Performance

The Performance tab brings goals, 1:1 meetings and reviews together on the employee profile. Each part can be turned on or off in organization settings.

Who sets these up

Performance is something an organization runs for its people, not something people run for themselves. Goals and 1:1s are created by whoever is responsible for the conversation, and the employee is their subject rather than their author.

Nobody arranges their own review conversation except an executive, who has nobody above them to do it.

One rule covers every performance action, so none of them can disagree with another:

• Creating, editing or removing a 1:1 series
• Creating, editing or removing a goal
• Commenting on a goal, and removing somebody else's comment
• Recording a review — marking it complete, writing notes
• Attaching a document to a review

Deleting is gated the same way as creating throughout, so a review conversation set up for you is not yours to delete.

The employee still owns the progress on a goal set for them: they move the percentage and the status. The category and weight stay with administrators, and removing a goal is done by whoever set it.

Goals

Track individual objectives with progress and discussion.

Goals support threaded comments, each with an author, a timestamp and a visibility level — the same three levels as review notes, so a manager can note something about a goal without it being readable by the person the goal belongs to.

A comment defaults to Employee and above, unlike a review note, which defaults to Department Head and above. The two are different kinds of writing: a review note is written about somebody, while a goal comment is a conversation with them on a goal whose progress they own. Comments written before levels existed are all Employee and above, so no existing thread changed.

The author always sees their own comment, and only levels above Employee and above are labelled — the ordinary case stays quiet.

Who may write one is the same rule as who may set the goal up — see Who sets these up. An employee does not comment on their own goal, and neither does an administrator on theirs; a department head comments on their own department's, and cannot write at a level their own leadership could not read.

You may always remove a comment you wrote. Removing somebody else's follows that same rule.

Deleting a goal or a comment asks for confirmation first, and names what is about to be removed.

1:1 meetings

A 1:1 is a series between two people — recurring, or a single conversation.

Each meeting in the series has:

• An editable agenda checklist.
• A note pane per participant — yours is editable and the other person's is read-only. Notes you mark private are visible only to you.
• A status of scheduled / completed / cancelled / skipped.

Who can open a 1:1

A 1:1 is visible to its two participants, to administrators and executives, to the employee's manager, and to the head of the employee's department. Private notes remain visible only to whoever wrote them.

Being able to open a 1:1 is not the same as being able to create one — see Who sets these up.

Calendars

If either participant has connected Google Calendar or Outlook under Settings → Connected apps, the meeting is placed in that calendar with the other person invited as an attendee, so it can be accepted or declined like any other invitation.

The time is sent as a wall-clock time in your organization's timezone, so a recurring 1:1 stays at the same hour across a daylight-saving change. A series with no time set creates no calendar event. Cancelling a meeting or deleting the series removes the invitation from the calendars it reached.

Linking a 1:1 to a review

Choosing a review cycle under Part of a review marks the conversation as the preparation for that review, and the series shows which one on the list. Only cycles that are currently running are offered — a draft has not opened yet, and a cycle whose window has closed is nothing to prepare for.

A review conversation is a single meeting, so selecting a cycle sets Repeats to Once. Clearing the cycle restores the other options.

Rescheduling

Editing a 1:1 covers the cadence, the date of the next meeting, the time and the duration.

Changing the time moves every upcoming meeting that still follows the series. Changing the date moves only the next one, which is what you want when a single meeting has to shift without disturbing the rest. Calendar invitations are updated either way.

Review cycles

A review cycle records when performance reviews fall due and who they cover, and sends reminders to the people responsible for running them. Set them up under Settings → Performance → Review cycles.

When reviews are due

Two schedules, and the choice decides which other fields apply.

A hire-date cycle then says how far after the start date the review falls, and whether it comes back:

• Every year on the anniversary — the work anniversary, and the default.
• Once, N months after hire — a single review a set distance into the job. Three months is the usual one. Nothing further is sent after it passes.
• Every N months after hire — a recurring check-in on the employee's own clock rather than the company's.

A 29 February start is reviewed on 28 February in years that have no 29th, and a 31st is held to the last day of a shorter month rather than spilling into the next one.

Reminders

Reminders go out 14 and 3 days ahead unless you choose otherwise. You can pick from 30 days, 14 days, 1 week, 3 days, 1 day and on the day, or enter any other number of days, up to six reminders per cycle.

Only one reminder is sent at a time — the most recent one that has come due. Setting up a cycle a few days before somebody's anniversary still produces a single timely reminder rather than a burst of stale ones.

Reminders about a 1:1 follow the same principle: they go to the people who have to run the meeting, while the employee receives the invitation and the notice that it was scheduled.

Who a cycle covers

The list shows how many people each cycle currently covers, so a department that has been emptied does not read the same as one with thirty people in it.

Status

Active means reminders are sent. Draft means nothing is sent — use it for a cycle you are planning but have not opened.

A cycle whose end date has passed shows as Ended. That is read from the dates rather than set by hand, and an ended cycle sends nothing further, because reminders are counted back from the start date.

