Performance review cycle — Admin overview

This article orients Review admins to all phases of a performance review cycle — from pre-launch configuration through post-cycle wrap-up — and links to the atomic task articles for each step.

> Note: Your organization may have renamed this feature. If you don't see "Performance Reviews" in your navigation, check with your admin for the name used in your account.

Required role: Review administrator Available on: Perform and Total Platform pricing packages

Feature Structure

A performance review cycle moves through four phases. Review admins are responsible for all four.

Before the cycle — configure feature settings, assign roles, set up question templates and answer templates, configure Performance Ratings+, choose the review experience, and create the cycle
During the cycle — manage participants, peer nominations, review authors, nudges, progress reporting, and calibration setup
Results phase — hold and lock calibration sessions, share and finalize results, unshare if corrections are needed
After the cycle — lock the cycle and download review data

What You Can Do

Before the Cycle

Configure feature settings and roles

Manage notifications

Set up question templates and answer templates

Configure Performance Ratings+

Set up AI-Assisted Reviews (optional)

AI-Assisted Reviews applies to manual review cycles and is available on the Total Platform and Perform & Goals plans. Two company-level settings must both be on before any cycle can use it: Feature Settings > 15Five AI > AI-Assisted Reviews and Agents Hub > Performance Reviews AI. Turning them on makes the feature available; each manual cycle still has its own review experience, chosen during cycle setup. Lifecycle Reviews are excluded from AI-Assisted Reviews and are unaffected by these settings.

Create the cycle

Create and launch a manual review cycle

During the Cycle

Manage participants

Manage peer nominations

Monitor progress and send nudges

Set up calibrations

Results Phase

Calibrations

Share and finalize results

Analyze results

After the Cycle

Lock and download

Key Rules

Review administrators can create and delete review cycles, manage all participants, view all submitted reviews, and share or finalize results.
Cycle collaborators have the same permissions as Review administrators — except they cannot create or delete review cycles — and only for cycles they are added to.
Lock a review cycle only after all summary meetings are held and the cycle is fully complete. Locking prevents any further review submissions or edits.
Calibration sessions should be created and contributors assigned before all manager reviews are submitted, so contributors have adequate time to hold sessions.
Once results are shared with a participant, review edits are disabled. Use the unshare workflow to reopen results for editing if corrections are needed.
To confirm a cycle is locked, go to Reviews and look for a lock icon next to the cycle name.
Enabling AI-Assisted Reviews at the company level does not decide what an individual cycle does. Each manual cycle uses Enable 15Five AI, Disable 15Five AI, or the legacy experience, chosen during cycle setup.

Was this article helpful?

Sorry to hear that. Tell us what was missing →