Modules/Features: Reviews
TLDR; since our last release we have listened to end user feedback from our previous release we have made some visual and functional changes to the set-up and administration of the Review Templates module.
Review Enhancements📝
SETTINGS>OBJECTIVES & REVIEWS>REVIEWS>TEMPLATES
ADD REVIEW TEMPLATE
Based on feedback provided by users of the platform we have reduced the number of pages within the ADD REVIEW TEMPLATE form.
PAGE ONE: INFORMATION AND NOTIFICATIONS
Information
Within this section you can provide a Title and Description for your template as well as selecting a template folder.
Notifications
All of the existing notification sliders are available in this section, allowing you to decide which notifications are received.
PAGE TWO: SETTINGS AND ADDITIONAL REVIEW ITEMS
Settings
Basic settings can be applied to the template to highlight whether it’s a sensitive review, if you’d like to score the reviewee, if the review recurrs, etc.
Experienced template creators will notice some of the sliders you previously used are no longer on this page, but not to worry, we’ve only moved them to other pages in the wizard!
Additional Review Items
If you’ve used the Reviews feature before you’ll remember that you could select whether or not to include the open Objectives for an employee. This function is still available however, we’ve moved it to it’s own additional sections page, which paves the way for us to continue to develop this area in the future and give you other areas of the platform you can pull in.
We’ve also introduced a new additional feature called “Review should include Skills Assessment”, but more on that a bit further down…
PAGE THREE: REVIEW PARTICIPANTS
We have updated the terminology and design of this page to make it clear that whichever ‘type’ you select here, will participate in the review and provide answers to feedback questions. All you have to do is select the question set you’d like them to answer and their card will show as selected.
PAGE THREE: REVIEW ACCESS
Review Template Access
Sometimes everyone in the company needs to have access to a Review Template such as “Weekly 1-2-1”, whereas other’s only need access to a very small number of templates such as an “Employee Wellbeing Check-In”. You might find that you have Department specific reviews such as a “Product & Development Probation Review” or reviews that only a certain Group of people need to have access to like a “Skills & Development Assessment” for your Department Heads and Training Group.
Page three of the Review Template Wizard enables you to select whether a template can be selected by any user in the company (through the Myself mode)
Or if you only want the template to be available to certain Users, Groups, Departments or Sites.
If you’re not sure who’s in that grouping of people, you can click the avatar and you’ll be presented with the list of people inside that grouping.
Access For In Progress Reviews
Adding in Users, Groups, Departments, Sites, Security Groups and/or Participant types in this screen will provide those people permission view a review whilst it's in progress. This comes in handy for annual appraisals and 360 feedback.
Access For Completed Reviews
Adding in Users, Groups, Departments, Sites, Security Groups and/or Participant types in this screen will provide those people with permission to view a review once it's completed. This comes in handy for HR so they can view completed exit interviews.
Page Five: Summary
This is a quick summary of all information and settings applied during the template creation.
Confirmation Modal
We appreciate that when you set up a review you want to make sure that the right people are seeing the information at the right time. The confirmation modal you see when you click save highlights who can use the template and who can see the review whilst it's in progress or once it's been completed.
MANAGE>OBJECTIVES & REVIEWS>REVIEWS
As a user that can create and conduct reviews for employees, when a Review Template is marked as sensitive, they will be able to see this and be mindful of the subject matter they're looking to discuss.
The sensitive icon can be seen on the list of open reviews.
When selecting a template to use.
And when conducting the sensitive review type.
Review Details
With the updates being made across the Reviews module for visibility and access, we've introduced this section within the Review Details page.
Skills Assessment
Above we mentioned the Skills Assessment toggle within the Additional Sections page to the new Review Templates.
For the last 12 months you've been able to add Skills and Skill Levels to the platform, as well as benchmarking Skill Levels against the Roles. These two things alone gave you the ability to see whether someone was ready for a promotion or needed additional training.
Now you're able to add a Skills Assessment section to a review enabling you to focus on the individual employee and where they sit against where you think they should be for their Role.
COMPLETING A SKILLS ASSESSMENT
If you're using a Review Template that includes the Skills Assessment, you'll see an additional section available when conducting a Review.
Within this tab you're able to review the current Skills and Skill Levels associated to the employee, as well as add additional skills from within the platform.
Any Skill Levels you set against the Role will also be reflected in this section, showing whether someone is in a deficit, matches or exceeds the level they need for the role.
Should the employee have additional skills outside of their role, you can create these in the platform and then select them within the skills assessment by clicking the '+' button in the top right of the section.
Any skill added that isn't associated to the role will have the relevant skill level shown in yellow.
Overall assessment comments can be made within the Review and will be reflected in the summary panel as well as the review details page.
Over on the left you'll see the summary panel that also contains a quick snapshot of the skills, levels and comment made during the assessment.
UPDATES TO THE TIMELINE
At the end of August last year, Release v.1.27.0, we updated the employee timeline to include much richer information.
Now when you conduct and complete a Skills Assessment with your employees their Timeline will be updated to reflect this and you can see the Timeline in realtime on the review details page.
Role, Skill, Matrix Importers
To support the ease of use of the Skills Assessment feature within Reviews we have created three additional import tools; Roles, Skills and Matrix.
Role Import
This will allow you to import the role name and role description. If you already have roles in the platform, when you carry out an import we'll do a match on the role name and update any existing roles whilst also creating new ones.
Skill Import
This will allow you to import the skill name. skill description and skill level descriptions. If you already have skills in the platform, when you carry out an import we'll do a match on the skill name and update any existing skills whilst also creating new ones.
Matrix Import
If you'd like to take full advantage of the associations you can make between Roles and Skills, the Matrix import allows you to do just that.
We provide an example spreadsheet you can populate with your own Roles and Skills and then assign the relevant Skill Levels.
Once you've completed the import you'll then be able to use the Skills Assessment feature to review everyone's skills and make sure their Skill Level is accurately captured.