Create and manage performance reviews (as an admin)

1. Set up a review
   • Set up and schedule a performance review cycle for your employees and reviewers.
     • Choose if employees participate in self-evaluations, manager (or other assigned reviewer) reviews, or both.
     • Set up email reminders for participants.
   • All primary and full access admins are able to create a review cycle. Limited access admins with the “Manage performance reviews” option selected in their permission settings can also do this.
2. Track progress
   • Access your dashboard for real-time updates on review completion rates and follow up with employees or managers as needed.
3. Gather insights
   • Evaluate feedback from completed reviews and facilitate a conversation with your employees and reviewers when the time is right.
4. Share feedback with employees
   • After the self-evaluation and reviewer evaluation are complete, you can share the performance review with the employee.
5. Reviewers can add summaries and private notes
   • After a review has been shared, reviewers can add a summary for all to see, or add a private note for just the managers and admins to see.
   • As an admin, you can view and delete reviewer/manager summaries on completed and shared review cycles, but not finalized ones.

What's not included (for now):

• 1x1s

Performance reviews contain sensitive information about employees. Primary admins and full access admins will automatically be able to create, manage, and view performance reviews. Learn how to manage administrator's permissions if necessary. 

1. Head to the People section and select Performance.
2. Read the overview and when you’re ready, click Get started.
   • If you already have a performance management tool, or Gusto doesn’t fit your needs, check out our App directory for other options or to see if you can connect your current system.
3. Click Set up a review cycle.
   • Interested in performance reviews but not ready to start your review cycle yet? Don’t worry, you can set up your review cycle, add participants, and save it as a draft until you’re ready to send it out.
4. Name the cycle—this is how we’ll refer to this group of performance reviews, try to include a time period in the name so you can tell different review cycles apart.
5. Select the type(s) of reviews you want to have:
   • Reviewers (often managers) complete performance evaluations for employees you’ve asked them to review. 
     • At this time, a reviewer must have an employee profile in Gusto—users with admin accounts but not employee accounts cannot be added as reviewers.
   • Employees complete a self-evaluation for themselves.
   • Both
6. Click Continue.
   • You can also click Exit and save as draft if you aren’t ready to move on just yet.
7. Schedule the review cycle by selecting a start date. 
   •  On the scheduled start date, the review cycle will automatically kick off and start for all selected employees.
8. Set a self-evaluation deadline (if applicable).
9. Set a manager review deadline (if applicable).
10. Set a sharing deadline (if applicable)—managers reviews must be shared by this day. Reviewees can’t see the manager review until it’s shared.
11. Set an end date—the review cycle ends on this day. This is when you intend to finalize reviews to prevent additional modifications.
12. Toggle the button to send reminders and choose how many days before each deadline you'd like to send them.
    • These are soft deadlines, which means participants can still submit reviews past the due date until an admin finalizes the review cycle.
13. Click Continue. 
14. Click +[employee name] to add employees for review.
    • Once added, if you need to remove an employee from the list, click the X next to their name.
    • Employees can use this article to help them complete their self-evaluation.
15. Click Continue.
    • You can also click Exit and save as draft if you aren’t ready to move on just yet.
16. Confirm or edit the reviewers for each employee.
    • To get you started, we’ve set each employee’s reviewer as their direct manager (if one was already assigned). If someone else will review an employee’s performance, this is your chance to choose the right person to be their reviewer.
      • This change only affects this review cycle and will not change who their manager is in Gusto.
    • Reviewers/managers can use this article to help them complete their reviewer evaluations.
      • At this time, a reviewer must have an employee profile in Gusto—users with admin accounts but not employee accounts cannot be added as reviewers.
17. When everything looks good, click Continue.
    • You can also click Exit and save as draft if you aren’t ready to move on just yet.
18. Use a pre-existing review template or build your review template using the question wizard—create custom sections and questions. Use the three-dot menu to edit, delete, reorder, or add new sections.  
    • For reviewers
      • The prompt(s) will be surfaced to reviewers when they are asked to fill out an evaluation for employees.
        • Examples:
          • What long-term goals did you set for your employees?
          • Did this employee achieve these goals?
    • For employees doing self-evaluation
      • The prompt(s) will be surfaced to employees when they are asked to fill out a self-evaluation.
        • Examples:
          • What long-term goals did you set for yourself?
          • Give some examples of how it turned out for you.
19. Check the box to save and title the template if you want to use it again in the future. 
20. Click Continue.
    • You can also click Exit and save as draft if you aren’t ready to move on just yet.
      
