Setup Considerations: Performance Reviews

Administrator Guide

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of performance reviews. It explains:

Why to set them up.

How they fit into the rest of Workday.

Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.

Security requirements and business process configurations.

Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.

Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are

You can use performance reviews to provide feedback on workers' performance to help improve worker effectiveness and engagement. You can also use performance reviews to assist in coaching and driving worker development.

Business Benefits

You can configure performance reviews to:

Track your workers' performance and drive their development.

Enable discussions with workers about their competencies, goals, and development items.

Connect performance reviews to compensation, making it easier to reward workers when your organization uses performance-based compensation.

Use Cases

You can conduct performance reviews to run:

Periodically to coordinate with the compensation process in your organization and align with your goals.

On an ad hoc basis so workers can continue to develop outside of the scheduled review period.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
How often do you want to schedule periodic performance reviews?	Determine the frequency of your performance reviews based on who in your organization is participating and when the review period takes place. Set up different employee review templates for different review periods.
How do you want to organize performance review templates for specific worker groups?	Set up your domains and employee review templates to enable different requirements for specific worker groups. Example: Special review templates for sales workers.
Who do you want to initiate performance reviews?	Use the Maintain Review Types task to determine who can start performance reviews. Example: You can configure the task to enable workers to start their own performance reviews, or enable only managers or HR partners to initiate the reviews.
Are you moving content from a previous review to a review for a new period?	You can configure the Load Content from Previous Review prompt in your review templates to carry over or consolidate content from previous reviews.
Are you using net attainment of goals to help determine compensation?	Determine how to calculate the net attainment and include the Goals section in the performance review template.
How do you want to rate the component parts of your performance reviews?	You can assign ratings to individual items and sections on employee review templates, or on performance reviews. You can use Workday-provided rating scales or create your own custom scales to align performance reviews with Calibration, Compensation, or Succession.
Who needs to acknowledge and approve performance reviews?	You can configure business process steps to support approvals and acknowledgments. Acknowledgments only apply to managers and employees. You have more flexibility when setting up approvals so that other types of workers can approve a performance review.
Do you want to include calibration in your performance reviews?	Include the appropriate business process steps to support calibration.
How can you include embedded analytics in performance reviews to provide more reporting about your workers?	You can configure embedded analytics on the Complete Manager Evaluation for Performance Review and the Get Additional Reviewers for Performance Review business processes to provide custom reports you enable as worklets or use Workday preconfigured worklets. You can use these reports to provide more context and information about your workers' performance.
How can you conduct international reviews for workers with multiple positions when the primary and secondary managers are in different countries?	When workers have multiple positions in different countries, route steps to the home country manager or the host country manager using business process routing modifiers.
What data do you want to gather with performance reviews and how do you want to measure it?	You can configure templates to require workers to complete specific fields. You can include summary sections or comments. You can set up templates to weight items and sections, or include item ratings and calculated ratings.
Do you want additional managers or reviewers to provide feedback?	You can set up your business processes to support additional manager evaluations. You can enable up to 2 additional managers to provide evaluation comments for workers. You can include the Competencies section in a template to enable additional reviewers. Additional reviewers can comment only on this section.

Recommendations

Use care when setting the

Period Start Date

and

Period End Date

values for the Start Performance Review
business process. Don't schedule an employee review with dates that overlap an existing employee review of the same review type.

Select the

Period Start Date

and

Period End Date

values when you load content from a previous review and you configure the template with the Carryover with Item Evaluation Content
or Consolidate
option. These dates determine which content is eligible for the current review.

The

Period End Date

value also controls worker access to review data when you select the View Only On Completed Review
option in the

Employee View Option

prompt on the template. When you select this option, workers don't see their review data until after the

Period End Date

and the process is complete.

Don't set the start date to before a worker's hire date.

Copy the template before you launch the official review, because you can't edit review templates when reviews are in progress or complete.

Test your employee review templates before launching the review. If you need to update a template during testing, cancel the reviews first and edit the template.

Requirements

When you include the

Questions

section on your review template, you must configure question categories and questions for feedback and review.

Limitations

Using parallel steps in performance reviews can cause unexpected results. We recommend setting up the Complete Self Evaluation
and Complete Manager Evaluation
subprocesses in a sequential order. See FAQ: Employee Reviews.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Configure these domains in the Performance Enablement functional area:

Domains	Considerations
Self-Service: Performance Reviews	Provides workers self-service access to starting and updating their own performance reviews.
Set Up: Employee Reviews	Enables workers with the administrator role to configure all parts of the employee review process.
Performance and Goals: Contingent Worker Eligibility	Enables contingent workers to participate in employee reviews, including performance reviews.
Process: Employee Reviews	Enables workers to start and view employee reviews. Workday requires this domain for organization-level performance reviews. Example: Administrators or support roles such as HR Partner.
Set Up: Goals	Enables workers to add goals when you include the Goals section on the performance review.
Worker Data: Performance Reviews	Provides access for roles who need to view another worker's performance review. Example: Managers and support roles such as HR Partner or HR Administrator.
Worker Data: Review Event	Enables workers to complete performance reviews on behalf of other workers and run the My Team's Performance Reviews report.

Business Processes

Business Processes	Considerations
Complete Additional Evaluation for Performance Review	You can enable contingent workers to serve as additional reviewers for performance reviews when you include the Competencies section on employee review templates.
Complete Additional Manager Evaluation for Performance Review	You can configure steps that enable additional managers to add, change, or delete comments on the performance review.
Complete Self Evaluation for Performance Review	You can enable workers to evaluate themselves as part of a performance review.
Get Additional Manager Evaluation for Performance Review	You can enable workers to add up to 2 additional managers to the performance review.
Get Additional Reviewers for Performance Review	You can enable workers to add additional reviewers in Competencies sections.
Set Review Content for Performance Review	You can determine what actions workers and managers can perform in the performance review process.
Start Performance Review	Determine whether you want the performance review process to be simple or complex. Examples: You can include a Set Content step, or enable others to evaluate a worker's competencies.

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards	Considerations
My Team's Additional Manager Evaluations report	Enables you to report on worker evaluations by other managers. Workday doesn't display the primary manager's comments to additional managers.
My Team's Performance Reviews report	Enables managers to view performance reviews for their entire team in a single report.
Performance Review Status report	Enables managers to view the statuses of their workers' performance reviews. Managers can drill down on details for individual workers.

Integrations

Web Services	Considerations
Get Employee Reviews	Imports employee reviews for performance reviews.
Import Employee Reviews	Loads in-progress and completed performance reviews.
Load Employee Reviews	Loads the employee review information of a worker.
Put Employee Reviews	Loads performance reviews.
Put Review Type	Adds, edits, and removes review types, including performance reviews.
Start Performance Review	Creates in-progress or completed performance reviews.
Update Employee Review Rating	Loads overall ratings and overall manager comments for performance reviews for both workers and contingent workers.

Connections and Touchpoints

Performance reviews can touch the Compensation functional area in Workday. Performance reviews also interact with Manager Insights Hub. Managers can start and view information related to performance reviews within Manager Insights Hub. See Setup Considerations: Manager Insights Hub.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.

Concept: Load Content from Previous Review

Concept: Session Timeout

Create Employee Review Section Types

Steps: Create Employee Review Templates

Create Rating Scales

Steps: Calibrate Talent and Performance Ratings

2025R2 Release Note: Flex Team Hosts as Performance Review Additional Managers

Setup Considerations: Manager Insights Hub