Create a Review Cycle

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.

How do I set up a review cycle in BambooHR?

Purpose: To teach you how easy it is to set up review cycles, along with feedback, assessments, and goals in BambooHR® Performance Management.

Table of Contents

Setup guide

If you need to review or learn more about setting up Performance Management, click View Setup Guide in the top right corner of the Performance section in Settings. 

Clicking View Setup Guide will bring up a new page with steps that guide you through an overview of Performance Management features (goals, review cycles, etc.) and how to introduce Performance to your employees.

Review cycle setup

With Performance Management enabled in your account, navigate to Settings > Performance. Then, click Create a Review Cycle to get started.

Once you click Create a Review Cycle, select either On Fixed Date or By Hire Date to determine when the review cycle should start. After making your selection,* click Create Review Cycle. 

Your selection will determine the settings for the rest of the review cycle setup. If you decide to switch from a fixed date to a hire date schedule (or vice versa) when setting up a review cycle OR after the review cycle has started, you will need to delete the existing review cycle and create a new one with the correct schedule.

1. People

You will need to determine the following settings on the People tab of the review cycle setup:

  1. Review Cycle Name: Give this specific review cycle a name to help you keep track of it. Each employee included in the review cycle will be able to view the review cycle name on their Performance tab.
  2. Who should be included?: Determine which employees you want include in this particular review cycle:  All Employees or Only Some Employees. If you choose to include only some employees, the list of standard filters will appear (Department, Division, Employment Status, Job Title, and Location) for you to utilize.

Each employee included in this step will be able to view the Performance tab on their employee profile.* Click Next: Feedback to continue.

*NOTE: If you add an employee to a review cycle and later remove them, past goals, assessments, and feedback remain viewable on their Performance tab. However, new goals, assessments, or feedback will not show until you add the employee back to a review cycle.

2. Feedback

Important Note: The feedback setup has a different workflow in the Pro package because it includes peer and upward feedback. 

  • If you are subscribed to the Pro package, please refer to the Create a 360° Review Cycle help guide for the updated workflow. 
  • If you have Performance Management as an add-on, you can still refer to this section for guidance on setting up a regular feedback review period.

The employee has a "soft" deadline of 14 days from the date of the request for submitting feedback. If they have not provided feedback by the 13th day, they will receive another email notification at 7 AM (company time zone). After 14 days, the employee will no longer receive notifications about the request, but they will have a total of 30 days to complete the request.

If the request is still incomplete 30 days after the date of request, the inbox notification will expire in BambooHR, and the employee will no longer be able to submit feedback until their manager submits a new request.

Example: A manager sent a request to an employee on January 3. The employee has a "soft" deadline of January 17th to submit their feedback. If they have not submitted the feedback by January 16, they will receive another email notification and have until February 2 to complete the feedback. 

The following settings will help you set up a feedback review period for your review cycle if you choose to do so:

  • Include Feedback for Review Cycle: Toggling on this option will enable feedback for this review cycle. 
    • If this is the only review cycle with feedback enabled, toggling off feedback will not allow managers to access feedback for their direct reports, and the Feedback Status report will no longer be available on the Reports tab.
  • Date: The date selected here is when the email notification will go out to managers for requesting feedback. After this occurs, the system will autofill the Date field with the next feedback date. In the example above, the date is 09/14/2022. Once managers receive the email notification on 09/14/2022, the Date field will automatically change to next feedback date, which is Sep 14, 2022. You can then edit that date if you need to. 
  • How often should managers be prompted?: Determine how often you want managers to receive feedback on their direct reports. Frequency options include every three months, four months, six months, and 12 months. 
  • Upcoming Reminder Dates: This setting shows you three upcoming feedback dates.
    • If you make changes to the frequency, the system will simply change the upcoming feedback dates.
  • Questions: This section shows a preview of  the two standard feedback questions that employees will need to answer. If you are subscribed to the Pro package, please view this section about adding custom feedback questions.

Click Next: Assessments to continue. 

Outside of a regular feedback review period, you can navigate to an employee profile and request feedback at any time. Keep in mind that you can only have 10 open requests at a time for the employee.

Custom questions

Custom feedback questions are only available on Pro packages. If you do not have the Pro package and are interested in upgrading your package, click here to learn more.

To add a custom question, click +Add Question. You also have the option to remove the two standard questions by clicking on the x..

There is a limit of five feedback questions in total, we recommend keeping questions simple but meaningful at your company. For example, if you keep the standard questions, you can add up to three custom questions. If you delete the two standard questions, you will able to add up to five custom questions. 

Managers will receive a preview of the feedback questions in their inbox notifications when requesting feedback on their direct reports.

Feedback by hire date

If you create a review cycle based on the employee's hire date, options in the Feedback Schedule section will look different:

  1. Prompt manager to ask for feedback...*: Select the number of months after an employee's hire date their manager should receive a notification to request feedback.
  2. Repeat every # of months: Check this box if you want to continue to prompt managers to request feedback (or until you choose to delete or deactivate the review cycle) based on the cadence selected.

If you want to create a one-time 90-day performance review cycle, leave the Repeat box unchecked. Instead, schedule managers to request feedback on a specific employee either two or three months after their hire date (two months if you want to allow time for feedback before enabling the assessments at the three-month mark).

