A review type decides who evaluates each person in a performance review. Factorial has four: Self review, Manager to direct report, Peer and Direct reports to manager (sometimes called upward review). You can pick one or combine several in the same review, which is how 180° and 360° reviews are built.

The four review types

Before you start

• Make sure each employee's manager is up to date in their profile. Manager reviews and direct report reviews use the manager on file at launch.
• Review types can only be changed while the review is in Draft.

Step by step
 

Select review types (admin or owner)

1. Go to Performance > Reviews and click New review, or open a draft review and click Edit.
2. In the Review types step, select one or more of Self review, Manager to direct report, Peer and Direct reports to manager.
3. Click Continue (in a new review) or the change saves automatically (in Edit).
4. In the review's Questionnaire, add questions to the tab of each selected review type. Each review type has its own questions.

Rules and behavior

• If you select a review type, then you must add at least one question to its questionnaire tab before launching.
• If you select Manager to direct report, then an evaluation is created for each person in the target group who has a manager in their profile. People without a manager get no manager review.
• If an employee has more than one manager, then admins and owners can add the other managers as additional reviewers on their manager review. They share the same evaluation. See Manage an active review: participation, peers, reviewers and status.
• If you select Direct reports to manager, then each person in the target group who manages people is evaluated by each of their direct reports.
• If you select Peer, then no peer evaluations exist at launch. They are created when someone assigns peers. See Manage an active review: participation, peers, reviewers and status.
• If a review has only Self review and action plans are on, then the employee's current manager leads the action plan once the self review is submitted. In that case the manager can only write in the Conclusion section.
• If a review has Self review and Manager to direct report, then the action plan can start once both are submitted.
• If Final question scoring is used, then both the self review and the manager review get an Overall performance question, but only the manager's answer counts towards the score.
• If you use Include competency assessment, then competency questions are added to self, manager and peer evaluations, never to direct report evaluations.
• Self reviews are never anonymous. Peer reviews are anonymous to the evaluated person only if Make peer review anonymous is on.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: "An employee has no manager review." → Cause: they had no manager in their profile when the review launched. → Fix: set their manager, then ask an admin to replace the reviewer of an existing evaluation, or add the person again. See Manage an active review: participation, peers, reviewers and status.
• Symptom: "The launch fails with 'Your review may not have any reviewers'." → Cause: the review types and the target group don't produce any evaluation, for example Direct reports to manager only for people who manage nobody. → Fix: add another review type or change the people to evaluate.

FAQ

1. Can employees edit their self review after submitting it?
Only if Allow review edits is on. Then they can edit and resubmit until the review ends, and their manager is notified.

2. Who chooses the peers?
Admins, review owners and each employee's direct manager, once the review is active.

3. Can an employee review their manager anonymously?
No. Make peer review anonymous only applies to peer reviews. Direct report reviews always show who wrote them, except in reviews migrated from the older version of Reviews, which show the Anonymous responses notice in Edit > Visibility.

4. Can I run a review with only self-assessments and still do action plans?
Yes. The employee's current manager leads the action plan.