Performance Review Process Template
Five documents and three sheets, including a tracker that projects where the cycle closes by weighting every outstanding review at its own manager's prior rate.
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Rating Distribution, one working day
Two ways to read a half-finished cycle, and only one of them holds
One row per working day the window is open. The last row is the cycle. Every row before it is a forecast, and the sheet is explicit about which is which.
Submitted And Outstanding
Counts, not percentages. On day one this pair is the only honest thing on the row, and the sheet says so in the note column rather than leaving somebody to work it out.
Running Share Above The Middle
The share of what has arrived that sits away from the middle and above it. This is the number every review platform shows you and the number that will mislead you, because a manager writing an easy review submits it on Tuesday and a manager writing a hard one submits it on the last afternoon.
Projected Close, Each Manager's Own Prior Rate
Every outstanding review weighted at the rate its own manager produced last cycle, added to what has already arrived. This is the column to plan against, and the per-manager part is not a refinement. A manager who put nobody above the middle last time contributes nobody this time.
Projected Close, Company Prior Rate
The same arithmetic with one company average standing in for every manager. It is here as a control, so the sheet can show what the shortcut costs rather than assert it.
Evidence Returns Issued, Cumulative
The one mid-window figure anybody should act on. It is about how an evidence box was filled in, it belongs to one named manager, and it decays: a return issued on day nine cannot be answered before the window shuts.
Six working days into a ten-day submission window, 74 of 191 reviews were in and 66.2 percent of them sat above the middle of the scale. The cycle closed at 51.3 percent, and nobody did anything in between. Submissions arrive sorted by how comfortable the review was to write, so the front of every window is the top of every scale. Reviews that arrive already specific trigger less of everything downstream, which is what review writing is for.
The per-manager weighting is the whole trick. Run the same projection at the company's prior rate and day 6 reads 57.3 percent, six points high, peaking exactly when somebody decides whether to intervene. One Marloe Logistics manager held fourteen reviews, none of them above the middle last cycle, and filed all fourteen on the final day. Weighted at his own zero rather than the company's 52 percent, the projection stayed inside a 2.6-point band all window, which is stable enough to plan against.
So the projection mostly exists to stop an intervention. A mid-window note saying ratings are running high tells managers the answer before they write the hard reviews. A rating steered toward a target cannot be explained one at a time afterwards, and a procedure deciding a promotion or a retention decision has to be. What is correctable instead is the evidence, one review at a time. Eleven rows reached calibration against 31 last cycle.
What is in the pack
Rating Distribution
One row per working day: what is in, the running share, the projection at each manager's own prior rate, and the same projection at one company average sitting beside it as a control.
Cycle Tracker by Manager
Reviews owed, prior rate, what has arrived, what each manager's outstanding batch is projected to contribute, and their evidence returns issued and still open.
Completion Status
One row per check with a count, an owner and a closing date, including the acknowledgments and the retention floor, which is one year from the record or the personnel action, whichever falls later.
Cycle Plan
Scope as a number with a rule behind it, dates counted in working days, and the decisions assigned rather than the tasks. It says in as many words that the cycle owner owns no rating.
Review Forms by Level
Four forms on one spine, differing only in what counts as evidence at that level, with the goals pre-filled from the frozen register so a retired objective cannot be rated against.
Manager Writing Guide
Two pages of before-and-after rewrites for the four constructions that get a review returned: a trait, a bare number, an absence of problems, and a comparison to a colleague.
Calibration Agenda
The eleven open rows with the evidence text quoted as written both times, the ratification block with its signer, and the structural findings addressed to the next cycle rather than the room.
Why the Running Distribution Is Not the Cycle
The two pages to read before the tracker, on why early submissions are sorted by rating and what the per-manager weighting is actually correcting for.
How it works
- 1
Send last cycle's ratings
Per person, with the manager who wrote each one. Plus whatever holds your goals now and your headcount with manager and level. Inconsistency between teams is expected and is not worth tidying first.
- 2
The goal register gets frozen
Every goal gets an effective-from date and a retired-on date where one applies, before the window opens. From then the form offers a manager only the goals in force for that person, pulled from the same cascade map that flagged which ones connect to a stated objective.
- 3
The window runs and reports honestly
Each arriving review is checked the day it lands, and the projection reads the close from whatever has arrived. When it holds within a point of last cycle, the finding is that nothing needs doing.
- 4
Calibration gets a closed set
The rows still open, each with its reason and its evidence quoted as written, plus a ratification block with a named signer for everything else. The projection stays behind.
Frequently asked questions
Why not just read the distribution as reviews come in?
Because the order they arrive in is not random. An easy review takes twenty minutes and gets written on Tuesday; a hard one needs a prior record found and a sentence composed, and it slides to the last afternoon. In the worked cycle that read 66.2 percent above the middle on day 6 against a 51.3 percent close.
Why weight by each manager rather than one company rate?
Because the managers are not interchangeable, which is what your last calibration probably found. One manager here had fourteen reviews and put nobody above the middle last cycle. At the company's 52 percent his outstanding batch contributes 7.3 ratings that never appear. His own rate is zero, and using it is what makes the projection work.
What if this is our first cycle and there is no prior data?
Then the projection has nothing to weight with, and the pack says so rather than substituting a company average and presenting it as a forecast. Run the evidence check and the goal freeze this time, which need no history, and the tracker records each manager's rate as it closes so next cycle has one.
Does returning a review to a manager mean overriding their rating?
No, and the difference is the point. The check reads the evidence box and ignores the rating's level entirely. It quotes the sentence and asks for a date, an artifact, a figure or a named third party. Eight of 41 managers moved the rating themselves on rereading; nobody asked them to and the cycle owner rates nobody.
How is this different from the calibration template?
This one runs the cycle and hands over a closed set of rows. The calibration pack computes the session agenda from submitted reviews and finds the manager patterns in them. Eleven rows reached the room here against 31 last cycle, which is what the evidence check and the goal freeze bought.
What format are the downloaded files?
Five Word documents and three CSV sheets in one zip, needing no conversion. The documents open in Word, Pages and Google Docs and the sheets in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets. A PDF version is there for circulating the plan and the writing guide rather than filling them in.
Is it free, and what does Edit with AI add?
The download is free with no account. Edit with AI installs the same pack as a private Space and runs it against your own material: your prior ratings, your goal records, your headcount. It freezes the register, projects your close, and checks the reviews as they arrive.
Find out where this cycle actually closes
Send last cycle's ratings with the manager who wrote each one, plus whatever holds your goals now. The first thing back is the projected close from what has already arrived, against last cycle's, and the reviews that owe you an evidence sentence.
Edit with AI