Manage a performance review cycle – Personio

Learn to manage a performance review cycle after you've launched it.

Tip: To read more about Performance Management and how it can support the retention of talent, visit our website and read our Attraction Plus Whitepaper or take a look at our Performance Management Guide.

Before you start

Your permissions determine which cycles you can view and manage.

To access all cycles, you need administrator access, or edit rights for cycles and cycle reviews. If you have custom edit rights for cycles you can view cycles for a defined group of employees only.
To edit and archive a cycle, you need to be the Administrator or the cycle owner. You're only the owner of the cycles you create.
If you're a supervisor, you can see the review cycles that your direct reports participate in, regardless of your permissions. You can also see the cycles that your indirect reports are in if the sharing and confidentiality settings allow it.

Note:
If the account of a cycle owner is deleted or deactivated, Personio assigns their ongoing cycles to the Administrator. The cycles are set to draft and the Administrator receives an email notification.

To learn more, read View and edit access in the Performance & Development app.

Access review cycles

To access an overview of all the review cycles and see their status, go to Performance > Review Cycles .

The possible cycle statuses are:

- Draft: The review cycle hasn't been launched yet, and you can keep editing it.
- Scheduled: The cycle is scheduled and the first activity hasn't started yet.
- Live: The review cycle has been launched, and at least one activity has started.
- Closed: You're finished with this review cycle, and you have closed it. Note that you cannot reopen the cycle, and you cannot edit the reviews in it.

Tip
Before closing a cycle, make sure all reviews have been shared.

View cycle details

To view the details of a specific review cycle, go to Performance > Review Cycles and click the name of the relevant cycle. A table shows the required review types and their status.

Note: Supervisors can only view their direct reports and their relevant review statuses in a review cycle. They can also navigate to the Performance overview of their direct reports and request peer feedback by clicking the three dots on the right.

A review can have one of the following statuses:

None assigned: No reviewer (peer or supervisor) has been assigned yet for the review type.
Not started: The reviewer hasn't started writing the review.
In progress: The reviewer has started writing the review but has not submitted it yet.
Submitted: The reviewer sent the review.
Sharing allowed: The cycle owner has activated the option to share the review with the recipient. This status applies to submitted manager reviews only. You need to set up this option when configuring the cycle.
Shared: Personio has shared the review with the recipient (in the case of a manager review) or with the supervisor.
Not applicable: For Manager reviews. The status appears if no manager is assigned or if you accept changes in the cycle participants after the activity has ended.
Select reviewer: For peer and (depending on the cycle configuration) for upward reviews, you need to manually select the reviewer.

Edit activities and participants in a live cycle

You can edit different aspects of a cycle as long as it's live. You can rename it at any time, and you can do the following:

Edit activities

Note that if an activity has reached its end date, but the cycle is live, the activity is still in progress. You can extend the activity end date and edit its configuration. Also you can still write, edit and share reviews.

Go to Performance > Review Cycles. Click the relevant cycle.
In the cycle details view, click Edit > Cycle.
Under Activities, you can edit:
▶︎ The activity start date (if the activity hasn't started) and its end date.
▶︎ The activity reminders.
▶︎ The sharing and confidentiality settings.
▶︎ The activity form.
▶︎ The nomination method for peer reviews. This resets previous approvals. For example, if you’re changing to employee nominations, Personio discards previous manager-approved nominations.

Note that you should change forms only when absolutely necessary. When you change a form for an ongoing activity:

Personio assigns new reviews to the cycle participants, using the new template.
Personio saves previous draft and submitted reviews as Discarded in the reviewer's Performance page.
Reviewers with draft or submitted reviews receive a notification about these changes.

Edit participants

To add employees to the cycle or to remove them from it, follow these steps:

In the cycle details view, click Edit > Participants.
Change the filtering rules as needed to include or exclude participants.

After you add an employee to the cycle:

They participate in all activities, including those that have reached their end date. As the activity remains in progress as long as the cycle is live, you can extend the end date.

After you remove an employee from the cycle:

Personio removes them from all activities, including the activities they have completed.
They can still access their draft and submitted reviews under Performance. They show as Discarded.
If the removed employee is their supervisor's only direct report for an ongoing cycle, the supervisor loses access to the cycle.

