This article walks through how to set up review cycles to hide all verbatim feedback given by peers (in peer reviews) and/or direct reports (in upward reviews) from review cycle participants. Hiding peer and upward reviews can be helpful if your company doesn't want to hold fully-transparent review cycles. If you use this setting, managers should summarize the peer's and/or direct report's feedback before sharing results with the review cycle participant.
Hiding peer and/or upward reviews is a global setting— meaning if the setting is enabled, it will apply to all participants in all review cycles. We also offer the option to remove peer and/or upward feedback one-off (if that better suits your needs).
In this article, you will learn...
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Best-Self Review® and feature settings.
👥 This article is relevant to Review admins.
📦 This feature is available in the Perform and Total Platform pricing packages.
Note
These are company-wide settings that will be applied to all review cycles whose start dates fall after the change is made. Changes made to these settings after a cycle has started will not retroactively apply.
Hide peer and/or upward reviews from participants
- Click on the 'Settings' gear in the top, right-hand corner of 15Five.
- Select 'Features' from the dropdown menu.
- Scroll down to the 'Best-Self Review®' section and click to open.
- Find the settings titled 'Peer review transparency' and 'Upward review transparency' and expand the sections using the arrow icon.
- Select the Hidden option for one or both of the above settings, depending on whether you want both peer and upward reviews to be hidden. Selecting this option means that participants can see a summary of their review written by their manager, but will not see the feedback verbatim. Save your changes.
Note
You'll also see a section titled "Who can see peer/direct report's identities" in transparency settings. Keep in mind that peer and direct report identity will technically always be anonymous to participants if you select Hidden in Step 5 because verbatim feedback will never appear for the review cycle participant.
User experience
You set up your company-wide Best-Self Review® to hide peer and/or upward feedback from cycle participants— now what? This section of the article walks through what these changes mean for review writers, managers, and review cycle participants.
For review writers
As peers and/or direct reports complete their reviews, they will see a note at the bottom of any reviews that will be hidden based on transparency settings letting them know that their feedback will not be shared verbatim with the review cycle participant.
For managers
When viewing peer or upward reviews that are hidden from the review cycle participant, managers will see a note informing them that reviews will not be shared with the review cycle participant, and that they should write and share a summary so participants can still get value from peer/upward feedback.
Once all reviews are submitted about a review cycle participant, their manager will complete the review summary. Remember— participants will only have insight into peer and upward reviews via the summary notes.
Once the summary is completed, either a review admin, a cycle collaborator, or a review admin will share results with the participant.
For participants
Once review results are shared with a review cycle participant, they can see self/manager answers, as well as summary information for peer and upward feedback.
Related articles 📖
- Visibility settings for Best-Self Review®
- How to remove an answer from a participant's view
- How to complete, share, and finalize review summaries as a review manager