3. Assessments

Important Notes

  1. Assessments run independently of your feedback review schedule. You will want to keep the feedback review schedule in mind as you select when you would like your assessments to occur and how often.
  2. Assessments are double-blind, meaning neither the employee and manager can view the other's completed assessment until they complete their own assessment first. 
  3. An assessment review period remains open for 30 days. After 30 days, the system will partly close the review period, meaning employees and managers can still submit assessments, but they will not receive any further email notifications. 
  4. Only the manager listed in the Reports To field on the employee profile can fill out the manager assessment for their direct reports.
  1. Include Assessments for Review Cycle: You can use the toggle to enable or disable assessments for the review cycle. If you want to add assessments at a later time, you can do so by editing the review cycle.
    • If this is the only review cycle with assessments enabled and you later choose to exclude assessments, you will no longer have access to the Employee Performance, Company Performance, and Assessment Progress reports on the Reports tab. 
  2. Assessment Schedule: Select when you want the assessment review period to start. (After the start date, you cannot edit the date until the review period ends.) Then, set the review period frequency. The options include every three months, four months, six months, and 12 months.
  3. Assessment Questions: This section displays the standard questions that come with every assessment, including answer options.
    • Can I change or remove the four standard questions? Yes. We feel that these questions are necessary for assessing performance in a way that focuses on the employee's needs and the heart of an employee's performance. However, you can remove them by clicking on the X and confirming the deletion of all standard assessment questions. The system will then require you to add one custom question for the manager and employee before continuing. You can choose to restore the standard questions by clicking Restore BambooHR Standard Questions.
  4. Custom Questions: You can add up to ten custom questions in addition to the four standard questions. The questions will allow an employee to type a free text response in the assessment. You also have an option to add a rating by clicking + Add Rating below the question. You can edit assessment questions until the assessment review period starts and at least one employee has started filling out the assessment. At that point, the questions remain locked for the remainder of the assessment review period. Full Admin user(s) will receive a notification ten days before the next assessment review period, and they can make any necessary changes to the questions during that time.
    • Why are there only ten additional questions? We limit the number of questions to make reviews less burdensome by focusing only on the most important questions.
    • Can I translate the custom questions to a different language? You can use translations for custom questions by navigating to Settings > Account  > Translations.
  5. File uploads: Check the box if you want to allow the employee and manager to upload files to their assessments. You can then choose to require file uploads or not.
    • If a file does not automatically show on an employee's Documents tab, you can find it stored within the assessment on their Performance > Assessments subtab. For future reference, select the file's corresponding assessment review period.

Click Next: Review to continue.

Assessments by hire date

Assessments set up based on employees' hire dates will have different scheduling options: 

  1. Prompt manager to ask for feedback...*: Select the number of months after an employee's hire date the manager and employee should receive a notification to complete their assessments. 
  2. Repeat every # months: Check this box if you want to continue to prompt the manager and employee to complete assessments (or until you choose to delete or deactivate the review cycle) based on the cadence selected.
4. Review & Launch

The Review & Launch step gives you the opportunity to review your feedback and assessment schedules and who you have included in the review cycle. If you wish to make changes to the review cycle setup, click on the respective step in the sidebar menu. When you are ready to launch the review cycle, click Launch Review Cycle. You also have the option to click Save & Finish Later. The action will save the review cycle setup as a draft, and you can return to it by navigating to Settings > Performance > Review Cycles  and selecting the draft review cycle.

If you skip a step in the review cycle setup, an incomplete status will show up next to the step in the sidebar menu. You will need to indicate whether to disable that step or update its settings before launching the review cycle. 

Managing review cycles

You can manage review cycles on the Performance tab in Settings. Once you create a review cycle, a table will show the name of the review cycle, the date icon, the number of employees included, and the status. If you wish to deactivate or delete a review cycle, you can do so by hovering your cursor over the review cycle name and selecting either the trash icon to delete or the eye icon to deactivate. To edit or reactivate an inactive review cycle, click on the name, confirm the review cycle details, and click to relaunch the cycle.  

Deactivating a review cycle

If you choose to deactivate a review cycle, you will receive a prompt to confirm the action. Employees will no longer be able to complete assessments or feedback, but past assessments and feedback will still be available on the employee's Performance tab. Please note that if you deactivate all review cycles, you will no longer have access to the following reports on the Reports tab: 

  • Feedback Status
  • Employee Performance 
  • Company Performance 
  • Assessment Progress 

Review cycle FAQ

  1. Is there a limit on how many review cycles I can create? 
    • No. There is no limit on the number of review cycles you can create in BambooHR. 
  2. Is there a way to see what review cycles an employee is in?
    • No. Currently, there are no reports that show this specific information.
  3. What will the manager or employee see if they are in more than one active review cycle?
    • When they navigate to their Performance tab and click Assessment, they will notice the names of all active review cycles attached to a specific date range in the dropdown menu.
  4.  How do review cycles impact impromptu assessments?
    • The Start Assessment option will show up on an employees Performance > Assessments tab if you skip all active assessments for every active review cycle an employee is in. 
  5. Is there a way to do a 90-day performance review for new hires or disciplinary follow-up reviews? 
    • Yes! You can use the By Hire Date option when setting up your review cycle. The best way to do this is to schedule managers and employees to complete their assessments either two or three months after the hire date and keep the Repeat box without a checkmark.
  6. Why schedule my review now if they are not due until the end of the year?
    • Even if reviews are not due until the end of the year, it can be easy to forget. Setting the date now will help you move on to other tasks. It will also help you get feedback and goals started as soon as possible to have more information for managers to use in the assessments.
  7. Can the review cycle be based on the employees hire date rather than every three, four, six, or 12 months?
    • Yes! You can create review cycles on a fixed date (all employees will have reviews start on the same date) or the hire date (employees included will have reviews start based on the date they got hired).