In both Performance Reviews, there are several different question types that you can use to craft the best assessment form for your team.

The questions you ask impact the quality of feedback you receive, so it’s something you should keep in mind when designing a Performance Review questionnaire. Asking the right questions can make the writing process easier and the feedback more meaningful.

Here is an overview of the questions types you can customize for your forms:

By default, responses are limited to 50,000 characters. That’s 7,500-8,000 words, or 15-17 full pages single-spaced. You can adjust that limit at the bottom left of your questionnaire.

If the cycle has already started, proceed with caution when deleting a question. Deleting a question will delete any responses people might have submitted. When adding a new question, add it to the end of the questionnaire if possible. This will keep the original questions in the same order, which is important for comparing answers.

To add or delete questions, click Edit Cycle Settings, then expand the Timeline section.

We recommend finalizing your questionnaire before your cycle is launched to your employees. To remove questions in a new cycle you’re setting up, you can use the Edit icon to remove or re-order the question. Watch the gif below in action!

If your cycle has already begun, we won’t allow you to delete the first question. Doing so can remove responses already entered by employees, skewing your final results.

You’ll need to delete from the bottom of the cycle and go upwards:

You can change the options in multiple-choice, linear scale, checkboxes, dropdown menus, and overall ratings when creating your questionnaire.

Edit questions later on by clicking the pencil icon:

You can add more options or edit or remove what’s there.

You can make any question in a Performance Review cycle mandatory:

When writing the review, your employees can’t share until that question has content.

Add section headings to divide up your questionnaire by theme or topic. This may be useful for having sections on general feedback, objectives-related questions, or a focus on values. You can use headings to include information about your company values, directions for applying ratings, or general instructions.

A free text question lets your employees write qualitative answers to your review and feedback questions. Free text questions often require reflection and take some time to answer. Craft your questions to guide your employees’ writing process.

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Multiple-choice questions allow respondents to select one answer from a list of response options that you define. This format works best for binary questions (e.g., yes/no, true/false), nominal scales (e.g., exceeds expectations, meets expectations, needs improvement), or when you want respondents to choose the option that corresponds most to their opinion.

Linear-scale questions allow respondents to indicate their preferred position on a sliding scale. As an HR admin, you can define the endpoints of the scale to be numerical ratings or nominal ratings. Reviewer responses can make it easy to compare answers and identify gaps between respondents’ perspectives.

Checkboxes allow respondents to select as many answers as they like from a list of predefined responses. This question type is useful for gathering input on topics with multiple applicable answers—for instance, to identify which areas an employee can improve on, competencies they think they excel or lag at, or which learning and development activities would be helpful for an employee.

Dropdown questions are similar to multiple-choice questions, allowing respondents to choose one answer from a list of response options. The difference is that response options are presented in a dropdown menu, which makes this question type ideal for when you need to display a long list of answer choices.

You can enable this for self-assessments, manager assessments, or both.

We offer default rating options but you can edit them by clicking the pencil icon. You can also choose to keep the Overall Rating confidential from the employee (more on that below).

When you edit your Overall Rating scale, we recommend using the largest number to represent the best possible rating. If you use our Performance Review Insights feature, we assume that the largest number is the best performance and analyze your data based on that assumption.

Confidential questions are only visible to managers, and only the manager and HR Admins will see the responses. You can mark any question as confidential as you set up your questionnaire.

This is what the confidential question will look like from the reviewer’s perspective:

You’ll notice that the confidential topics are hidden by default when you print the review. This ensures you can share a print of the review without the confidential questions. If you’d like to create a print including the confidential topics, you can do so in the print view:

When exporting a review as a PDF, you’ll get to choose whether or not you want the confidential topics to be included in the documents:

You can create questionnaire templates for Performance Reviews and 360 Feedback cycles. Go to the cycle overview page to get started:

Click Add New Template, then give your template a name and description.

Tip: Name it something descriptive so you know which is which later on.

You can select any question type that is available for your cycle. In review cycles, you can add the 2D Graph and Overall Ratings and mark questions as Confidential.

When you’re done, save your template.

Your templates are listed with the newest on top, but you can move them around as you need.

You can edit an existing template:

And archive a template you don’t need anymore. Archived templates can be un-archived at any time.

Select the template in the Questionnaire section to add it to your cycle:

Click ‘Customize’ to make changes before the cycle goes live. You can add more questions or edit and delete the existing questions in the template.