In Best-Self Review® cycles, upward reviews are reviews written about a manager by their direct report(s). If upward reviews are included in a review cycle and you are the manager of a review cycle participant that has direct report(s), it is your responsibility to review submitted upward reviews of your team before sharing and finalizing review results with them.
If you are an additional manager or review viewer for a participant, you can view upward reviews written about them upon submission. Upward reviews are not visible to the participant until review results are shared with them.
In this article, you will learn...
- What the upward review process looks like
- Visibility and permission options for upward reviews
- How to access and review upward reviews of your team
Upward review process overview
This section walks through what the upward review process looks like for you, a manager of review cycle participants who are also managers. Please note that upward reviews may not be included in a review cycle.
- Your direct report's direct reports write and submit upward reviews about them. Once an upward review has been submitted about your direct report, you will receive a notification.
- After submission/notification, you can open the upward review. Review admins, cycle collaborators, additional managers, review viewers, and anyone in the participant's hierarchy* can also view upward reviews upon submission.
- If any answers on the upward review aren't constructive, you have the ability to either remove feedback or send feedback to review admins to remove it so it isn't shared with your direct report.
- Once the review summary opens, you can write summary notes, share review results with your direct report, and hold a final meeting with them to go over review results. Review admins and cycle collaborators can also share and finalize review results for a review cycle participant. Upward reviews are not visible to your direct report until you share the results. You will not be able to remove feedback from upward reviews once results have been shared, but can make edits to your summary until review results are finalized.
- Whether the direct report's identity shared with the participant depends on review cycle settings. Whether the upward reviewer's verbatim feedback is shared with the participant depends on review cycle settings or whether a review answer was removed from shared results.
*This is only the case if hierarchy visibility is enabled for the review cycle
Check out these additional resources ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Remove a review answer from a participant's view
Help Center article 💡: Complete, share, & finalize summaries
Visibility and permission options for upward reviews
This section walks through options set in your company's Best-Self Review® feature settings that impact visibility and permissions for upward reviews. These settings can only be managed by account admins.
Remove feedback: Depending on your company review settings, either you (the manager) or a review admin have the ability to remove feedback that is not constructive on these upward reviews. If you do not have permission to remove feedback on your own, you can send a request to a review admin to remove it.
Upward review transparency
- Upward review visibility: This setting controls whether upward review answers are shared or hidden from the review cycle participant. If the 'Hidden' option is selected, you will see a note at the top of upward reviews letting you know that the participant (your direct report) will not see the upward answers verbatim and that you should include upward feedback in your summary.
- Direct report identity visibility: This setting dictates who can see the identify of review answer authors.
Access and review upward reviews for your team
- Click on Best-Self Review® in 15Five's main, left-hand navigation.
- Click on the name of the cycle you need to work on. It will be under the 'Active review cycles' section.
- If you are also a review admin or cycle collaborator in addition to your role as a manager, select the 'My team' option at the top of the review cycle's Overview page.
If you are a manager without additional review cycle permissions, the 'My team' option will be selected for you by default. - Scroll down to the 'Cycle participants' section and find the direct report you want to review upward reviews for. Click their name to open their review results, or click ... to the right of their name and select 'View' from the dropdown menu.
- Click into the 'Upward' tab to see all submitted upward reviews.
- If upward reviews are hidden from the participant, your direct report, you will see the yellow message shown below.
- If you have permission to remove feedback from upward reviews, you will see a ... to the right of each upward review answer. Select 'Remove from shared results' to remove the answer from your direct report's view, or select 'Allow editing' to reopen the upward review and send it back to the review author for editing. You can read more about this process in our "Remove a review answer from a participant's view" Help Center article.
- Review the submitted upward reviews and use this information to help you complete your review summary and guide your final meeting.