Roles in a Best-Self Review® cycle

Understanding the various roles in a review cycle is key to ensuring the cycle runs smoothly. Since there are different levels of participation in a review cycle, it is important to know which roles are responsible for what. This article defines each role and its permissions in Best-Self Review®.

In this article, you will learn about the following Best-Self Review® roles:

• Participant
• Review writer
• Peer
• Upward reviewer
• Manager
• Additional manager
• Review admin
• Cycle collaborator
• Review viewer
• Sharing user
• Calibration session contributor
• Custom review role (available to early adopters only)

Roles in a Best-Self Review® cycle

• Participant: A review cycle participant is a person who is being reviewed in a review cycle. If someone is not a participant, reviews will not be written about them. Participants are determined during the process of creating a review cycle. Participants are responsible for things like writing a self review, nominating peers, and participating in a final meeting with their manager.
  Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm a review participant
• Review writer: A review writer is a person who is responsible for writing a review about a participant. Review writers do not have to be participants themselves. If you have to write a review, self, manager, additional manager, peer, or upward review, you are a review writer. 
• Peer: A peer is a person who is responsible for writing a peer review about a review cycle participant. Peers may or may not be participants in the review cycle.
• Upward reviewer: Upward reviewers are people responsible for writing an upward review about their manager. In this case, the manager is a participant in the cycle. A participant's direct reports are assigned as their upward reviewers by default, but review administrators can edit upward reviewers for participants. Upward reviewers may or may not be participants in the review cycle.
  Help Center article 💡: Change upward review author(s) for a review cycle participant
• Manager: Managers are people who are responsible for writing manager reviews about their direct reports, assuming the direct reports are participants in the cycle. Managers are also responsible for approving/denying peer nominations for their direct reports, sharing & finalizing results, and holding a final review meeting. Managers may also be able to remove feedback from their direct reports' peer or upward reviews if the setting is enabled by review administrators. A participant's direct manager is assigned as their manager in a review cycle by default, but review admins can edit the manager reviewer for a participant.
  Help Center article 💡: Change manager review author for a review cycle participant
  Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm a review manager
• Additional manager: Additional managers are people other than a review cycle participant's direct manager who have the ability to write a manager review about them. One default additional manager and up to five cycle-specific additional managers can be appointed for any given review cycle participant. Additional manager feedback is also included in calibration sessions and may be included in performance ratings formulas, depending on Best-Self Review® feature settings. Default additional managers can also be granted visibility into all past reviews of the person they're an additional manager for in Best-Self Review® feature settings.
  Help Center article 💡: Add an additional manager for a participant
  Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm an additional manager
• Review administrator: Review administrators are able to create, edit, and delete review cycles, create and edit question templates, report on cycle progress, nominate and manage peers for review cycle participants, view all submitted reviews and results, interact with calibration sessions, share and finalize review results for review cycle participants, and lock/unlock review cycles. They do not have to participate in a review cycle to see progress and results. By default, review admins have visibility into all review cycles that were created while in the role. If a review administrator is added after a cycle has begun or after a cycle has ended, there will be an option to allow or restrict visibility into those previous cycles.
  Help Center article 💡: Add or remove review administrators
  Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm a review admin
• Cycle collaborator: Cycle collaborators are added to a review cycle by a review administrator either during cycle creation or after the review cycle launches to help manage a cycle and its results. Cycle collaborators have the same permissions as review admins (with the exception of creating review cycles, managing question templates, and deleting review cycles), but only for specific review cycles.
  Help Center article 💡: Add or remove a cycle collaborator
• Review viewer: Review viewers are non-managers who have read-only permission to a participant's review results. Review viewers are helpful in change management, dotted-line, and matrix scenarios. A person can be appointed as a cycle-specific review viewer, which grants them visibility into a person's review results for only a specific review cycle, or a global review viewer, which gives them visibility into all review results for a person.
  Help Center article 💡: Add a review viewer for a participant
• Sharing user: Sharing users are individuals who have the ability to share and finalize review results with a participant (in addition to the participant's manager in the review cycle, review admins, and cycle collaborators).
  Help Center article 💡: Edit individual settings for a participant
• Calibration session contributor: Also called contributors, people in this role are assigned to specific calibration sessions and can make changes to managers' review ratings when holding a calibration session. Anyone can be appointed as a contributor.
• Custom review role (currently available to early adopters only): In addition to all the aforementioned roles, 15Five gives you the ability to create custom administrative roles that give individuals only the permissions they need.
  Help Center article 💡: Create custom Best-Self Review® roles