Self-assessment reviews allow employees to reflect on their own performance before receiving feedback from others. They are an important part of the performance review process, helping employees recognize their achievements, identify development opportunities, and prepare for meaningful conversations with their managers.
In Factorial, a self-assessment is one of the review types that can be included in a Performance Review. It can be used on its own or combined with manager, peer, and upward reviews to create a more complete evaluation process.
Overview
A self-assessment review gives employees the opportunity to evaluate their own performance over a defined review period.
As part of a Performance Review, employees complete a questionnaire about their work, using the questions configured by an administrator. Depending on the review setup, the questionnaire can include ratings, written responses, numeric answers, or multiple-choice questions.
Self-assessments help organisations:
- Encourage employee ownership and reflection
- Support more balanced and constructive performance conversations
- Compare employees' self-perception with manager and peer feedback
- Create a documented record of achievements, strengths, and development areas
- Self-assessments can be combined with other review types, including:
- Manager review
- Peer review
- Upward review
This allows organisations to build review processes such as 180° or 360° reviews within the same Performance Review.
How to use
For administrators
- In your sidebar, go to Performance
- In Reviews, create a new Performance Review or open an existing draft
- Select Self review as one of the review types
- Add or create the questionnaire that employees will complete
- Configure the review settings, such as:
- Deadlines
- Launch date or schedule
- Automatic reminders
- Visibility settings
- Scoring and weighting (optional)
- Select the employees who will participate
- Launch or schedule the review
Once the review starts, employees receive a notification prompting them to complete their self-assessment
For employees
- Open the notification or go to your assigned Performance reviews
- Select the review you need to complete
- Answer each question in the questionnaire
- If needed, click Save as draft to continue later
- Click Submit when your review is ready
After submitting, you can continue editing your self-assessment until the review period ends. Each time you submit updated responses, your manager is notified.
What you can configure
When creating a Performance Review that includes self-assessments, administrators can configure:
- Review types — Combine self, manager, peer, and upward reviews.
- Templates — Use predefined templates or save custom reviews for future use.
- Deadlines — Define how long participants can submit and edit their reviews.
- Scheduling — Launch immediately or schedule the review for a future date.
- Automatic reminders — Send reminders 7 days and 1 day before the deadline, with the option to add additional reminders.
- Scoring and weighting — Generate overall review scores and assign weights to questionnaire sections.
- Company score scale — Define the organisation's scoring scale and labels.
- Competency assessments — Evaluate competencies and compare employee, manager, and peer assessments.
- Goals integration — Connect review outcomes to employee goals and action plans.
- 9-box potential assessment — Include a potential rating that contributes to the 9-box grid. This information is visible only to managers and process owners.
- Action plans and sign-off — Agree on development actions after the review and optionally collect an electronic signature and generate a PDF.
- Performance cycles — Organise reviews, goals, and feedback into recurring performance cycles.
- Analytics and insights — Review performance trends, average scores, and AI-generated insights.
If an employee cannot edit their self-assessment, the review period may have ended. Self-assessments can only be edited and re-submitted while the review remains active. Once the deadline passes, responses can no longer be changed.
If the manager cannot see an employee's responses, early access may be disabled. Check the review's visibility settings. If early access is not enabled, managers will see responses only after the review closes.
Available question types
Administrators can build questionnaires using different question formats:
- Rating — Evaluate using a numerical scale with customisable labels
- Open text — Provide written responses
- Number — Enter a numeric value
- Multiple choice — Select one or more predefined options
Questions can also be configured to:
- Be mandatory
- Include an optional comment field
- Display different wording depending on the review type (for example, employee versus manager)
Action plans for self-reviews
Performance Reviews that include only a Self review can continue to the Action plan stage without requiring a manager review.
Previously, reviews configured with only a self-assessment could not progress to an action plan. As a workaround, organisations had to add a manager review—even if they did not intend to use it—to unlock the next step. This particularly affected teams with large manager-to-employee ratios that rely on self-assessments as their primary review method. Now, no additional configuration is required.
How it works
If a Performance review includes only a Self review:
- The employee completes and submits their self-assessment
- Once the self-assessment is published, the review becomes eligible for an Action plan
- The employee's current manager is automatically assigned to lead the Action plan
- The Action plan appears in the manager's pending Action plans list, allowing them to continue the review process
During the Action plan stage for self-reviews:
- The employee's current manager is responsible for leading the Action plan
- Managers can add comments only in the Conclusion section
- The rest of the Action plan experience remains the same as for other review types
If the Performance Review also includes a Manager review, the Action plan process behaves exactly as before.
Visibility and privacy
Performance Reviews include several visibility options that administrators can configure.
Depending on the review settings, you can:
- Restrict participants so they only see the feedback they submitted
- Allow managers to access responses before the review period ends
- Make peer reviews anonymous
Self-assessments are never anonymous. They are always associated with the employee who completes them.
Tips and best practices
- Schedule self-assessments before manager reviews to encourage independent reflection.
- Combine rating questions with open-ended questions to capture both measurable results and valuable context.
- Align questions with competencies and goals to make feedback more actionable.
- Use reminders to help increase completion rates before the deadline.
- Encourage employees to provide specific examples that support their responses.
FAQ
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Can employees edit their self-review after submitting?
Yes — self-reviews can be edited and re-submitted until the review period ends. The manager is notified on re-submission.
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Are self-reviews anonymous?
No. Self-reviews are attributed to the employee. Anonymity is a setting for peer reviews.
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Can we combine self-review with other reviews?
Yes — self, manager, peer, and upward reviews can all run in the same process (this is how 360° reviews are built in Factorial).
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Does the employee see their score / 9-box position?
Scores follow the visibility settings you configure; the potential score / 9-box position is visible to managers and process owners, not to the evaluated employee.
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Can we reuse a review setup?
Yes — save any review as a template, or start from a predefined one.