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.

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.

The questionnaire will include a Pre-Calibrated Overall Rating for managers. This allows your managers to enter their initial rating for employees. Once the HR team has analyzed the Overall Ratings entered by the managers, they can make adjustments, and finalize the Overall Ratings. More on that below.

You can disable the pre-calibrated rating if you prefer. Click the Pencil icon to edit:

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.

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.

When writing the review, the manager will see two Overall Rating fields. Only the Pre-Calibrated Rating is editable before the ‘Deadline for reviewers to write’.

You’ll find the Overall Ratings listed in the Calibration tab:

You can sort this list by reviewee, by reviewer, by self-rating, or by the Pre- and Post-Calibrated Rating. This allows you to see how managers are rating their employees, and who is giving the highest and lowest ratings.

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!

You can adjust the rating right from the Calibration tab. This works great if you have a small cycle.

If you have a lot of participants, it’s easier to use the Import option. You can use the file you exported!

Enter the new rating in the Reviewer Overall Rating column and save.

Click the Import Calibration button then drop and drag your file.

Review the information on the confirmation screen before clicking the “Change Ratings” button. The confirmation screen tells you how many ratings will change, how many will remain the same, and whether there are any issues with the imported ratings. Confirm twice to complete the import.

Note that the import file will overwrite any adjustments you made manually. After the file is imported, you can make further manual adjustments.

There are certain conditions that prevent you from adding a final, calibrated rating.

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.

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