Learn what an Upward review is in Personio, and how to manage it.

What is an upward review in Personio?

An upward review is a review type that allows employees to provide feedback for their supervisor. You can add it to a performance review cycle using the performance review cycle builder in Personio.

Add an upward review to a performance review cycle

You can add an upward review to a cycle when creating a new cycle or when editing a live one.

Once upward reviews are assigned, Personio notifies employees via email. The draft upward reviews are available in Performance & Development > Feedback, under the To do tab.

Assign upward reviews

When you add an upward review to a cycle, you can allow the manual nomination of the direct reports who provide the upward review.

Then, in the cycle's detail page, you can nominate the direct reports. To do so, you need to be the supervisor's supervisor, or to have administrator rights for cycles:

1. Under Performance & Development > Cycles, click the review cycle name to access the details of the review cycle. 
2. Click the three dots located to the right and select Request upward feedback.
3. The Upward Review dialog will display. To assign upward reviews to the relevant reports, select the checkbox beside the chosen name. Click Nominate.

The direct reports who have been nominated to provide upward reviews receive an email notification. They can fill out and send their feedback under Performance & Development > Feedback.

Fill out and send upward review forms

To fill out and send an Upward review, follow these steps:

1. Go to Performance & Development > Feedback.
2. Under the heading To do, click on the relevant upward review.
3. Enter the feedback into the relevant form fields. It will be saved automatically.
4. At the bottom of the template, you can see the sharing and confidentiality rules for the review:
   ▶︎ You can choose whether you want to share the feedback with your supervisor. This option is enabled when adding or editing an upward review.
   ▶︎ You can choose whether you want your supervisor to see your name. This option is enabled when adding or editing an upward review.
   
5. Click Submit review, or select Save for later to save it as draft and continue editing at a later stage.
6. When you click Submit review, the Submit this upward review? dialog displays, stating who will see your feedback, with or without your name. Click Submit review.

Notes
▶︎ Regardless of the above settings, the review is always shared with the the supervisor's supervisor, with your name.
▶︎  The review can be shared with the recipient's immediate supervisor, or with all subsequent supervisors along the entire reporting line. Learn more about these sharing and confidentiality settings.

Edit upward review forms

Depending on the status of a review and the status of the review cycle, a review can be edited or not. 

Status	Notes
Closed review cycle	After a review cycle has been closed, the status of upward reviews changes to Locked, and it is not possible to edit upward reviews anymore.
Upward review in draft	An upward review that is still in draft can be edited at any time. See below how to edit an upward review.
Sent upward review	Once an upward review has been sent, its status changes to Locked (not editable). Only Personio Administrators, the supervisor's supervisor, and employees with edit rights for cycles and cycle reviews can Unlock the upward review to allow editing.

To edit an upward review that has not been sent, or that has been unlocked, follow these steps: 

1. Go to Performance & Development > Feedback.
2. Under the To do tab, click on the relevant upward review.  
3. Make the necessary changes in the relevant form fields. Your changes will automatically be saved.

Track upward review progress

Personio Administrators, and employees with edit rights for cycles and cycle reviews can track the progress of upward reviews. Supervisors can track the progress of upward reviews assigned to their direct reports.

Where a supervisor is included in a review cycle that includes upward review(s), a counter is shown: for example, 0/10 submitted, where 0 is the number of upward reviews submitted and 10 is the total number of a supervisor's direct reports. 

If a supervisor in a review cycle that includes upward review(s) does not have direct reports, the status None available is shown.

Export an upward review

You have the option to export the review to the feedback receiver's Documents tab, or to download the review as a PDF file:

Notes
▶︎ Reviews that haven’t been shared with the feedback receiver cannot be exported to their Documents tab.
▶︎ Reviews that have been shared confidentially will have n/a in the reviewer name field of the pdf.

1. Go to Performance & Development > Cycles and click on the name of the relevant review cycle.
2. The cycle details page opens. Next to the relevant employee and below Upward reviews, click the button indicating the number of submitted upward reviews.
3. A window opens with the list of upward reviews concerning the employee. Click the relevant one. Note that you can only access submitted or shared reviews.
4. The review details page opens. On the top right, click Export.
5. Choose whether you want to export the review to the Documents tab of the feedback receiver, download the review as PDF, or both. Tick the relevant checkboxes.
6. Click Export.