What an employee sees of their own

The Performance tab is on your own profile, read-only. Your goals, the 1:1s you attend and the reviews you are the subject of are all things you are in, so being unable to open them meant you could not see a goal set for you, or when your own review falls due.

Note and comment counts are worked out per reader, so a restricted note is not given away by a number next to a review.

What a person sees on their profile

The Reviews tab has three parts.

Coming up lists the cycles that currently cover this person and when their next review falls due — worked out from their own start date for a hire-date cycle, or from the window for a fixed one. A cycle records nothing until an assessment is written, so without this the tab reported "Not in a review cycle" to everybody an administrator had just put in one.

Only running cycles appear, and only those whose scope covers the person. A fixed window that has closed, a one-off milestone that has passed, and anyone with no start date on file are all left out.

Past reviews lists reviews that have already happened — anything completed, noted or with a document attached. Without it a completed review disappeared the day after it was due, because Coming up only ever shows the next date a cycle produces. A review under a cycle since switched off still appears here, so the record of a conversation does not depend on the cycle still running.

Either list opens to show what has been recorded, and lets whoever runs the review act:

• Mark complete — records that the review happened, who recorded it and when. Reopening clears that, so the record never claims a completion that was undone.
• Notes — see below.
• Documents — anything filed against this review, opened in one click rather than found in the documents list.

Recorded lists assessments already written against that person — the cycle, who assessed them, the status and any overall rating. Completed assessments are read-only.

Review notes

A note on a review carries a visibility, which decides who can read it. Each level is also readable by everyone above it.

Each level is named after the roles that can read it, so it matches the roles used everywhere else in the product. Hovering a level on the review spells them out in full.

The author always sees their own note, whatever the level.

Who may write, and at which levels:

• Executives and administrators — any level, for anyone. Administrator and Executive only is how something is kept from a department head as well as from the employee.
• Department heads — the first two levels, for their own department. They cannot write a note their own leadership could not read.
• Everyone else — review notes are not written by their subject.

Removing a note is the author's to do, or leadership's — a department head cannot quietly remove something an administrator wrote about one of their people.

Sending a review document

A signed review form, a development plan or a letter that belongs to a review is sent from Documents → Add a document, using the Review document mode beside Upload to folder and Send for signature.

It asks four things, in this order:

1. Review cycle — which review the document belongs to. Only cycles that are currently running are offered.
2. Recipients — everyone who needs to sign, added the same way as for any other signature request.
3. Who is being reviewed — which of those recipients the review is about.
4. Message, settings and signing order — unchanged from an ordinary signature request.

The due date is worked out for whoever is being reviewed, from that cycle's schedule — the same date their Performance tab shows. Once sent, the document opens from that person's Performance tab instead of having to be found in the documents list.

Every review the person is scheduled for counts, not only ones already recorded. A cycle's dates are derived, so an active cycle covering somebody is a real review even with nothing stored against it yet; the record is created as the document is sent.

If the chosen cycle does not cover the chosen person, the page says so — check the cycle's scope under Settings → Performance.

Who the document belongs to

A review form is routinely countersigned by the department head first and the employee second. Whose review it is and who signs in what order are separate questions:

• The employee being reviewed owns the document. It appears on their profile and their Performance tab whatever order the signatures were collected in.
• The signing order is set the same way as on any other document — all at once, or one after another in an order you choose.

The person being reviewed must also be one of the recipients.

Troubleshooting & notes

• I don't see the Performance tab. It is visible to administrators, executives and department heads, and the relevant feature must be enabled in organization settings.
• I can see the tab but there is no button to add a 1:1 or a goal. Those are set up by whoever runs the conversation. A department head sees them on their own department's profiles but not on their own, and an administrator sees them everywhere except their own profile.
• I can't edit the other person's 1:1 notes. That is by design — each participant edits only their own pane.
• A 1:1 isn't in my calendar. Check that the series has a time set, and that Google Calendar or Outlook is connected under Settings → Connected apps. A series with no time creates no event.
• A review cycle isn't offered when I create a 1:1. Only cycles that are running appear there. A draft cycle, or one whose window has closed, is not offered.
• A cycle stopped sending reminders. Check whether it is set to Draft, or whether its end date has passed — an ended cycle sends nothing further.
• A cycle I created is not showing on anyone's profile. It only appears under Coming up while it is Active and its scope covers that person. A hire-date cycle also needs a start date on the employee's record to count from.
• I cannot see a note somebody says they wrote. Notes have a visibility level, and the one you are looking for may be above yours. A department head does not see Administrator and Executive only notes.
• A review cycle is not in the list on the upload page. Only cycles that are running are offered — a Draft cycle, or one whose window has closed, is not. Check its status under Settings → Performance.
• The upload page says the cycle does not cover that person. The cycle's scope excludes them. Open it under Settings → Performance and check whether it is set to everyone, a department, or named people. A hire-date cycle also needs a start date on the employee's record to count from.
• A goal comment won't delete. You can always delete your own. Otherwise the same rule applies as to the goal itself: an executive for anyone, an administrator for anyone but themselves, a department head for their own department.
• A link to someone's reviews opened their 1:1s instead. Fixed — a link ending ?perfTab=reviews now opens the Reviews tab.