Create a review cycle

15Five's Best-Self Review® is a modern performance review tool that helps companies achieve high performance while bringing out the best in their people. Using research-backed question templates and the ability to aggregate an individual's wins, challenges, and progress on key objectives, Best-Self Review® eliminates bias and steers the conversion toward growth and forward-looking performance. This article walks through the steps of creating a Best-Self Review® cycle.

In this article, you will learn...

• Pre-launch considerations and recommendations 🌟
• How to create a review cycle 🧑‍💻
• What happens next? ➡️
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ❓

Pre-launch considerations and recommendations 🌟

In preparation for rolling out Best-Self Review® at your organization, consider the following:

Who should be responsible for assisting with administrative tasks in the review cycle?

There are two administrative roles within a review cycle: review admins and cycle collaborators. Assign these roles to individuals who should be responsible for overseeing the review cycle.

• Review admins manage all aspects of review cycles, including creating, editing, and deleting cycles, managing question templates, monitoring progress, managing peer reviews, viewing results, and locking/unlocking cycles. They can also interact with calibration sessions and share final results. Review admins automatically have visibility into all cycles created during their role, but access to previous cycles depends on permissions granted after their role assignment.
  Help Center article 💡: Add or remove review admins
  Help Center article 💡: Best-Self Review® for review admins
• Cycle collaborators are assigned by review admins during or after cycle creation to help manage specific review cycles. They share most permissions with review admins, except for creating or deleting cycles and managing question templates, and their permissions are limited to the cycles they are assigned to.
  Help Center article 💡: Add or remove a cycle collaborator
  Help Center article 💡: Best-Self Review® for cycle collaborators

Who should be included/excluded in your upcoming review cycle?

When creating a review cycle, you can choose to include or exclude any employee, group, or account status (active, invited, and created). You can also limit participation by hire date. Learn more about these options in the FAQs at the bottom of this article.

In addition, if there are groups or individuals you don't want to be participants or write reviews in review cycles, you can globally exclude them.

Which review types do you plan to use?

You can choose to include any combination of Self, Manager, Peer, and/or Upward reviews in a review cycle.

How do you want to add questions to your review cycle?

If you're a review admin tasked with creating a Best-Self Review® cycle, you know that crafting effective questions is essential to collecting meaningful feedback. Fortunately, 15Five gives you options when it comes to adding questions to your review cycle.

Question templates contain the questions that will be asked to cycle participants. Each review type (self/manager, peer, and upward) gets its own question template, meaning that there can be up to three different question templates used in a review cycle.

You have three options for adding questions to your review cycle:

• Using 15Five's default question templates
• Cloning existing question templates and making edits
• Creating custom question templates

Help Center article 💡: Decide how you want to add questions to your review cycle

Which review tools do you plan to utilize?

15Five offers various tools that you can use to create a more robust and equitable review cycle, including:

• Performance Ratings+: With 15Five's Performance Ratings+ tool in Best-Self Review®, you can automate numerical scores for participants in the review cycle. This is done using a custom formula that combines aggregate scores from self and/or manager review answers. Performance Ratings+ can also be pulled into the HR Outcomes Dashboard to measure employee performance.
• Competencies: Competencies are demonstrable and measurable clusters of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes that an employee needs to perform their work functions successfully. There is an optional 'Competencies' questions section that you can include in review cycles that allows review authors to rate how the person they're reviewing demonstrates specific company-wide or group competencies.
• Company values: Company values are the guiding principles and beliefs that shape the culture, decision-making, and behavior of an organization. They are the foundation on which a company's mission and vision are built, and they represent what the organization stands for and what it aspires to be. There is an optional 'Company values' questions section that you can include in review cycles that allows review authors to rate how the person they're reviewing lives out company values.
• Objectives: Review admins can add objectives to Best-Self Review® question templates to allow participants to assess, track, and directly connect objective data to overall performance while filling out reviews.
• Calibrations: Calibrations enable People Ops and HR leaders to visualize the distribution of review ratings across different managers and easily adjust those ratings in real time— ensuring that reviews are being done in a fair and unbiased way across teams.

What levels of visibility work best for your organization?

• Who should have access to employee review results? 
• Do any of your employees require additional managers and/or review viewers?  
• When utilizing peer and/or upward reviews, determine the level of visibility the participants should have.

Read more in our "Visibility settings for Best-Self Review®" article.

What review cycle cadence and timeline do you want to use?

During review cycle creation, you will be asked to provide state/end and review due dates (we call them milestones). Check out our best practices for Best-Self Review® timelines.

You'll also be asked to select whether you want the review cycle to repeat on a quarterly or bi-annual basis.

How to create a review cycle 🧑‍💻

Follow the steps below to create a review cycle. You can leave the setup process at any step— your draft will be saved after you give it a name, and you can access it from the Best-Self Review® dashboard.

1. Click on Best-Self Review® in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
   
2. You will land on the 'Review cycles' page. In the top right corner of the page, click the Create a new review cycle button.
   
