Manager Change During an Assessment Review Period

Purpose: To help you understand how changing an employee’s manager during an assessment review period affects the manager assessment workflow.

BambooHR Performance Management is available for customers on BambooHR Pro. Click here to get an overview of the Pro plan or to schedule a demo.

Manager change

If you need to change an employee's manager during an active assessment review period, first confirm their current manager in the Reports To field within the Job Information table on their employee profile. The current manager (before a manager change) would have received a notification to fill out the manager assessment for the employee. 

The following section includes details on how to update the employee's current manager to a new manager.

Please keep in mind that notifications will only go out to managers of employees you have included in the review cycle.

An employee can only have one manager listed in the Reports To field for each entry within their Job Information table.

To assign a new manager to an employee, navigate to the employee's Job tab, select Job Information and click +Add Entry. Under "Add Job Information Item," select the new manager from the dropdown list within the Reports To field and update any other applicable fields. Be sure to save the change.

In the example above, a current assessment review period is ongoing, and I changed Charlotte's manager to Cheryl Barnet on 05/06/2024. Cheryl will now be able to access Charlotte's Performance tab to complete the manager assessment, and Jennifer will no longer have access.

Assessment Progress Report: If you are terminating an employee’s manager during an assessment review period, the employee will still appear in the Assessment Progress report, but their terminated manager will show with the No Access status. In order for the employee to have a completed manager assessment, you will need to assign a new manager to the employee within their Job Information table. The new manager's assessment progress will then show in the report.

Access to the manager assessment

New manager

The new manager will not initially receive an email notification about submitting a manager assessment for an employee (direct report), but they will receive assessment reminders ten days and three days before the due date. As the new manager, they will now have access to their new direct report’s Performance tab and can complete the assessment at any time during the review period. 

If the previous manager did not start their manager assessment, the new manager will be able to start and complete the assessment for that employee before the review period closes. 

If the previous manager started the assessment and saved their progress instead of submitting the assessment, the new manager will be able to view the previous manager's saved responses. The new manager can remove the previous manager's responses and enter their own responses.

Previous manager

The previous manager will no longer have access to the manager assessment on the employee's Performance tab.

Assessment options for new managers

Skip assessment

Please note that skipping assessments is irreversible. Once a manager skips an assessment, they will still have the option to start an impromptu assessment if needed.

Skipping the assessments altogether and waiting until the next review period will provide the new manager with more time to have better feedback for the employee. If the manager assessment is still incomplete, the new manager can click Skip This Assessment to remove the need for both the employee and manager to complete their assessments for that review period. 


If the employee already completed their self assessment before the skip, the system will keep record of their assessment, and the new manager can view the employee's responses. 

When the manager skips the assessments, the employee will receive an email notification. Managers will not receive this email notification.

Impromptu assessment

Once the new manager starts an impromptu assessment, the employee will need to fill out another assessment. If the employee already completed their self assessment, they will have the option to access the completed assessment from the Assessments dropdown menu to copy and paste their responses into the impromptu assessment. If the employee did not complete the self assessment, they will need to start from scratch on their impromptu assessment.

Starting an impromptu assessment (for both employee and manager) is an option as long as the assessment review period is part of an active review cycle in Settings > Performance Management. After skipping the assessments for the selected review cycle, the manager can then click Start an Assessment. Please keep in mind that impromptu assessments will show under a new review period that is outside of the currently active review period. They can find this information within the dropdown menu next to "Assessments" on the employee's Assessments subtab (see above).

If the manager decides to start an impromptu assessment, the employee will receive an email notification and can click Start Self Assessment. Managers will not receive this email notification.

If necessary, the manager can click Cancel Impromptu Assessment to revert the assessments back to their original state in the current review period.

The employee will also receive an email notification about the cancellation. Managers will not receive this notification.

Manager change after an assessment review period

After the 30-day assessment review period closes, self and manager assessments will still be available to complete as it is a soft due date

If you find that a new manager is unable to access the manager assessment for an employee, be sure to review the Reports To field on the employee profile. Only the manager assigned in the Reports To field at the time of review period closure can complete the assessment. This is by design to ensure accurate data reporting and avoid having new managers complete an assessment for an employee they did not manage during that specific assessment review period. 

The new manager can skip their manager assessment to wait until the next assessment review period to complete it.

If you still need to have the manager assessment completed for an employee in a closed review period,* you can choose one of the following ways as long as the closed assessment review period is part of a review cycle that is active in Settings > Performance Management:

  1. Temporarily assign the previous manager (following the same steps here) to the employee. After the previous manager submits the assessment, you can then reassign the new manager to the employee.
  2. Start an impromptu assessment. This will allow the new manager to complete the manager assessment for the employee, but it will show under a separate assessment review period on the employee profile. 

If you need to verify a manager change after an assessment review period, the Audit Trail report will include details about the change.

*A review cycle contains review periods. A review period is referring to the dates you have set up for assessments and feedback within the review cycle. As long as a review cycle is active, your company will be on schedule to complete any assigned performance reviews as part of that review cycle.