A Review Cycle That Actually Closes
Annual reviews rarely fail on the form. They fail because nobody knows whose turn it is, the manager’s rating leaks before the employee has written a word, and the round never formally ends. How AWRA runs a review cycle from draft to close, who reviews whom, what goals do, and why closing a cycle locks it.
Ask an HR manager in March how last year’s reviews went and the honest answer is usually a spreadsheet. Forty rows, a column per step, half the cells green. Eleven managers have not started. Three employees say they never saw a self-review form. Two reviews were finished and then rewritten after a conversation that went badly. Nobody can say when the round ended, because it never did.
None of that is a problem with the review form. A form is easy. The hard part is the round around it: who is in scope, whose turn it is on each review, what the employee may see and when, what happens to the reviews that are still open on the deadline, and whether a finished review can be changed afterwards. That is what a review cycle is for, and it is what this post is about.
A cycle has three states, and the last one is a lock
HR creates a cycle with a name, the period it covers, a rating scale, optional due dates and the goals everyone starts with. It then moves through three states, and each one changes what is possible.
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Draft
The cycle exists and nobody has been asked anything. Nothing reaches an employee or a manager. This is the moment to check that every employee has the right line manager on their record, because that decides who reviews whom.
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Open
Opening creates one review for every employee in scope — everyone active or on probation, or one department — each with the starting goals, and tells each person whose turn it is. Someone hired or moved into the department later is brought in with a single action while the cycle is open.
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Closed
Closing locks the cycle. Finished reviews stay as they are. Any review still in progress is marked Not completed, and no review in a closed cycle can be edited afterwards: no rating, no goal, no reviewer. The one thing still possible is the employee acknowledging a review that was completed before the close.
That last step is the one most review processes are missing. Without it, a round drifts: a manager finishes a review in May for a year that ended in December, and a rating that was agreed gets quietly revised after a dispute. A cycle that closes gives HR a date on which the record of the year is fixed, and a clear list of the reviews that did not happen — which is information in its own right.
Chase before you close
Closing on the due date while managers are still mid-review locks their reviews as not completed. The cycle page shows how many reviews are at each stage across the whole cycle, so close when the count of open ones is what you expect, not when the calendar says so.
Who reviews whom, decided before anyone is asked
When the cycle opens, each review is given a reviewer. It is the employee’s line manager, taken from their employee record, provided the manager has an active login. If there is no manager, or the manager’s login is inactive, the review goes to the HR team. And if the manager on the record turns out to be the employee themselves — it happens with founders and department heads — the review goes to HR rather than letting anyone review themselves.
The line manager needs no HR permission to do this. Being the review’s reviewer is the check, so a manager sees and rates the reviews assigned to them and nobody else’s, without being handed access to the rest of HR. People with the permission to manage reviews can act as reviewer on any review, and can hand one to someone else when a manager leaves or changes — never to the employee it is about, and only to an active user in the workspace. The new reviewer is told.
| Who | What they can do |
|---|---|
| The employee | Rate themselves against each goal, write a summary, submit, then read the completed review and acknowledge it with a response |
| The reviewer | Edit goals, rate each goal, give the overall rating and a summary, complete the review, move a stuck self-review on |
| HR, managing reviews | Create, open and close cycles, add people, act as reviewer on any review, reassign reviewers |
| HR, viewing reviews | Read every review, including the reviewer’s ratings, without changing anything |
Goals, and why a rated goal stays
A review is rated against goals. The cycle sets the ones everyone starts with, each with a weight — written on the cycle as one goal per line, with a weight after a bar, so a goal that matters twice as much counts twice. On each review, the reviewer can then add goals specific to that person, reword them, reweight them or remove them, up to thirty in all.
One rule protects the employee. Once they have submitted their self-review, a goal they rated cannot be removed, only reworded. Deleting it would silently delete their rating with it, and a review where the employee’s own assessment disappeared is not one they can be asked to sign off. A goal the reviewer adds after the self-review is marked as such on both sides, so it is clear why it carries no self-rating.
