OpenBlend Solutions

This article will walk you through how to set-up an Evaluate Cycle for Probationary Reviews. To learn more about managing live Probation Evaluate Cycles, click here. 

Evaluate for Probations Overview

OpenBlend's Evaluate Module can support automatic Probationary reviews, based on an employee's start date and your Probation period length. 

OpenBlend will run system checks on a users start date, every day, and automatically apply users to the cycle that fit the criteria.  

You will have a default probation period length in your Evaluate Cycle settings, but you can set custom Probation lengths for individual users. 

For more information on setting a user's start date and custom Probation lengths, please take a look at our user set-up guide. 

Please note, if you would like to use this functionality, and do not already have this enabled, you will need to get in contact with your Customer Success Manager. 

Setting Up the Cycle

Once you have created your Review Template, you can go ahead and set-up the cycle for your Probationary Reviews. 

Within your Admin area, click on "Evaluate Cycles" and then click on the "+ Add Probation Cycle" button, as shown in the screenshot below. 

Set your cycle name, please note that this naming will be visible to your managers and employees as the cycle becomes applicable to them. 

Cycle Settings: Details

Set your cycle settings as applicable. Please note, by default Manager Evaluation is enabled and you can choose from a list of optional settings, each of the settings is described below.

• Do you want employees to complete a Self Evaluation?
  Enable this if you would like to have employees review themselves as part of the cycle
   
• Do you want this cycle to be discussed with employees?
  If Self Evaluation is enabled, this is enabled by default. You can select this option without Self Evaluation, to allow the manager to discuss and publish a manager only review cycle to the employee. 
    
• Manager evaluations need approval (by a reviewer) before they can be discussed
  This setting will put manager evaluations through a review process by an OpenBlend Admin. This setting will stop managers from being able to discuss the cycle with their employees until the review has been approved by an Admin. This could be used for calibration for Pay Reviews, as an example. 
    
• Employee Self Evaluation is hidden from managers until Discussion Session
  By default, once the employee has completed their self-evaluation, this will be visible to the manager during their manager evaluation. To avoid bias, you can use this setting to stop the employee self-evaluations being published to the manager before the conversation.  
    
• Send an email to inform managers and their reports that the cycle has started?
  This setting will send everyone who is applicable, the email notification to let them know when they have a new cycle to complete. If you choose not to check this, you will need to ensure that you email out to your employees and managers to inform them of the cycle. 

Probation Length

In each of the Evaluate Probation Cycles, you will set a default probation length. Simply select the Probation length that applies to your organisation from the dropdown. 

For example, if your organisation's Probation length is 3 months, please select this from the dropdown. If you have multiple Probation lengths, we would recommend that you choose the majority option here. 

Please note, as an Admin, you are able to override this for some users within the user's profile in User Information section. Learn more here. 

Evaluation Length

This field dictates when the Evaluate cycle should be sent to the employee and/or manager. From this field you should select the period of time backwards from the Probation end date, you would like the review to start. 

For example, if you select 1 month, the cycle will be set live for employees/managers 1 month before the Probation end, in this example, it would be pushed out 2 months into the Probationary period. 

" Save & Continue "

Select Review Template
From the dropdown, please select the review template you have created. It is important to double check the questions at this stage, as once the cycle goes live, you cannot change the questions in the Review Template. 

" Save & Continue "

Select Reviewers
If you have the Approval setting on, the individual(s) will be be granted access  and required to review and approve each submission. 

Regardless of wether the approval setting is enabled, the selected Reviewers will be able to export a CSV of all the responses.

" Save & Continue "

Start the cycle! 

Once you have completed all the set-up stages, you can click the blue button at the bottom of the page to set your cycle live. 

Please note, you can only have 1 Probation Cycle live at any one time.