Complete performance reviews and self-evaluations (as a manager or reviewer)

Customers on the Premium plan have access to the performance review feature—admins can upgrade the plan at any time. 

Performance reviews give you the opportunity to share feedback and identify ways to help your employees (or colleagues) manage their careers. 

For now, Gusto supports the following for employees (but not contractors):

How it works

  1. Administrators set up a review/review cycle
    • Admins assign “reviewers” for each employee—if you’ve been assigned as the reviewer, you’ll complete feedback for the assigned participant(s) from your employee account. 
    • You'll be able to review each participant's goals and any feedback they've received while filling out their review.
  2. Track progress
    • Access your performance management dashboard from your employee profile for real-time updates on the completion rates for your reviews, and follow up with teammates/employees as needed.
  3. Gather insights
    • Evaluate feedback from completed reviews and facilitate a conversation with your reports (or teammates) 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. Add review summaries and private notes
    • After you've shared a review, add a summary for all to see, or add a private note for just you and the admins at the company.

Once admins create a review cycle, you’ll receive an email with a request to complete your performance review(s). You’ll also see a reminder on your Home page that takes you to a new Performance section in Gusto. 

Here, you can view the performance review progress for people you’ve been assigned to review, fill out your reviewer evaluation(s), share feedback with the employees if and when ready, and complete your own self-evaluation if required.

View and complete assigned performance reviews and your self-evaluation (if applicable)

  1. Click the Home page sticky to take you to the new Performance page in Gusto—or head right to the Performance section.
    • You’ll be able to see current review cycles, and over time, past ones as well. 
    • You'll need to be signed in to your employee account.
  2. Click into the applicable current review cycle.
    • Check out what’s been completed and by who on this page. 
  3. In the “Action” column, click Fill out to complete your reviewer evaluation. 
    • Important: if your manager has asked you to complete a self-evaluation in addition to being a reviewer, you’ll see a “My performance” tab within the review cycle. 
      • To complete your self-evaluation: Click the My performance tab, and then click Fill out.
  4. Review the prompt(s), enter your responses, and click Submit. 
    • Don’t worry, your feedback won’t be shared until you or an admin decides to share it.
    • Max character limit: 65,500 characters
  5. Click Submit again to confirm your reviewer evaluation—you cannot edit or change the review once submitted. 
  6. Once you’ve filled out your reviewer evaluation, you’ll have the ability to view all responses and share them once both self-evaluation and reviewer evaluation are complete.
  7. Next to each employee’s name on the cycle dashboard, under the “Action” column, click the three-dot menu.
  8. Select View or Share with [employee name].
    • Heads up: you’ll only have the option to share with the participant after both the self-evaluation and reviewer evaluation have been submitted—sharing the review with the participant cannot be reversed, fixed, or taken back. 
      • If you elect to share the result, the participant can review their feedback in the Performance section of their Gusto profile.
      • Admins also have the ability to share the full review with direct reports. 
  9. When viewing a review, click the left-menu options “Employee self-evaluation” or “Reviewer evaluation” to read responses. 
  10. Click Back to return to your cycle dashboard, or Share with [employee name] 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.
  11. 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 the Performance section of your account. To do so:

  1. Head to the Performance section.
  2. For any active reviews, click View.
  3. Click Go to review for the employee.

Add a summary or private note after a review is shared

  1. Head to the Performance section.
  2. For any active reviews, click View.
  3. Click Go to review for the employee.
  4. Under the “Results” header, click Summary.
  5. Add a summary—you can summarize the feedback from the review, record action items and meeting notes, etc.
    • This summary can be viewed by everyone, including the person who was reviewed.
    • We’ll notify the person reviewed that their summary is ready. They'll be able to find it in the Performance tab the next time they sign in to Gusto. You can still edit the summary after it’s submitted. 
  6. If you'd like to add a private note for just you and the admins at the company, click Add a private note.  
    • Once a note has been added, in the individual's unique performance review, you can click “Notes” to see the note.
  7. Click Share summary.
  8. Confirm you'd like to share the summary by clicking Share summary again.

FAQ

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: As a new manager/reviewer, can I see past reviews for my current reviewees?

A: Yes. Managers can view and export reviews for their reports—if the manager changes, the new manager will have access to the historical reviews.