How to - Configure Performance Review Workflows

Purpose Statement

Performance review workflows determine how the review is routed for approval. There are a myriad of ways these can be configured. This article is meant to help understand the basic tenants of how the workflow works and the settings that may be adjusted within the workflow.

Performance Reviews: Sequential versus Parallel Workflows

There are two kinds of workflows for performance reviews:

- Sequential – review steps are one after another in sequence; “A” must happen before “B” can happen before “C” can happen and so forth.
- Parallel – review steps can happen simultaneous – e.g. Employee may self review while Manager simultaneously reviews. Review cannot proceed to next steps until the simultaneous events have been completed.
  - Sequential is more common than parallel
  - Parallel reviews can have sequential steps in them

It’s not advisable to ask your client what kind of workflow they need. You have to determine the best functionality based on discovery and set it up accordingly – Assess, Consult, Build, Teach!

Really important things to know about performance review workflows:

You can’t filter steps on performance reviews – e.g. you cannot tell a workflow to follow one sequence of events for a specific cost center, but another sequence for a different cost center. You’d have to build multiple workflows and review profiles to accomplish that.
Employee Signature step must ALWAYS come after the last approval step and prior to finalizing the review. An employee can sign a self-review without the need for the button.
On Expired – You may “expire” a step after a certain number of days/weeks (hours and minutes is an option although it runs overnight and tends to not work) – to prevent your workflow from getting stuck, you must loop the on expired to an expired email notification and from the notification back to the review step in question.
On Wait – you can use this step to force the system to “wait” to move on to the next step until a certain period-of-time has passed. Again, minutes and hours tend to not work well.
Parallel Reviews – make sure whatever steps are being done in parallel are connected to the appropriate split and join steps.
All steps must have a step before and a step after except for “On Created” and “End” – many problems exist when a workflow is left without a connection.
Review Workflows also have the capacity to skip a step in the event a person is missing on the employees record.
Override Score cannot presently be shut off. This functionality works best when the scoring is averaged or totaled, not when entered or selected.

Performance Reviews: Additional Workflow Settings

In the aforementioned options area, there are multiple dropdowns that affect end-user visibility into a performance review, as well as requirements for ratings, comments, and signatures. You can use that Options article (KB0015086) to determine how those functions work, or for additional control, you can use the workflow settings in each step.

In each “Review” step within a workflow, you will see two different “Use Visibility Settings For” options – one for the reviewer and one for the reviewee. By default, they are shut off.
Upon checking the box next to either, you will see a warning display – enabling the visibility in the workflow will override the settings in the performance review profile. Simply click “OK”.
Options will display. For each reviewer step, you can control what information the person reviewing would see. For the reviewee (the employee the review is for) you have control over when the comments and ratings are visible to them.
- These visibility settings take effect upon that particular step being created – not upon the step being submitted. For example, if you have a review workflow that goes from Manager 1 to HR, and HR’s Review step has comments and ratings turned on for the reviewee, the employee will now be able to see the comments and ratings supplied by Manager 1 as soon as HR gets the to-do item to review.

Backup Settings and Delegations

There is a backup setting available in the workflow.

This setting lets you do one basic thing:

- Skip a missing manager assignment; if the review is designated to go to Manager 2 for example, and the employee’s profile does not have a manager assigned, you can skip that person assuming they have 0% of the grading assigned to them.
  - Do not choose a backup user for the “Backup User Account” field; in the Action to Skip field, choose “on reviewed” so that the review step for the user in question is skipped entirely
    - Please note that if the next step following this skip step is rejected, it will follow the reject process in the same manner as the review process. For example, if the next step is Finalize and the reject option is enabled to go back to manager 2, and manager 2 was skipped, it will revert back to the step prior to the skipped step.
As of today, you can’t actually assign a back up person despite how it looks. If you insert a person’s name here, it won’t actually do anything.

Delegations

When a backup user isn’t possible or appropriate, you can delegate a performance review step to another user by adding a delegation to the user’s profile. Case use:

A client reviews all staff on May 1^st of each year. They have around 200 managers and some managers may terminate during the review process. This menas that while a Manager 1 and 2 might be assigned, they could be assigned to a terminated person who cannot complete the step. The client would like to know how they can complete the review without having to delete the review, change the manager, and start over.

Find the manager in question under My Employees
In their main tab, go to the Wokflow Delegations section (if the Workflow Dleegations widget does not show up, click on Edit Tabs to add the widget from the Available Windows to the Selcted windows.
In the Delegations window, choose Add New.

This will add a new line:

In the “Delegate to” line, choose the user or group to delegate the todo to
In the workflow type, you must choose the corresponding workflow. For example, if your reviews use a sequential workflow, you must choose the Sequential Performance Review Workflow. If you have a parallel review, choose the parallel workflow. If you use both and need delegations for both, you will need to create two delegations.
- Please note that adding a delegation will delegate ALL workflows for the workflow type chosen.
Choose the from and to settings to determine how long a delegation should be in place
- This information can be changed as needed.

Please note that delegation can be added once the workflow is already in motion – the system will add a to-do to the newly delegated person, while also maintaining a to-do item for the original person.

Requirement and Signature Settings

In each “Review” step, you may control what requirements are turned on for each specific Reviewer

Percent for review – how much of the grade is the person assigned to this step responsible for? Most clients have the immediate supervisor 100% responsible for the grade, but that’s not true of every client.
Responsible for Final Grade and Effects – if the grading method for the review is set to “selected” or “entered”, the system defaults to having the finalizer select or enter the grade on the final step. By checking this box, you are making another step responsible for taking that action; please note only one step may be responsible for the final grade.
Rating Required – person assigned to step must enter ratings on the review before submitting
Entry Comments Required – person assigned to step must enter entry comments into each entry comment field before submitting
General Comments Required – person assigned to step must enter general comments to any general comment section on review prior to submitting
Do not Use Electronic Signature – this shuts off the “Sign as” button on the summary tab.