Note: Our performance review feature is only available on Plus and Premium plans. If you’re on another plan, you can upgrade anytime.
Our performance review feature helps admins create and run performance cycles for US employees. With this feature, you can easily manage:
Manager reviews
Self-evaluations
Automatic reminders
You can also add goal tracking and real-time feedback to help your team grow.
Performance reviews include sensitive employee information. Only certain admins can schedule and manage them:
Primary admins
Full-access admins
Limited-access admins with performance review permissions
If you already use a different performance management tool—or our tool doesn’t fit your needs—visit our App directory to find other options or connect your current tool.
Create a performance review (primary admins, global admins, and admins with the manage performance reviews permission)
Create and schedule a performance review for your US team members and reviewers.
Decide if you want self-evaluations, manager reviews, or both.
Set up email reminders for team members.
Track progress
Check your dashboard to see how many reviews are done. Remind team members or managers if needed.
Gather insights
Look at feedback from reviews and talk to your team members and reviewers when it’s time.
Share feedback with team members
After self and manager reviews are done, you can share the performance review with the team members.
Reviewers can add summaries and private notes
After reviews are shared, reviewers can add a summary everyone can see, or a private note just for managers and admins.
Admins can view and delete summaries on completed and shared reviews, but not on finalized ones.
What’s not included yet:
1-on-1 meetings
Only certain admins can create and manage reviews:
Primary admins
Full-access admins
Limited-access admins with performance review permissions
To create and schedule a performance review:
Go to People.
Click Performance.
Click Go to performance reviews.
Click Create a review cycle. If you’re not ready to start your cycle yet, you can still create it and save it as a draft.
Name the cycle. Include a time period in the name so you can tell different cycles apart.
Select the type(s) of reviews you want to have:
Manager review: Reviewers complete an evaluation of their direct reports.
At this time, a reviewer needs an employee profile in Gusto. Admin-only accounts cannot be reviewers.
If you want a reviewer other than the employee’s manager, you can choose them later when you assign reviewers.
Self-evaluation: Employees complete an evaluation of themselves.
Both (check both boxes).
Click Continue. If you’re not ready to start your cycle yet, you can click Exit and save as draft.
Select a start date. On the start date, the review cycle will automatically kick off for all of the team members you choose.
To set a self-evaluation deadline (if applicable), toggle the button and pick a due date.
To set a manager review deadline (if applicable), toggle the button and pick a due date.
To set a sharing deadline (if applicable), toggle the button and pick a due date.
Manager reviews need to be shared by this day. Reviewees can’t see the manager review until it’s shared.
Click Continue.
To add employees to the review cycle, just click their name. To remove an employee, click the X next to their name.
When you’re done adding employees, click Continue. If you’re not ready to move on yet, click Exit and save as draft.
Assign a reviewer for each employee. If you assigned an employee a manager in Gusto, this will be their default reviewer.
If needed, you can choose someone else to be their reviewer. This will not change who their manager is in Gusto. At this time, a reviewer needs an employee profile in Gusto—admin-only accounts will not work.
When everything looks good, click Continue. If you’re not ready to move on yet, click Exit and save as draft.
To create review questions, you can choose to:
Start with recommended questions: You can edit, add, delete, or reorder questions by clicking the three-dot menu.
Start from scratch: You can add your own questions and response types by clicking Add a question.
If you want to reuse this for future review cycles, check the box next to Save this as a template.
Click Continue. If you’re not ready to move on yet, click Exit and save as draft.
Review your details, next steps, and the performance review timeline—if you’d like, you can add a personal note to the end of the email that gets sent to participants. Under What happens next, click Preview the kick-off email to review the email and note.
If everything looks good, click Schedule a review cycle. If you’re not ready to move on yet, click Exit and save as draft.
US employees and reviewers will get emails and dashboard reminders to complete their reviews. If they need help, share these resources:
Reviewer evaluation help (for reviewers/managers)
Self-evaluation help (for US employees)
Admin
Admins can use templates to set up ratings and customize ratings labels.
Once ratings are enabled, you can add a performance rating section to either the manager or team member review template. This happens during the setup flow when creating a new performance review cycle.
Once managers submit their ratings, admins can then view performance ratings across participating team members.
Reviewer
Reviewers will be asked to submit a performance rating for a direct report.
Reviewers can also view a direct report’s past performance ratings on their direct report’s profile.
Team member
Team members will be asked to submit a performance rating for themselves.
Note: Once feedback is shared, it cannot be undone.
Admins can see all feedback, while reviewers can only see their own team’s feedback. Employees’ self-evaluations are automatically shared with admins and reviewers. To share feedback with employees, admins or reviewers need to do it manually. Employees can see shared feedback in Gusto under Performance.
To view and share performance reviews:
Go to People.
Click Performance.
Click Go to performance reviews.
Click the name of the performance review. If you do not see it, you can enter the name of the review cycle in the search bar.
Scroll down to Participants and click the employee’s name. Here, you can see both the manager’s review and the employee’s self-evaluation.
To share the results with the employee, click Share results. If the reviewer has already shared the results, you will not be able to click this button.
To confirm, click Share results with [employee’s name].
After you’ve created a review cycle, you can add or remove participants and change the assigned reviewer(s).
To manage participants and reviewers:
Go to People.
Click Performance.
Click Go to performance reviews.
To add a participant, click Add a participant.
To remove an employee or change their reviewer, click the three-dot action menu next to their name and choose Change reviewer or Remove from cycle.
To finalize cycles and export reviews:
Go to People.
Click Performance.
Click Go to performance reviews.
In the top-right of the page, click Finalize reviews or Export reviews.
Finalizing a review ends submissions, sharing, and editing of reviews.
If exporting reviews, we'll email you when the file is ready.
Q: Who can see performance reviews?
A:
Admins can view and export (or download) all reviews in a review cycle.
They can also share reviews.
Managers can view and download reviews for their direct reports.
If a new manager takes over, they can also see past reviews.
Reviewers can view and download self-evaluations from the people they review, and the reviews they write for them.
Reviewees can view and download their own self-evaluations and their manager’s review once it’s shared with them.
We’d love to hear your feedback on how we can improve our performance review feature.