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Upward Review - Anonymity

  • September 18, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 27 views
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  • fvdkFollower
  • Follower
  • 3 replies

Hi all!

We’re setting up a performance cycle and for the 1st time we’re going to include an upward review to encourage open and honest feedback about our management team.

Questions we have at the moment:

  • Submission timestamps are visible to managers in anonymous upward reviews? If so, how the system prevent timing-based identification? A manager might correlate submission times with when they know specific team members were working or if the self-evaluation submission is done at the same time
  • What other metadata safeguards are in place to protect reviewer anonymity?

Anyone able to help here? Thanks in advance!!

Best answer by Milan

Hi ​@fvdk , great to hear you’re planning to include upward reviews in your cycle - they can provide valuable perspective and help leaders grow!

To clarify your questions:

  • Confidentiality vs. anonymity: Upward reviews can be configured as confidential. This means the direct manager won’t see the reviewer’s name, but the skip-level manager and HR will. That’s why the setting is called confidentiality settings rather than anonymity.

  • Metadata visibility: Only the submission date and cycle are shown - no reviewer names or timestamps. However, depending on your sharing settings, a manager may infer timing from notification emails.

  • Best practice: To prevent this, configure the cycle so reviews are released in a bundle once the manager submits their review, rather than as they come in. You can find this setting under the Manager review configurations (see attachment). 

Review sharing preference

This setup ensures feedback remains confidential with minimal exposure of metadata, while keeping the process transparent and well-structured.

Let me know if you have other questions.

3 replies

Moe
Community Admin
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  • MoeCommunity Admin
  • Community Admin
  • 324 replies
  • September 22, 2025

Hi ​@fvdk !

Just tagging my colleagues ​@daniel.boon and ​@Milan in case they can help with this 😄

Milan
Community Moderator
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  • MilanCommunity Moderator
  • Community Moderator
  • 16 replies
  • Answer
  • September 23, 2025

Hi ​@fvdk , great to hear you’re planning to include upward reviews in your cycle - they can provide valuable perspective and help leaders grow!

To clarify your questions:

  • Confidentiality vs. anonymity: Upward reviews can be configured as confidential. This means the direct manager won’t see the reviewer’s name, but the skip-level manager and HR will. That’s why the setting is called confidentiality settings rather than anonymity.

  • Metadata visibility: Only the submission date and cycle are shown - no reviewer names or timestamps. However, depending on your sharing settings, a manager may infer timing from notification emails.

  • Best practice: To prevent this, configure the cycle so reviews are released in a bundle once the manager submits their review, rather than as they come in. You can find this setting under the Manager review configurations (see attachment). 

Review sharing preference

This setup ensures feedback remains confidential with minimal exposure of metadata, while keeping the process transparent and well-structured.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Product Manager @ Personio | Performance & Development | Performance Management
F
Follower
  • fvdkFollower
  • Author
  • Follower
  • 3 replies
  • September 23, 2025

Hi ​@Milan ! 

Thank you for your help and guidance! Much clear now :)


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