How to create and manage Performance Reviews in TalentHR

Performance Reviews in TalentHR let you set up structured feedback cycles and evaluate employees from multiple perspectives.

Depending on your needs, a review cycle can include:

Manager & self review: Employees evaluate their own performance, while their line managers review them separately.
Upward feedback: Employees provide feedback on their line manager’s leadership and support.
Peer feedback: Selected colleagues provide feedback on an employee’s working relationships and collaboration.

Note: Performance Reviews are available with the Premium plan. Click here to read more.

To create a Performance Review cycle

1. Sign in to your TalentHR account as an Administrator or HR Manager and go to Performance (1) from the left-side menu.

Note: Users assigned a custom role can also create and manage Performance Reviews when their role includes the relevant Performance Review permissions. See this article for more information.

2. Make sure the Review cycles (2) tab is selected.

3. Click Add review cycle (3).

4. Select one or more of the following Review Types:

Manager & self review (4)
Upward feedback (5)
Peer feedback (6)

5. Click Continue (7).

Note: Manager and self reviews are paired and cannot be enabled separately. Employees included in this review type must have a line manager assigned to them.

To configure the review cycle settings

1. Type a Title (1) for your review cycle.

2. From the Recurrence (2) drop-down list, select how often the review cycle should run:

No recurrence
Every 1 month
Every 3 months
Every 6 months
Every 12 months

3. Under Applies to, choose one of the following:

All employees (3) to include everyone.
Custom selection (4) to include employees based on their location, division, department, job title, employment status, or individual employee record.

Note: The review cycle applies to the employees being evaluated. Employees who share their feedback (e.g. Peer reviewers) do not need to be included in this selection.

4. Under Timeline, select the cycle’s Start date (5) and End date (6).

5. If you selected Peer feedback, set a Peer selection deadline (7).

The reviewed employee’s line manager, an HR Manager, or an Admin can select peer reviewers from the start of the peer-feedback period until this deadline. Selected peers can continue completing their reviews until the peer-feedback end date.

6. To set different dates for each selected review type, enable Custom timeline (8).

7. Set separate start and end dates for:

Self review (9)
Manager review (10)
Upward feedback (11)
Peer feedback (12)

Note: Custom timelines let you collect peer and upward feedback before the manager review ends, so managers can use that feedback as additional context when completing their evaluations.

To configure Upward feedback

When Upward feedback is selected under Review Types, an additional Upward feedback section appears under Settings.

1. From the Visible to (1) drop-down list, choose who can view the submitted feedback:

Manager being reviewed only
Manager's manager only
Manager being reviewed and their manager

2. To hide the reviewers’ identities, enable Anonymous (2).

3. Click Continue (3).

Note: When anonymous upward feedback is enabled, the reviewer’s identity is hidden from everyone, including Administrators and HR Managers. The submitted responses remain available to users who are permitted to view the feedback, including in Performance reports, but no reviewer-identifying information is displayed. In very small groups or filtered results, the respondent may still be apparent.

To configure the questionnaires

Each selected review type has its own questionnaire.

1. From the Questionnaire section, select the tab of the review type you want to configure:

Self review (1)
Manager review (2)
Upward feedback (3)
Peer feedback (4)

2. Enable Include standard questions (5) to add TalentHR’s predefined questions for the selected review type.

Note: Standard questions apply only to the current review cycle. You can edit their wording, but you cannot change their question type.

By default, TalentHR provides four standard questions for managers and four for employees. The first two multiple-choice questions contribute to Reports through a 0-5 scoring system, while the remaining two collect written feedback. You can supplement them with custom questions, which appear in exported reports and can be added to any review cycle.

3. Click the pencil (6) icon next to a standard question to edit its wording.

4. Use the six-dot handle (7) to drag and drop questions into your preferred order.

Note: Question placeholders such as {Name} and {Company} are replaced automatically with the relevant employee and company names when participants complete their reviews.

To add a custom question

1. Select the questionnaire tab where you want to add the question, and click + Add question (1).

2. Type the question in the Title (2) field.

3. From the question-type drop-down list (3), select one of the following:

Text
Long text
Single selection
Multiple selection
Link
Rating (0-10)
Likert scale (Strongly Disagree - Disagree - Neutral - Agree - Strongly Agree)

4. When adding a custom question to the Manager review, choose who can see the manager’s response (4):

Manager: The response remains visible only to the manager, as well as users with the View employee performance reviews permission (such as Admins, HR Managers, and custom roles with that permission).
Manager & employee: The employee can view the response after the manager submits the review.

5. Click the checkmark (5) to save the question.

6. To remove a custom question, click the bin (6) icon.

7. Repeat these steps for every questionnaire included in the review cycle.

Notes:

Each enabled review type must contain at least one question before you can publish the review cycle.
Standard and custom questions are configured for each review cycle.
Click Clear to remove all questions from the cycle’s questionnaires.
Upward feedback can be anonymous depending on the review cycle’s settings.

