Create and manage performance reviews (for admins)

1. Set up a review—primary admins, global admins, and admins with the Manage performance reviews permission can do this. 
   • Set up 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.
2. Track progress
   • Check your dashboard to see how many reviews are done. Remind team members or managers if needed.
3. Gather insights
   • Look at feedback from reviews and talk to your team members and reviewers when it’s time.
4. Share feedback with team members
   • After self and manager reviews are done, you can share the performance review with the team members.
5. 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

Performance reviews contain sensitive information about team members. Primary admins and full access admins will automatically be able to create, manage, and view performance reviews. Limited access admins with the “Manage performance reviews” permission can also access this feature.

1. Go to People and click Performance.
   • Primary and full-access admins have access to this feature, along with limited access admins who have the “Manage performance reviews” permission.
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 team members you’ve asked them to review. 
     • At this time, a reviewer must have an employee profile in Gusto. Admin-only accounts cannot be reviewers.
   • Team members 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 team members.
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 +[team member name] to add them for review.
    • Once added, if you need to remove a team member from the list, click the X next to their name.
    • Team members 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 team member.
    • To get you started, we’ve set each team member's reviewer as their direct manager (if one was already assigned). If someone else will review their 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. Admin-only accounts cannot be 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 a team member.
        • Examples:
          • What long-term goals did you set for your team?
          • Did this person achieve these goals?
    • For team members doing self-evaluation
      • The prompt(s) will be surfaced to team members 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 team members 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.

Team members 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 US 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 team member 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 team members.

Reviewer

• Reviewers will be requested 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 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. Go to People and click Performance.
   
   • Primary and full-access admins have access to this feature, along with limited access admins who have the “Manage performance reviews” permission.
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. When viewing a review, click Manager review, Self-evaluation, or Summary (if already shared) to read responses and notes.
   • Click Back to return to your performance dashboard.
5. Click Share review—this button will not be clickable if the reviewer has already shared it. Sharing the review with your team member cannot be reversed, fixed, or taken back.
   • Heads up: Self-evaluations are automatically shared with admins and reviewers, but reviewer-evaluations must be manually shared with a team member—sharing the reviewer evaluation with your team members cannot be reversed, fixed, or taken back. 
     • If you elect to share the results with your team member, they can review their feedback in the Performance section of their Gusto profile.
     • Reviewers can also share their feedback directly to their reviewees. 
6. 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 a team member's Gusto profile.

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

1. Go to People and click Performance.
   
   • Primary and full-access admins have access to this feature, along with limited access admins who have the “Manage performance reviews” permission.
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 + Add a participant button (above the “Actions” column).
4. Click the three-dot action menu to view reviews, change reviewers, or remove a participant from the cycle.

1. Go to People and click Performance.
   
   • Primary and full-access admins have access to this feature, along with limited access admins who have the “Manage performance reviews” permission.
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 didn’t get the answer you wanted, we’d love to hear your feedback on how we can improve this feature.

Q: Who can see performance reviews?

A: Here’s who can see them:

• 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.