As of February 2026, the pre-calibrated rating is recorded as a state of the overall rating, rather than as a separate second rating.
If your calibration cycle was created before February 2026, managers will still see the pre-calibrated and overall ratings as separate questions on their review form. Documentation for the original settings is available here.
When using performance ratings for employees, it’s important to apply consistent standards across the organization. A common practice to achieve this is to calibrate and adjust ratings based on conversations between different managers and HR. Small Improvements gives you a few ways to handle this process.
Creating a Calibration Review
You’ll select the Calibration option when starting a new review cycle:
The setup of cycle participants, naming, and the sharing process are the same as in a regular cycle.
Rating configuration
In calibration cycles, the system typically tracks two versions of the rating: the initial pre-calibrated submission from the manager and the final calibrated version.
We know that every company handles calibration differently, so we’ve also made it possible to disable that distinction by unchecking Record Reviewer’s pre-calibrated rating submission. When disabled, the overall rating is treated as a single value that can optionally be updated by admins, but does not require a separate calibration submission before sharing. This is best for teams whose ratings rarely change and who prefer a simplified UI without status tags or a detailed version history.
Dates in a Calibration Review
In a Calibration Review, you restrict the date from which the manager can share their side of the review, and also when the overall ratings can be locked down. This allows you time to evaluate the managers’ reviews to ensure they conform to company standards.
Cycle Starts: The first day people can begin working on their assessments. You can set this for a date in the future and have the kick-off email sent automatically.
Deadline for reviewees: The last date for employees to share their self-assessment. This is the same as in a non-calibration cycle.
The Grace Period is an optional extension for employees to grant more time, not shown as a date to employees directly.Deadline for reviewers to write: The last date reviewers can add or edit content in their assessments.
If you are using the “Finished Writing” indicator, set up in the Sharing Process section, you can choose to notify the reviewees’ indirect managers, the HR team, or both.Calibration Period: This is the time after the deadline to write content and before the first date that managers can share. HR Admins evaluate the reviewers’ content during this period and make suggestions or adjustments.
You can choose to allow managers to adjust the overall rating during this period or lock that down as well.
The Calibration Period begins immediately after the deadline for reviewers and extends until the Sharing period begins. You can't add gaps in the dates in your Timeline.
Reviewers share and revision: When the calibration period is over, your managers can share their assessments. You can also allow them to edit the content of their reviews and change the overall ratings for their employees.
The HR team can update the overall ratings in bulk (see below). If you are doing so, you may want to disable the manager’s ability to edit the overall ratings during this time.
The Grace Period is an optional extension for employees to grant more time, not shown as a date to employees directly.
Everyone should sign by: This date applies to both reviewers and reviewees. It’s the deadline for signing their reviews.
Note that the time set in these deadlines is the default end of the business day. You can adjust that by clicking Settings > Date and Time.
What the manager sees
The overall rating includes a status tag indicating to managers whether it has been calibrated. The status tag is only visible to the review writer; the employee being reviewed will not see that their rating was calibrated once the review is shared.
The option to share a review will be disabled until after the calibration period determined in your cycle timeline, but employees can indicate they've finished writing by checking Finished Writing.
Analyzing and Calibrating Ratings
Admins can calibrate ratings from the Calibration tab in their Review cycle:
Calibrated ratings can be added individually, or imported via spreadsheet if you have a lot of participants or if calibration meetings take place outside Small improvements.
Use the “Export for Calibration” button to create a CSV file to analyze in a spreadsheet program. This works just like the cycle export, which means you can filter for a specific department, team, location, or manager.
You can also filter for specific columns. The settings above will create a file limited to the employee’s name and email, the reviewer’s name, and both the Pre-Calibrated and Overall Rating.
You can use the exported file to update the Calibrated Ratings through import, so do include both Overall Rating fields.
If you’d like to sort by the reviewee’s gender, department, location, etc, go ahead and include those columns.
Note that large exports can take some time to compile!
To import ratings, just make sure your spreadsheets includes an updated overall rating and upload the file.
Limitations to calibration updates
There are certain conditions that prevent you from adding a final, calibrated rating.
Hierarchy in Rating Assignment: You cannot adjust the ratings of someone in your management chain. You also cannot adjust your own manager-assigned overall rating.
Signed reviews: When a review has been signed by either party, you cannot change the Overall Rating. Revoke the signatures to proceed.
Timeline constraints: If your Timeline does not allow managers to update Overall Ratings, an HR Admin cannot adjust the rating for their reports once the calibration period begins.
Workaround with Second HR Admin: Have an additional HR Admin to perform calibration tasks for direct reports when needed. This ensures adherence to platform guidelines and facilitates a fair review process.
Templates for importing ratings
If you didn’t make an export of your cycle, you can use one of these template files to update Calibrated Rating. You’ll just need to fill in the employee’s email address and the new rating.