Performance & appraisal

How it works

An appraisal cycle is one performance period — the container for everything: goals, feedback, a final rating and sign-off. You set a cycle up once, activate it, and it runs your whole review. This guide walks the full journey in order.

At a high level: an administrator builds the cycle (dates, rating scale, goal grading, feedback rounds and approval workflows), activates it and enrols participants. Employees then set goals and gather feedback; goals are later scored; an admin records a final rating; and a sign-off closes each person's appraisal.

Who does what

Finding your way around

Opening Employee appraisal management lands on the Overview dashboard. Its sub-menu has five areas:

• Reviews — the peer nominations and feedback you owe, by cycle.
• Appraisal cycle — your own appraisals (and any you've approved), sign-offs awaiting you, and — for admins — everyone in the org and the tools to create and manage cycles.
• Goals — four tabs: Goal setting, Goal setting approval, Goal scoring and Goal scoring approval.
• Form templates and Business process management — questionnaire and workflow setup (admins).

1. Create the cycle

An administrator opens Appraisal cycle → Manage cycles → New cycle. Only a name is required. You also set start and end dates, a rating scale, and two date windows (for goal-setting and goal-scoring). The cycle's dates are its spine — every goal runs for exactly this period. A new cycle starts as a draft: nothing is live and no one is notified yet.

2. Rating scale & goal grading

Two things are set once, at the cycle level, so they're fair and consistent for everyone:

• Rating scale — the lowest and highest whole number the final rating must fall within (default 1–5), with optional labels like "3 = Meets expectations". This is used only for the final rating at the end.
• Goal grading scheme — how every goal is measured (percentage attainment 0–100%, or a value target each goal sets) and the named grading bands (for example, Below 0–50, Meets 50–80, Exceeds 80–100). Every goal inherits this, so "Meets" means the same for everyone.

3. Goal windows

You set two windows inside the cycle: a goal-setting window (when goals are created and agreed) and a goal-scoring window (when approved goals are self-scored). They must sit within the cycle dates, and setting must end before scoring starts. Both are required before you can activate. During each window, Hubtoll shows a dismissable reminder banner and a daily notification to nudge people who haven't acted — judged in your company timezone, inclusive of the last day.

4. Questionnaires

Under Form templates, build and publish each questionnaire. A feedback round can only use a published form, and each field's rules (required, min/max, rating scale, allowed options) become the validation reviewers see — so design them deliberately.

5. Review rounds

Design the feedback process as one or more rounds, run in an order you choose. Every round has a name, a window, and a position. There are two kinds:

• Nomination round — "pick your reviewers". You set the maximum number of peers each person may nominate.
• Feedback round — "fill in the questionnaire". You pick a published form and who reviews: the employee themselves (self), their line manager, a selected person, the peers who accepted in a nomination round, or anyone in a chosen group.

On a feedback round you can turn on anonymous (hides the reviewer's identity from everyone, including admins — only the identity, not the content) and send to reviewee for validation (the reviewed person can Accept or Reject the feedback once, with a note).

6. Approval workflows

In Business process management, set up three independent workflows (see Approval workflows for how to build them):

• Goal setting — approves a newly agreed goal.
• Goal scoring — approves the score submitted against an approved goal.
• Sign-off — approves the final rating at the end.

7. Activate & enrol

Click Activate to make the draft live, then optionally pick the participants. You can activate with none and add people later — a live cycle's setup page has an Add participants button. Each participant starts at Not started; their current line manager is captured (so a later reporting change doesn't disrupt them); their fixed reviews are created; and they're notified in-app and by email. You can add participants later but can't remove them once enrolled.

8. Setting goals

During the goal-setting window, participants create goals. An employee sets their own individual goals; a head can also set department goals; an admin can also set company goals. Each goal has a title, an optional description, a type (individual, department or company — fixed once created), an owner, an optional parent goal (for roll-ups) and an optional weight. Goals inherit the cycle's grading scheme, and their dates copy the cycle's period.

Every goal goes through the Goal setting workflow. While pending it's hidden from all but its owner, approvers and admins, and counts toward nothing. Once approved it goes live and can be scored. A rejected goal reopens for the owner to revise and resubmit. If an Update workflow is configured, an approved goal can be revised before it's scored.

9. Scoring goals

Scoring opens only after a goal is agreed, and only during the goal-scoring window (which binds everyone, admins included). Only the goal's own owner submits its score — from the goal, or via Score a goal in the Goal scoring tab. They record the achieved value on the cycle's metric, and the score routes through the separate Goal scoring workflow. On approval, the score becomes the goal's final value and band. Each goal carries one active score (a rejected score can be revised and resubmitted). If an Update workflow is configured, a finalised score can be revised.

Roll-ups: a goal can feed a parent goal in the same cycle. An automatic parent's value is calculated from its children's approved scores, weighted by importance — so it moves as the children are scored.

10. Feedback rounds

Feedback runs alongside goals:

• Nomination — the reviewed employee nominates peers (up to the round's maximum); each peer accepts or declines. The moment a peer accepts, their review task is created.
• Giving feedback — each reviewer fills in their own assigned review. You only see your own until others submit theirs (and only if you're entitled to that person's feedback). Autosave keeps a draft; Submit locks it as final and validates against the form's rules.

A round completes for a person when enough reviews are in or the round's window passes — so one unresponsive peer never blocks an appraisal. When all of someone's feedback rounds are satisfied, their appraisal advances to Awaiting final rating.

11. Final rating

An appraisal administrator records the final rating, weighing the completed reviews and the goals together (the appraisal view shows both side by side). The rating is a whole number on the cycle's scale, plus an optional comment. The task appears in every admin's pending-approvals hub once feedback is complete. Recording the rating opens the sign-off workflow, with the rating admin as its initiator.

12. Sign-off

Sign-off runs on the workflow you configured. The rating admin is the initiator (that step auto-completes), then the request routes through whatever approvers you defined — a line manager, a group head, a selected user, or a chain. The workflow view appears right on the appraisal, showing the stages, the decision trail, and the actions for whoever's turn it is. The final step's approval moves that appraisal to Completed. An approver can send it back to be re-rated (Changes requested) or reject it. Previously collected feedback is preserved and never re-gathered. An admin can revise a completed rating through an Update sign-off workflow.

13. Close the cycle

When the period is over, the administrator closes the cycle. Everything stands as the record, and the cycle locks — its details and rounds can no longer be edited. Start a new cycle for the next period.

The status ladder