As a manager in a review cycle, you play a vital role in your team's review experience. One of your key responsibilities is completing manager reviews for each of your direct reports to share feedback on their performance and help them continue to grow in their role. In this article, we'll walk you through the process of opening, completing, and editing a manager review.
In this article, you will learn...
- How to open manager reviews for your direct reports
- How to complete a manager review
- Completing manager review without AI Assist
- Completing manager review with AI Assist
- Edit a submitted manager review
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Best-Self Review®.
👥 This article is relevant to Managers and Additional managers.
📦 This feature is available in the Perform and Total Platform pricing packages.
Note
If you need to edit your submitted review, check out our "Edit my manager review" article.
Open a manager review
- Click on Best-Self Review® in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation bar.
- Click on the name of the review cycle you want to open 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.
- Click on Actions in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- Use the "People" section on the left-hand side of your screen to select the person whose manager review you want to open.
- Click the arrow to the left of the manager review you want to work on.
- You'll automatically be taken to your manager review for the selected participant.
Complete manager reviews of my team
It's not possible to submit a manager review until either 1) your direct report submits their self review, or 2) the deadline for self reviews has passed. If at least one of the following above is true, then follow the steps below to submit your manager review:
- Fill in all the fields to complete your manager review.
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As you write your review, you can easily access 15Five data for your direct report to inform review answers (including High Fives, Wins & challenges, Objectives, Past Check-ins, Past reviews, Feedback, and their Career path). How you access these resources depends on whether or not AI Assisted Reviews are enabled for your organization. Please reach out to one of your Account admins if you think you should have access but don't see the tool in your 15Five account.
Experience without AI Assisted Reviews enabled
If AI Assisted Reviews are not enabled for your organization, click View resources in the top, right-hand corner of a question section. You can then use the dropdown to navigate between different types of data.
Experience with AI Assisted Reviews enabled
Generate a summary of employee performance
- Click Summarize data in the top, right-hand corner of your manager review to open the 15Five AI widget.
2. From here, navigate through different types of data using the dropdown menu. You can also use the "Summarize Data" option to generate an AI summary of your direct report's performance based on data from reviews submitted about them in the current review cycle and insights from 15Five features.
Draft an answer to a review question
Using relevant data, 15Five AI can generate a first-draft response to review questions to help you begin writing.
Click the Draft an answer icon in the text field under any review question.
The AI widget will open and begin analyzing relevant 15Five data. Once complete, it will draft an answer.
Click the Copy button under the generated answer to copy it to your clipboard. Or, generate a different answer by clicking Regenerate. Remember to review and reword it to your own voice.
- You can also use the writing improvement tools at the bottom of the 15Five AI widget to make the answer more concise, professional, or informal.
- To reference reviews that have already been submitted about your direct report, use the tabs at the top of the page under your direct report's avatar.
- Your manager review will likely contain a section called "Private Manager Assessment" (PMA). In this section, you'll answer forward-looking questions about your direct reports that are intended to reduce bias. Upon review submission, leaders can pull these answers into PMA-specific reporting to help inform performance and compensation decisions. Learn more about the Private Manager Assessment.
- Once you're done, click Submit at the bottom of the review.
Edit a submitted manager review
Before you try to edit a submitted manager review, please note the following reasons why you may not be able to:
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The section is being calibrated: You can't edit yes/no or opinion-scale responses once calibration has started.
Fix: To resolve this issue, reach out to a review admin with your desired changes and they can make the changes for you in the calibration session. The review is shared with your direct report: Shared reviews can't be edited.
Fix: To resolve this issue, you can unshare review results, make the desired edits, and then re-share review results.The review cycle is locked: Locked cycles prevent edits.
Fix: 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.
- Open the review, ensuring you're in the "Manager" tab, then click Edit review at the top of the page.
- Make desired changes. When you're done, click Resubmit at the bottom of the page.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: What information in 15Five does 15Five AI use to generate answers?
A: 15Five AI uses the following data to generate summaries and answer drafts:
- Self and peer reviews submitted in the current cycle
- Your direct report's 15Five data from High Fives, Wins & challenges, Objectives, Past Check-ins, Past reviews (that have been locked), Feedback, and Career Path
Q: If I begin drafting my review but need to step away, will my changes be saved?
A: Yes. You can draft your review and return to it at any point— your changes will save automatically.
Q: When is my submitted manager review visible to others?
A: Your manager review will be visible to your direct report once results are shared with them. Results can be shared by either you, a review admin, or a cycle collaborator.
Your manager reviews will be visible to review admins, cycle collaborators, and managers in your hierarchy (if hierarchy visible is enabled in the review cycle) once you submit the review.
Q: What is the rich text editor in Best-Self Review answers?
A: The rich text editor allows reviewers to format their responses using options like bold, italic, hyperlinks, and ordered or unordered lists. It’s designed to offer a cleaner, more intuitive writing experience that helps reviewers express their thoughts with clarity, structure, and emphasis.
Q: What other 15Five AI Tools exist?
A: In addition to AI Assisted Reviews, 15Five AI supports the following AI tools in 15Five:
- Manager Copilot: With this tool, managers can generate a summary of how their team is doing and receive actions and best practices proven to increase employee engagement, performance, and retention.
- Open-text feedback summaries in Engagement: With this tool, Leaders can automatically categorize and summarize open-text feedback from Engagement surveys into themes based on Engagement Drivers — saving hours and enabling leaders to quickly spot where their organization needs to take action.