To save or publish the review cycle

After configuring all questionnaires:

1. Click Save draft (1) to save the review cycle without publishing it.

2. Click Publish (2) when the review cycle is ready.

A draft can contain an incomplete setup, but it cannot be activated until it’s completed. When you publish a review cycle, TalentHR validates its configuration before allowing it to be published (i.e., its required settings, timelines, and questionnaires). For example, every enabled review type must contain at least one question before the cycle can be published.

After publishing, return to Performance > Review cycles and enable the Active toggle to activate the review cycle.

Note: Publishing a review cycle makes it ready for use. Participants can complete their reviews only when the cycle is active and the relevant review period is open.

How the different review types work

A. Manager & self review

With this review type:

Each eligible employee receives a self-review.
Their line manager receives a separate manager review.
Both reviews are considered fully completed once the employee and manager have submitted their respective forms.
The employee cannot view responses to manager-only questions.
The manager can use available peer and upward feedback as context while completing the manager review.

Note: If an employee does not have a line manager, TalentHR cannot create the corresponding manager and self-review pair.

B. Peer feedback

Peer reviews are not assigned automatically.

During the peer-selection period, the reviewed employee’s line manager, an HR Manager, or an Admin can select up to ten active employees as peer reviewers.

Once selected:

The peer reviewer is notified.
A peer-feedback form is created for them.
They can submit their feedback until the end of the peer-feedback period.

The selected peer:

Does not need to be included in the cycle’s Applies to selection.
Cannot be the employee being reviewed.
Must be an active employee.
Can even be the reviewed employee’s line manager.

Peers can be added or removed until the peer-selection deadline. After the deadline, the selection can no longer be changed.

C. Upward feedback

With Upward feedback, TalentHR automatically creates an upward-feedback form for each active direct report of every manager included in the review cycle.

Who can access the responses depends on the Visible to setting selected during the review cycle's configuration:

Manager being reviewed only: only the employee's direct manager can view the responses.
Manager's manager only: only the manager's manager can view the responses.
Manager being reviewed and their manager: both managers can view the responses.

Note: For upward feedback, the Visible to setting takes precedence over the View performance records user role permission. The users selected in Visible to can access the responses, regardless of their performance record permissions.

When Anonymous is enabled:

The reviewer’s identity is hidden from everyone.
The written responses remain available to users who can view employee performance reviews, according to the Visible to setting configured for the review cycle.
The submitted upward review cannot be reopened.

To manage existing Performance Reviews

1. Sign in as an Admin or an HR Manager, and go to Performance (1) from the left-side menu.

2. Select Review cycles (2).

From here, you can:

Use the Active (3) toggle to activate or deactivate a published review cycle.
Click the pencil (4) icon to edit it.
Click the more options (5) icon to access additional actions (Clone, Delete).
Extend (6): Add more days to an open cycle.

About the Clone and Delete options

Clone: Create a new draft containing the same settings and questionnaires. Existing reviews and responses are not copied.
Delete: Remove a review-cycle setup when it is no longer needed. Deleted review cycles and their responses can’t be restored.

To edit an active review cycle

If the review cycle is currently in progress:

1. Disable its Active toggle.

2. Click the pencil icon.

3. Make the required changes.

4. Save your changes.

5. Enable the review cycle again.

Note: Editing a questionnaire's structure during an ongoing review cycle may recreate the current cycle, causing any drafted or submitted answers in that cycle to be lost.

Structural changes include:

Adding or removing questions from an existing questionnaire.
Editing the wording of a question.
Changing a custom question’s type.
Editing the available answers of a selection question.
Changing whether a manager question is visible to the manager only or to both the manager and employee.
Changing the cycle’s recurrence or start date.

Whenever possible, make these changes before the cycle begins or after it has ended.

Reordering existing questions does not reset the current cycle. However, if the cycle is already in progress, you must first deactivate it before reordering its questions.

To extend an open review cycle

Use Extend when participants need more time to complete their reviews. Extending a cycle moves its end date without changing its questionnaires or removing submitted work.

If the peer-selection deadline was originally set to the review cycle's end date, extending the cycle also extends the peer-selection deadline.

Note: Only review types whose end date matches the cycle's end date will be affected.

To reopen a submitted review

Admins, HR Managers, and custom roles with the Reopen individual reviews permission can reopen certain submitted reviews to let the reviewer edit and resubmit their answers.

When a review is reopened:

It returns to draft status.
The reviewer receives an email notification.
The reviewer can update and resubmit it.

Notes:

Peer reviews cannot be reopened.
Anonymous upward-feedback reviews cannot be reopened.
A review cannot be reopened while the review cycle is inactive.

About AI-powered insights

TalentHR can automatically generate concise insights from submitted:

Peer feedback
Upward feedback
Combined peer and upward feedback

AI insights are not generated from self or manager reviews.

Managers can view an AI insight only if they can view the underlying peer or upward feedback. AI insights follow the same visibility rules as the feedback they summarize.

Note: AI insights must also be enabled through the Allow performance feedback summaries company setting. To access this setting, navigate to Settings > Domain settings > General, and scroll down to the AI Options section.