   
   
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   Tip

   If you prefer to copy the settings of an existing review cycle rather than creating a new one from scratch, you can clone that cycle.

3. Use the "Cycle name" text field to select a name for your review cycle. When you're done, click Continue.
   
4. Select review types. Select the types of reviews you'd like to include in your review cycle. If you want to hold a manager-only or peer-only review, please refer to the FAQs at the bottom of this article.
   
   Options are:
   • Self: Participants write reviews assessing their own performance.
   • Manager: Managers write reviews assessing the performance of their direct reports.
   • Peer: Peers write reviews assessing the performance of their colleagues.
   • Upward: Direct reports write reviews assessing the performance of their managers.
5. If you include peer reviews in your cycle, select whether you want peer nominations to be participant initiated or peer initiated. You can read more about each of these review types in our "Peer reviews: participant initiated vs peer initiated" Help Center article. When you're done, click Continue.
   
   • Selecting Participant-initiated means that participants will nominate peers to complete a peer review about them. This is the default and most common option.
   • Selecting Peer-initiated means that peers initiate a review by selecting participants they wish to write a peer review for.

6. In the "Cycle collaborator" section, select people to serve as cycle collaborators in your review cycle. Cycle collaborators have the same permissions as review admins but they are contained to a specific cycle. When you're done, click Continue.
   

7. Next, select milestones for your review. Check out our "Best practices for review timelines" article for tips on setting milestones.
   
   
   
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   Note

   Review milestones are "soft," meaning reviews can still be submitted and shared after the milestone passes. Individuals who miss a deadline can still submit reviews up until the review cycle is locked. If these need to be adjusted during your review cycle, it's okay— review milestones can be changed during an active review cycle. 

8. Select whether or not you want to include calibrations in your review cycle. Calibrations allow leaders to see the distribution of review ratings across manager teams and adjust those ratings in real-time, ensuring organization-wide consistency. This option is only available if manager reviews are included in your cycle.
   
   
   
   💡

   Tip

   The "Calibration due by" milestone should fall after the "Manager reviews due by" date and before the "Start sharing on" date.

9. Select whether you want the review cycle to repeat. Options are to repeat quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. If you don't want it to repeat, select "No, this is a one-time review." When you're done, click Continue.
   
   
   
   ✏️

   Note

   Repeated reviews will not launch automatically. An email will be sent to review admins a week before the cycle's start date asking them to confirm the cycle.

10. Now, it's time to choose who you want to participate in the review cycle. Participants are individuals who have reviews written about them. Non-participants can still write reviews in the review cycle. When you're done, click Continue.
    
    
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    Note

    To learn more about the options for managing review cycle participants, please refer to the FAQs at the bottom of this article.

11. Configure objective review options. Decide whether or not you want to include Objectives in the review cycle, and what types of objectives to include. When you're done, click Continue.
    
    If you decide in include objectives, the next page will ask you to select a timeframe for which objectives to include.
    
    
    
    ✏️

    Note

    Objective timeframe: If you select Jan 1-Jun 30 as the "timeframe of Objectives to be included," all applicable Objectives with start and end dates between January 1st-June 30th will be included in the review cycle. The only people who will see objectives questions are those who own at least one objective or key result that falls within this set timeframe.

12. Select the question templates you want to use in the review cycle. You can use 15Five's default question templates or create custom question templates. Learn more in our "Decide how you want to add questions to your review cycle" article. When you're done, click Continue.
    
    
    
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    Tip

    Click the View button to the right of a question template to see which questions it includes.

13. Next, decide whether or not you want to include Performance Ratings+ in your review cycle and select desired settings. When enabled, Performance Ratings+ automates a score for each participant based on results received in manager and/or self reviews. Learn more.
    
    
    If you include Performance Ratings+...

    If you choose to include Performance Ratings+ in your review cycle, you will be asked to select:

    • Performance ratings formula: Used to calculate a person's performance rating.
    • Rubric: Used to determine which performance rating scores correspond to.
    • Rating visibility: Whether or not participants can see their performance ratings in review results.
    • Additional manager inclusion: Whether or not additional manager reviews should be included in the calculation of performance ratings.
14. Finally, review the cycle settings. If you want to edit a setting, click Edit to its right. Pay special attention to the settings outlined in the "Advanced settings summary" section, as these options dictate visibility, transparency, and more for the review cycle.
    
    
    
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    Tip

    You can customize the kickoff email that will go out to participants by clicking Edit to the right of "Kickoff email."

15. When you're satisfied, click Save changes.
    

What happens next? ➡️

Once you save the review cycle, you can view and manage on the review cycles dashboard by clicking Best-Self Review® in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation and clicking the three dots to its right.

Your review cycle will launch on your selected start date. At that point, participants will receive a kick-off email if you selected the option to include one when confirming review cycle settings.

You can share the following resources to help your team get started:

• Best-Self Review® for review admins
• Best-Self Review® for cycle collaborators
• Best-Self Review® for review managers
• Best-Self Review® for review participants
• Best-Self Review® for additional managers
• Write or edit a review in a review cycle

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ❓