To use the filters, you need access to all the corresponding employee attributes ("Workplace", "Department" etc.). Configure this under Settings > Organization > Roles & permissions. Verify that you have permissions for all the employee profile sections containing the attributes (for example, HR information).

Review changes in the company structure

The cycle builder automatically detects changes in your company structure that affect the cycle participants. If you're the cycle owner, it sends you a notification in your inbox, alerting you about the changes you need to review.

In the cycle details view, click Edit > Participants > Review changes . You can see the following:

Changes in employee status

See employees that are now eligible to participate in the cycle. You can decide to add them to the cycle.
See employees that are no longer eligible for the cycle. You can either leave them in the cycle or remove them.

Note that when you add or remove participants, the same conditions apply as when editing participants.

Changes to an employee's supervisor

Note:
To avoid losing review data, make supervisor changes before or after a performance cycle, not during one. It's not possible to restore Discarded reviews.

If an employee changes supervisor and the new supervisor should write the manager review, you can add them to the cycle. You have two options:

Option A: Add the new supervisor to the cycle

The new supervisor can view the cycles, reviews, and performance notes of their new direct reports. This applies to their new indirect reports down the whole reporting line if you turn on hierarchical access for reviews and feedback.
The new supervisor can write the relevant manager reviews and nominate employees for peer reviews. The new supervisor's supervisor can nominate employees for upward reviews.
The old supervisor loses access to the cycle. Their draft and submitted manager reviews are discarded. They can access (but not edit) them under Performance.

Option B: Leave the old supervisor in the cycle

They can still view the cycles, reviews, and performance notes of their previous direct reports. This applies to their previous indirect reports down the whole reporting line if you turn on hierarchical access for reviews and feedback.
They can write the relevant manager reviews and nominate employees for peer reviews. The supervisor's supervisor can nominate employees for upward reviews.
At the end of the cycle, they lose access to it, but they can still access their draft and submitted reviews under Performance. Such reviews have the status Discarded and cannot be edited.
Discarded manager reviews cannot be reactivated or restored into the active cycle.
The previous supervisor can open the discarded review under Performance (read-only) and copy the text to share with the new supervisor.

Duplicate, close or archive a cycle

Duplicate a cycle

To duplicate a cycle, follow these steps:

Go to Performance > Review Cycles.
Click the relevant cycle.
Click the three dots on the upper right. Select Duplicate cycle.
Choose the new cycle's name and the start date of the earliest activities. Click Duplicate.

Personio duplicates participants and activities from the original cycle.

It also mirrors the activities' position in the timeline. For example, if Manager reviews are one week after Peer reviews in the original cycle, the new cycle follows the same schedule.

Close a cycle

Cycles don't close automatically when they reach their end date. You can close a live cycle at any time:

Go to Performance > Review Cycles.
Click the relevant cycle.
In the cycle details view, click Close cycle. Confirm your choice.

After you close the cycle:

Personio removes all incomplete tasks for employees related to the cycle.
Personio saves draft and completed reviews, which remain accessible and locked.
Personio moves in-progress reviews to a discarded status, but the author can still access them under Performance.
You can no longer reopen and configure the cycle.

Archive a cycle

You can archive a closed cycle, which hides all review data created as part of the cycle from employees and admins:

Go to Performance > Review Cycles. Click the relevant closed cycle.
In the cycle details view, click Edit > Cycle.
Click Archive cycle. Confirm your choice.

You can unarchive the cycle at any moment.

Delete a cycle

You can only delete draft cycles. To do so, follow these steps:

Go to Performance > Review Cycles.
Click the relevant closed cycle.
In the cycle details view, click the three dots icon and select Delete. Confirm your choice.

To delete a scheduled cycle, first unschedule it so that it reverts to draft:

Go to Performance > Review Cycles. Click the relevant scheduled cycle.
In the cycle details view, click Edit > Cycle.
Click Unschedule cycle. Confirm your choice.
In the cycle details view, click the three dots icon and select Delete. Confirm your choice.