21. Review the summary details, next steps, and the performance review timeline—add an optional personal note to the end of the email that gets sent to employees if you’d like.
    • Under the "What happens next" headline, click Preview the kick-off email to review the email and note.
22. When everything looks good to go, click Create review cycle.
    • You can also click Exit and save as draft if you aren’t ready to move on just yet.

Employees and reviewers will get emails and Dashboard reminders to complete their reviews. If they need help, here are some related resources:

• Reviewer evaluation help (for reviewers/managers)
• Self-evaluation help (for employees)

Admin

• Admins have a “Templates” tab where you're able to set up ratings and customize the ratings labels.
• Once ratings are enabled, you'll have the ability to add a performance rating section to either the manager or employee review template. This occurs during the set-up flow when creating a new performance review cycle.
• Once ratings are submitted by managers, admins can then view performance ratings across participating employees.

Manager

• Managers will be requested to submit a performance rating for a direct report.
• Managers can also view a direct report’s past performance ratings on their direct report’s employee profile.

Employee

• Employees will be requested to submit a performance rating for themselves.

Admins can use their dashboard to view feedback for all participants and share the feedback with participants once all reviews have been submitted. Reviewers will have the same dashboard and capabilities, but for their reviewees only.  

View and share performance reviews

1. Head to the People section and select Performance.
2. From the “Reviews” tab, click on a review cycle.
   • If you have multiple review cycles, you can use the filter icon to help find the review you're looking for.
3. Click the name of the performance review.
4. Click Share review—this button won't be clickable if the reviewer has already shared it.
   • Heads up: Self-evaluations are automatically shared with admins and reviewers, but reviewer-evaluations must be manually shared with an employee—sharing the reviewer evaluation with your employee can not be reversed, fixed, or taken back. 
     • If you elect to share the results with your employee, they can review their feedback in the Performance section of their Gusto profile.
     • Reviewers also have the ability to share their feedback directly to their reviewees. 
5. When viewing a review, click Manager review, Self-evaluation, or Summary (if already shared) to read responses and notes.
6. Click Back to return to your performance dashboard, or Share review if you’re ready to share the feedback with your employee. 
   • Heads up: Sharing the review with your employee cannot be reversed, fixed, or taken back.
7. Confirm you’d like to share the review by clicking Share review.

After you’ve shared the review, you can view it in full from your personal Performance dashboard, or under the Performance tab in an employee’s Gusto profile.

After you've created a review cycle, you can add or remove participants and change the assigned reviewer(s). 

1. Head to the People section and select Performance.
2. From the “Reviews” tab, click on a review cycle name.
   • If you have multiple review cycles, you can use the filter icon to help find the review you're looking for.
3. To add a participant, click the + button.
4. Click the three-dot action menu to view reviews, change reviewers, or remove the participant from the cycle.

1. Head to the People section and select Performance.
2. From the “Reviews” tab, click on a review cycle name.
   • If you have multiple review cycles, you can use the filter icon to help find the review you're looking for.
3. In the top-right of the page, click Finalize reviews or Export reviews. 
   • Finalizing a review will prevent any further submissions, sharing, or editing of reviews.
   • If exporting reviews, we'll email you when the file is ready.

If you don’t get the answer you were hoping for, we’d like your feedback about how we can improve this feature in the future. 

Q: Who can see performance reviews?

A: All the below can see a performance review:

• Admins can view and export all reviews in a review cycle.
• Managers configured in your org chart can view and export reviews for their reports—if the manager changes, the new manager will have access to the historical reviews.
• Reviewers can view and export their reviewees’ self-evaluations once they're submitted, as well as the manager reviews they have written.
• Reviewees have the ability to view and export their own self-evaluations, as well as their manager review, once it is shared with them by their reviewer.
  • Admins can also share reviews.