When the reviewer rates, the page shows the weighted average of their goal ratings as a guide. It does not set the overall rating. The overall rating, on the cycle’s scale of 3, 4, 5 or 10, is the reviewer’s judgement, and the page says so. A formula that decides someone’s rating is a formula that gets argued with; a judgement beside a visible average can be explained.
The average is the evidence. The rating is the decision. Keeping them apart is what lets a reviewer defend the second with the first.
The self-review, written before the manager’s rating is visible
An employee who can reach their reviews starts first. They rate themselves on every goal, add comments and a summary of the period, and submit. Their work is saved as they go, so a half-written self-review survives a closed browser, and submitting is refused until every goal has a rating. The reviewer is told the moment it is in.
There are three ways to reach it: My Reviews on the web for staff with a login, the same screen in the mobile app, and the Reviews section of the no-login employee portal, for staff who have a portal link and a PIN but no account. An employee with none of those does not start with a self-review they could never submit; their review goes straight to the reviewer.
The reviewer cannot complete a review while the self-review is still pending. If one is holding things up — someone on leave, someone who will not engage — the reviewer or HR can move the review on without it, and the review records who skipped it and when. The employee cannot add one afterwards.
Why the order matters
The employee never sees the reviewer’s ratings until the review is complete. A self-review written after seeing the manager’s numbers is a reaction to them. Written first, it is the employee’s own account of the period, and the gaps between the two columns are where the useful conversation is.
Completion, acknowledgement and the response
The reviewer rates each goal with an optional comment, gives the overall rating and a summary, and completes the review. They can save a draft first; completing it needs an overall rating within the scale. The review then records who completed it and when, and the employee is told it is ready to read.
The employee sees both columns side by side for the first time — their own ratings and the reviewer’s — with the overall rating and the reviewer’s summary. They acknowledge it, once, and can add a response of their own. The response sits on the review for HR and the reviewer to read. Acknowledging says the employee has seen it; it does not say they agree, and the response is where they say whether they do.
A completed review cannot be changed. Neither the reviewer nor HR can reopen it and revise the rating, which is the point: the version the employee read and responded to is the version that stays.
Whose turn is it?
Every review shows its stage — awaiting self-review, awaiting reviewer, completed or not completed — and the reviewer board lists only the open reviews assigned to the person looking at it — plus, for HR, the ones assigned to the HR team. Overdue steps chase themselves: once a due date has passed, whoever the review is waiting on is reminded, at most once every three days per review, until the step is done or the cycle closes. The reminder goes to the person who has the next move, not to everyone.
Before you open a cycle
- Every employee in scope has the right line manager on their record, and that manager has an active login.
- Staff without a login have a live portal link if you want them to self-review.
- Both due dates are set. They are what the reminders measure against.
- The starting goals are weighted the way you mean them, and managers know they can add their own.
- Managers know their rating stays hidden until they complete the review, and that completed means final.
The full screen-by-screen guide is in the help centre article on performance reviews.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Review cycles from draft to open to closed, with a period, a rating scale of 3, 4, 5 or 10, optional due dates, a department scope and weighted starting goals.
- One review per employee in scope, created when the cycle opens, with people added later while it is open.
- The line manager as reviewer, with no HR permission needed, falling back to HR when there is no active manager, and nobody reviewing themselves.
- Reassignment by HR to any other active user, with the new reviewer notified.
- Goals per review, up to thirty, weighted, editable by the reviewer, with a rated goal protected from removal after the self-review.
- A self-review saved as a draft and submitted only when every goal is rated, on the web, in the mobile app and in the no-login employee portal.
- The reviewer’s ratings hidden from the employee until completion, with a weighted average shown to the reviewer as a guide to the overall rating.
- Acknowledgement with a response, once, by the employee.
- Overdue reminders to whoever the review is waiting on, at most every three days, and a cycle that locks when it closes.
More we can add to your workspace
- Feedback from peers and direct reports alongside the manager’s, for a 360-degree review.
