Review cycles

A review cycle asks a group of people for written feedback about each person being reviewed: from the person themselves, their manager, their peers and their direct reports. Cadre creates every review to write, reminds reviewers, works out each reviewee’s score, and shares the results when you are ready.

Who can create, launch and run review cycles and share results: Owner, HR admin.

Who can follow review cycles and approve peer nominations for their team: Owner, HR admin, Manager.

Everyone writes the reviews they are asked for and reads their own results. See Your reviews. Managers have their own guide: Reviews and calibration.

Before you start

Build your forms in Reviews → Set-up. See Review forms.
To rate goals or blend in KPI scores, have a performance cycle for the same period. See Performance cycles.

Kinds of cycle

When you create a cycle you choose its Kind: Annual, Mid-year, Probation, 30-60-90 day, Project or Ad hoc. The kind is a label: the settings you choose decide how the cycle runs.

A workflow can also start a probation or 30-60-90 day review for one person, for example from a joiner’s workflow. Those cycles are marked started by a workflow. See Workflows.

The phases

Phase	What happens
Draft	You set the cycle up. Nothing is sent to anyone
Nominations	Peers are proposed and approved. Only when peer feedback is on
Writing	Reviewers write and submit their reviews
Calibration	Writing is closed. Scores are worked out. HR calibrates; managers see their team’s results
Sharing	HR shares results with reviewees, who acknowledge them
Closed	Nothing in the cycle can change

Create a cycle

Open Reviews, choose the Review cycles tab and click New review cycle.
Basics: enter a Name and choose the Kind.
Who is reviewed: choose Everyone with a current engagement, One department, One worksite, People who started between two dates, or People I choose. People are found when the cycle launches, from their engagements at that moment.
Feedback: turn on each kind of feedback you want and, for each, choose its Form, its Weight (%) in the review score, and who its Results go to. Peer and upward feedback can also be Anonymous. The weights of the kinds turned on must total 100.
Peers (when peer feedback is on): choose Who chooses peers, the Fewest peers and Most peers, and when Nominations due.
Deadlines and scoring: set when Writing due, and optionally Calibration due and Sharing due. Link a Performance cycle if you want goal questions and KPI scores, and set the KPI score weight (%), the Competencies’ share of the final score (%) and the Fewest responses to show anonymous feedback.
Check and save: read the summary and click Create draft.

Saving keeps the cycle as a draft. Nothing is sent to anyone until you launch it. While it is a draft you can click Change settings.

The new review cycle wizard: basics, who is reviewed, feedback, peers, deadlines and scoring, and check and save

The starting weights

The wizard starts at Self review 10%, Manager review 70%, Peer feedback 20% (anonymous), and Upward feedback off. Every one of these is editable.

Feedback types

Type	Written by	Can be anonymous
Self review	The reviewee	No
Manager review	The reviewee’s manager	No
Peer feedback	Colleagues, chosen through nominations	Yes
Upward feedback	The reviewee’s direct reports	Yes

The manager also rates the reviewee’s potential (low, medium or high), which places them on the 9-box. See Calibration.

The reporting line is frozen at launch. Whoever manages the reviewee when the cycle launches writes the manager review and sees the results, even if the reporting line changes during the cycle.

Peer nominations

Who chooses peers has three options:

The reviewee proposes, their manager approves. Turn on Approve a reviewee’s choices at once when they have no manager so nobody is left waiting.
The manager chooses.
HR chooses.

Proposals waiting for a decision appear in Reviews → Peer approvals. Approve them, or reject one with an optional reason (the reviewee sees it and can propose someone else). HR can choose peers for anyone from the cycle’s Participants tab with Choose peers.

When nominations close, proposals still awaiting approval are not added.

Launch and move through the phases

Open the cycle from Reviews → Review cycles. The button at the top moves it to the next phase:

Launch. Cadre finds the participants from the rule, pins each form’s current version and creates every review to write. Settings cannot change after launch.
Close nominations and start writing (only when peers are asked). Reviewers are told what they have to write.
Close writing and start calibration. Reviews not submitted by now are not counted. Cadre works out every reviewee’s score, and managers can see their team’s results from here.
Start sharing. Calibration ends. Results can then be shared with reviewees.
Close cycle. Nothing in it can change again.

To give people more time, click Extend a deadline, choose the Phase and the New deadline, and click Move deadline. Moving the writing deadline also moves every review not yet finished.

Follow progress

Participants shows each reviewee, their manager, progress by feedback type, their peers, their final score (once visible to you) and whether their result is shared.
Who writes what (HR only) lists every review with its reviewer, reviewee, kind, due date and status. A reviewer can decline a review, and the reason shows here.

Reminders

Cadre emails reviewers every morning about reviews due in the next two days and reviews that are overdue: one email per reviewer, at most once a day.

To send them now, click Send reminders on the Review cycles tab, then Send. This covers every cycle. Running it again the same day sends nothing new.

Scoring

Each reviewer’s answers become a score from 0 to 100 (see Weighted questions). Then:

Each feedback type’s score is the average of its reviewers’ scores. Each reviewer counts equally.
The review score combines the types by their weights. A type with no responses or a zero weight is dropped, and the remaining weights are re-proportioned. An anonymous type below the minimum number of responses is always left out.
The final score blends in the linked performance cycle’s KPI score by the KPI score weight (%), and the role competencies by the Competencies’ share. A missing part is left out and the rest re-weighted. The KPI score is used as it stands, whether or not its cycle is locked, and is not capped at 100.
The final score is banded into a grade on the organisation’s grade scale.

A Competencies’ share of 0 rates competencies without counting them.

During calibration, Refresh scores works every score out again, for example after a late KPI change. Calibrations are kept.

Anonymity

Only peer and upward feedback can be anonymous.
An anonymous type needs at least the cycle’s Fewest responses to show anonymous feedback, which is never fewer than 3.
Below that number, the type is withheld entirely, count included, and left out of the score. This stops anyone working backwards from a small group’s ratings.
Anonymous answers are shown as totals and averages. Written comments are listed alphabetically, never in the order they were submitted, and carry no name or date.

Who sees results, and when

Who	When	What
HR	From launch	Everything, including who wrote what
The reviewee’s manager	From calibration onwards	The feedback types whose results go to the manager
The reviewee	Only once their result is shared	The feedback types whose results go to the reviewee

Results go to is set for each feedback type: HR only, HR and the manager, or HR, the manager and the reviewee. The reviewee never sees their potential rating or a calibration reason.

Results can be shared once the cycle is in Sharing.

Open the cycle and choose the Results tab.
Click Share all, or tick the reviewees you want and share just those.
Click Share.

Each reviewee sees only the feedback types shared with reviewees, and anonymous feedback below the minimum stays withheld. Only the reviewees you share are emailed. Sharing again changes nothing for anyone already shared. Managers are not emailed: they have seen their team’s results since calibration.

Acknowledgement

The reviewee acknowledges their review once, with an optional comment. Acknowledging says they have read it, not that they agree. The manager signs it off in the same way from the result. Both show on the result.

Kudos beside the review form

HR can show reviewers, beside the form, the kudos their reviewee received in the period. It is off unless you turn it on for the cycle in Kudos → Settings. See Kudos.