A revolutionary performance management practice that supports employees on their journey of success, instead of just giving them a grade. Follow the steps below to customize the settings for review cycles. These settings are the global review cycle settings. Every new review cycle will follow these global settings unless changed when creating the cycle.
Access your company's global review settings
1. Click on the Settings menu at the upper right corner of your 15Five account.
2. Select 'Features' from the drop-down menu.
3. Click on 'Best-Self Review®'.
Note
Changes can be made to these settings up until the start date of your Best-Self Review cycle. However, changes made to these settings after a cycle has started will not retroactively apply. If you'd like to edit review settings for an active review cycle, please see this article.
Settings for your review cycle
Review administrator(s)
Due to the often sensitive nature of reviews, a specific review administrator(s) need to be assigned. These administrators will be able to create review cycles, question templates, and view all in progress and completed review answers. Select your review administrators here. Review admins don’t have to participate in a review cycle to see progress and results.
Note
Review admins must first be 15Five admins. Add a new 15Five company administrator by following these steps.
Exclude groups or individuals from your reviews
Our reviews are company-wide, but we understand there might be people you want to exclude from the process, like contractors or interns. This is a global exclusion from all review cycles.
Globally excluded groups or individuals cannot be participants, will not be asked to complete a self review, will not be asked to complete manager reviews, will not be asked to complete an upward review, and cannot be nominated as a peer. This setting is not the same as excluding a group or individual from a specific cycle.
Visibility setting
Privacy is a big deal, which is why we want you to choose the ideal visibility setting for your organization.
Options for visibility:- Hierarchy visibility: Review answers can be viewed by the individual, their manager, anyone above their manager, and review admins.
- Basic visibility: Review answers can be viewed by the individual, their manager, and review admins.
No matter which visibility option you choose, a rule of thumb is 'reviews become visible in app when submitted'. For a more granular breakdown of each review type's visibility, see this article.
Company values
Add your company values so we can include them in your review cycle(s). Values that are added after the cycle has begun will not be retroactively included. You will be able to decide whether a company value question is group specific or for all participants when you are creating a question template.
Competencies
Add competencies so we can include them in your review cycle(s). Competencies that are added after the cycle has begun will not be retroactively included. You will be able to decide whether a competency question is group-specific or for all participants when you are creating a question template. There is an entire page dedicated to competency results, under Team's and Company's results, when the review cycle comes to an end.
Selecting peers for peer reviews
We recommend each employee nominate three to five peers. Control the minimum and maximum number of peers an employee can nominate. This maximum number only prohibits a participant from nominating more than "x" number of peers and does not stop a participant from accepting x, 15, 20, etc nominations.
This setting does not apply when peer initiated peer reviews are selected for a cycle.
Approving peer nominations
Once participants nominate their peers, approval is required. Choose whether you want the nominations to be auto-approved to prevent roadblocks in the process.
Peer review transparency
Select how participants see their peer review answers and peer identities.
Pro tip: We recommend making peer reviews visible to participants. Consider training employees to give better feedback. See this piece for tips.
- Shared: Participants will see all peer answers verbatim.
- Hidden: Participants can see a summary of their peer reviews written by their manager.
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Everyone, reviews are fully transparent to participants: Identities of peers will be shown regarding peer reviews—meaning participants can see who wrote what about them.
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Everyone except for the participant: Peers' identities will be transparent to review administrators, the participant's manager, and the participant's hierarchy (if applicable).
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No one, reviews are fully anonymous to everyone who can see the review: Peers' identities will be hidden from everyone. No exceptions, even review administrators and managers.
- Shared: Managers will see all their upward review answers verbatim. Though all peer answers will be shown verbatim, you can manage the peer identity setting below.
- Hidden: Managers can see a summary of their upward reviews from their manager, but will not see upward answers verbatim. This is a bulk setting and will apply to all upward reviews in the cycle.
- Everyone, reviews are fully transparent to managers: Identities of direct reports will be shown regarding upward reviews—meaning managers can see who wrote what about them.
- Everyone except for manager: Direct reports' identities will be transparent to review administrators and the manager's hierarchy (if applicable).
- No one, reviews are fully anonymous to everyone who can see the review: Direct reports' identities will be hidden from everyone. No exceptions, even review administrators.
Release peer and upward feedback
We encourage managers to share all peer and upward feedback to employees but this might not always be appropriate. Control what feedback is released.
Options for releasing feedback:
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All answers will be shared and no answers can be removed.
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Allow review admins to remove answers from a review before results are shared.
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Allow review admins and managers to remove answers from a review before the results are shared.
If an answer is removed, it will only be removed from visibility for the participant. Review administrators, managers, and hierarchies will still be able to see the answer.
Review kick-off email
Kick off your review cycle with an announcement to your participants; give them insight into the review process, timeline and point people to get in touch with if they have questions.
Tip
We recommend you introduce the review cycle to your team members. We’ll automatically include relevant information about the schedule and deadlines.
Best-Self Review company notification settings
Options for emailing participants:
- when a new review cycle launches
- 7 days before their review is due
- 3 days before their review is due
- the day that their review is due
- if their review is overdue
- when self-reviews are submitted (managers only)
- when review results are shared
Success Center article 🗒: Email notifications for a review cycle
Disable Best-Self Review
Disabling the Best-Self Review feature will remove the tab from the main 15Five header for all users. All your review data will be saved in case you choose to re-enable this feature at a later date.
Next steps:
Help Center article 🧠: Create your Best-Self Review question templates