[Performance Reviews] 2D Assessment Chart

Small Improvements' 2D assessment chart is similar to a traditional 9-box assessment.

The 2D assessment chart provides your HR team with a high-level overview of alignment between managers and their teams. While it’s not necessarily a scientific measurement, the assessment chart can help you to quickly spot outliers and imbalances in how managers assess their teams.

You can enable the graph as you set up your performance review questionnaire. The graph's placement at the top of the questionnaire cannot be changed.

To update the axis labels, you’ll need to click the pencil icon to edit, and then click into the axis labels.

You can also edit the detailed descriptions that appear when a user hovers over an axis label.

To use the 2D graph as a 9-box assessment, our support team can enable an overlay that divides the graph into 9 sections. Contact us at [email protected] if you'd like to try it out.

With this customization, your 2-D graph will look like this:

The question can also be made Confidential if you only want managers to participate in this exercise. The results of any confidential questions are not shared with the reviewee.

Once your cycle has concluded, you can visualize their company’s performance on a single graph by clicking Company Graph on the cycle overview page here:

Use Reviewer View to see where managers have placed their teams; use Reviewee View to see where employees have placed themselves; and use Comparison View to see self- and manager-assigned placements on the same graph for a visual cue of alignment.

Hover your mouse over any icon to increase its size and display the name of the person it represents, and click on an icon to open their review in a pop-up window.

In this example, Stan sees himself as a strong performer, while his manager sees him in quite a different light -- there is clearly some misalignment that needs to be addressed. In contrast, Salma and her manager have placed her in nearly the exact same spot, indicating that they are largely on the same page.

It is not surprising for employees to give themselves stronger ratings than their managers give them: this is perfectly normal. It’s only problematic if the assessments differ wildly. It’s up to you to decide how far apart they can lie before a closer investigation is warranted.

In the sidebar on the right, you can filter manager by manager to get a sense of how closely each manager is aligned with their team. Deselect specific teams and/or individuals, and use the search bar for easier filtering.

It's important to ensure that reviews are consistent across teams. Reading dozens of reviews may not be feasible. But since the manager’s placement of employees on the chart will typically correspond with the sentiment of their reviews, you can use the 2D overview chart to spot high-level trends.

Can you spot whose team got better feedback?

It appears that Mark's team (in green) is consistently rated more generously than Chris's team (in red). In this scenario, your HR team may want to investigate further to ensure that ratings are assigned fairly across teams.

Keep in mind that the presence of a team with suspiciously higher or lower ratings doesn’t in and of itself indicate that there’s a problem with the way their manager rated that team — maybe some other factor caused that team’s ratings to differ. It wouldn’t make sense to simply recalibrate that team’s ratings without figuring out why those people were assessed differently, and working with the managers to solve the issue.

The cycle CSV export will include the coordinates of each reviewee and reviewer's graph placements, with each axis ranging from 0-100 and the center at (50, 50).

HR staff can see manager placements while their assessments are still saved as drafts (even before the manager has shared the assessment with the reviewee). The 2D graph should be analyzed after all reviews have been finalized.

You as an HR staff member should try to encourage the managers to rate performance by similar standards. You don’t have to apply forced ranking to achieve this; often, all it takes is a simple and honest discussion with the managers, showing them how differently ratings varied across teams and clarifying expectations.
​