes will save automatically.
Your upward review will be visible to the participant's manager, hierarchy*, additional managers, and review viewers, as well as review admins and cycle collaborators, upon submission.
Upward reviews become visible to your manager once results are shared with them, usually after their manager holds a final meeting to discuss their results. If transparency settings dictate that upward reviews are hidden from the participant, the upward review answers will never be shared— even after results are shared with them.
* A person's hierarchy will only be able to see their review results if the 'Hierarchy visibility' option is enabled in your company's Best-Self Review® feature settings.
There are a couple of scenarios in which you won't see the option to edit a submitted upward review. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot:
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You cannot edit a upward review without permission if the participant's manager has already seen it. In this case, you will see a button that says Request to edit review. The person's manager must first approve your editing request before you can edit the review.
- You cannot edit an upward review if results have already been shared with the participant. To resolve this issue, you can ask their manager to unshare review results, make the desired edits, and then have the manager re-share review results.
- You cannot edit an upward review in a locked review cycle. Locking a review cycle prevents any further reviews from being submitted or edited. To resolve this issue, ask a review admin or cycle collaborator to unlock the review cycle. Once the cycle is unlocked, you should see the option to edit your review.