- Calibration across reviewers, comparing the spread of ratings by manager before reviews are completed.
- A ratings report for the whole cycle, and each employee’s ratings across past cycles on one page.
- A printable PDF of a completed review, for the personnel file.
- Editing a cycle while it is still a draft, and deleting one that was created by mistake.
- Reopening a completed review or a closed cycle, with a reason recorded and both versions kept.
- Goals that run between cycles, set at the start of the year and carried into the review.
- The reviewer’s side in the mobile app, so a manager can rate and complete a review from a phone.
- A signed acknowledgement, with the employee’s signature captured on the completed review.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not decide anyone’s rating. The weighted average is shown as a guide, and the overall rating is always the reviewer’s judgement.
- We do not link a rating to pay or promotion automatically. What a rating means for someone’s salary is a decision for your organization, made by people.
The cycle ratings report and calibration read reviews that already exist and are the natural first pieces; we would quote them together.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsFive questions for whoever runs your reviews
When does last year’s review round end?
What you will probably hear
When everyone has finished.
How to read it
Then it does not end. A round needs a close date after which the unfinished reviews are recorded as not done, rather than finished late and back-dated in everyone’s memory.
Can the employee see the manager’s rating before writing their self-review?
What you will probably hear
They do not usually look.
How to read it
If they can, the self-review is a reply. Hidden until completion is the only version where the two assessments are independent.
Can a finished review be changed?
What you will probably hear
Only by HR.
How to read it
Ask whether the employee is told and whether the old version is kept. A rating that can be revised after the conversation is not the rating the employee responded to.
Who reviews a department head whose manager is themselves?
What you will probably hear
Nobody has thought about it.
How to read it
A system that assigns reviewers from the org chart has to handle the top of the chart. Falling back to HR is one answer; leaving the review unassigned is the common one.
Do line managers need HR access to review their team?
What you will probably hear
Yes, a reviewer role.
How to read it
A role broad enough to open reviews is often broad enough to read everyone’s. Being the assigned reviewer as the only check keeps a manager inside their own team.
The short version
A review cycle in AWRA is a draft until HR opens it, creates one review per employee in scope when it opens, and locks when it closes, marking whatever was unfinished as not completed. The line manager reviews without needing HR access, HR covers anyone without one, and nobody reviews themselves. Goals are weighted, and a goal the employee rated cannot be deleted from under them. The employee writes their self-review before they can see the manager’s ratings, reads both columns together once the review is complete, and acknowledges it with a response of their own. Set the managers and the due dates before you open it, and chase before you close it.
See HR in AWRA OpsHub
Employee records and line managers, review cycles with weighted goals, self-service for staff with and without a login, and payroll on the same record.
Explore HRFrequently asked questions
How does a performance review cycle work in AWRA OpsHub?
HR creates a cycle as a draft with a period, a rating scale, optional due dates and starting goals. Opening it creates one review for every active or probation employee in scope. Closing it locks the cycle, and any review still in progress is marked Not completed.
Who reviews each employee?
Their line manager from the employee record, when that manager has an active login and is not the employee. Otherwise the review goes to the HR team. HR can reassign a review to any other active user.
Do line managers need an HR permission to review their team?
No. Being the assigned reviewer is the check, so a manager can rate the reviews assigned to them without access to the rest of HR.
Can the employee see the manager’s rating before writing their self-review?
No. The reviewer’s ratings are hidden from the employee until the review is completed. The employee sees both columns together only after that.
Can staff without a login do a self-review?
Yes, if they have a live link to the no-login employee portal, which has a Reviews section. Staff with neither a login nor a portal link skip the self-review and go straight to their reviewer.
Can a completed review be changed?
No. Once the reviewer completes a review its ratings and summary are final, and once a cycle is closed no review in it can be edited. The employee acknowledges the completed review once and can add a response.
How are goal weights used?
Each goal has a weight from 1 to 10. The reviewer sees the weighted average of their goal ratings as a guide, but the overall rating is their own judgement on the cycle’s scale.
