Performance¶

The Performance application runs the conversation a company has with its people about how work is going: what was agreed, what happened, what it was worth and what comes next. It covers the whole cycle — objectives and their check-ins, a structured questionnaire, a self-assessment and a manager assessment, an optional multi-rater round, a rating that is calibrated before it is released, the employee’s own written reply, a development plan that outlives the review, and a retention period after which the review is proposed for deletion.

It is built for a small or mid-sized company: one HR officer, line managers who conduct two or three reviews a year each, and employees who should be able to read their own review without asking anybody’s permission — and should never be able to read anybody else’s.

Important

A performance review is one of the most sensitive records a company keeps about a person. The confidentiality architecture is not an option you switch on: it is how the data is laid out. Read Confidentiality before you launch a real cycle, and before you grant anybody the Officer access level.

The five modules¶

The application is a family of five modules. Installing Performance Reviews installs the first two; the other three are optional and can be added at any time.

Module	What it adds
Performance Reviews (`hr_review`)	The application itself: rating scales, questionnaires, review cycles, the review packet, the confidential assessment, sign-off, reminders and retention.
Objectives (`hr_objective`)	Objectives, key results and development goals with a real measurement and dated check-ins. Installed with the application, and usable on its own.
Multi-rater Reviews (360) (`hr_review_360`)	Peer, direct report, skip-level and outside raters, nomination and approval, the anonymity threshold and the portal form outside raters answer on.
Review Competencies (`hr_review_competency`)	A competency framework over Odoo’s skills: behavioural anchors, a per-job requirement matrix, gap analysis and a non-destructive write-back.
Hungary - Performance Reviews (`l10n_hu_hr_review`)	Trial-period (próbaidő) reviews counted from the contract, the probation decision record and its printed Hungarian document, and Hungarian master data.

Note

Technical names, for whoever installs them: hr_review (the application, listed as Performance Reviews), hr_objective, hr_review_360, hr_review_competency and l10n_hu_hr_review. The application appears in the apps switcher as Performance.

Who does what¶

Three access levels sit in the Performance category of a user’s access rights, each one implying the one above it. Being in a group says what a person may do; the record rules decide whose records they may do it to.

Access level	Who it is for	What it allows
(none)	Every employee	Read their own review, answer their own questions, acknowledge or comment on a review that has been shared with them, and run their own objectives.
Reviewer	Line managers	Everything above, plus conducting the reviews of the people who report to them: the manager assessment, the rating, the notes, the panel and the development plan of their own reviews only.
Officer	HR	Runs and sees every review in the companies they are allowed to work in: cycles, launches, reassignment, legal hold, unlocking and the purge.
Administrator	Whoever sets the system up	Everything above, plus the configuration: rating scales, questionnaires, reminder templates and retention.

Important

Reviewer is not a job title, it is an access level. A line manager who has it still only reaches the reviews of the people whose reviews name them as reviewer. Granting Officer to a line manager gives them every review in the company, including their own manager’s — that is almost never what is wanted.

Setting it up the first time¶

The order matters: a cycle cannot be launched on a questionnaire that has not been released, and a questionnaire cannot be released without a rating scale.

Install the application. Go to Apps, search for Performance Reviews and install it. Add Multi-rater Reviews (360), Review Competencies and, in Hungary, Hungary - Performance Reviews if you need them.
Grant access rights. In Settings ‣ Users & Companies ‣ Users, give yourself Administrator in the Performance category, give HR Officer, and give the line managers Reviewer. Everybody else needs nothing: a plain internal user already reaches their own review and their own objectives.
Create a rating scale. No scale is shipped on purpose — see Configuration. Either write your own at Performance ‣ Configuration ‣ Rating Scales, or let Performance ‣ Configuration ‣ Starter Rating Scale write a five-level one for you to rename and reword. The Hungarian pack ships a Hungarian scale with behavioural descriptions.
Build a questionnaire under Performance ‣ Configuration ‣ Questionnaires, then click Release. A released questionnaire is frozen; that is what keeps the answers stored under it meaningful.
Set the company options. In Settings ‣ Employees, in the Performance Reviews block, set the default questionnaire and scale, the retention period, and — if you want them — the automatic review intervals.
Check that the employees have a manager. A review needs somebody to conduct it. An employee with no manager on their employee record is reported and skipped when a cycle is launched, never silently included.
Launch a first cycle from Performance ‣ Cycles ‣ Review Cycles. The launch shows you exactly who is in scope and who is being skipped, before anything is created.

Tip

Run the first cycle on one department. The launch preview, the reminder schedule and the sign-off step are all easier to judge on twenty reviews than on two hundred.

What the application deliberately refuses to do¶

Several of these will look like missing features until you need them. They are decisions, and each one is explained where it applies.

A rating scale that is already in use cannot be re-valued. Changing what “3” is worth would silently rewrite every rating ever given on it. Create a new version instead.
A released questionnaire cannot be restructured. Answers were given under its wording.
A multi-rater round that cannot keep its anonymity promise is refused at launch, not at release time — by release time people have already answered under the promise. See Multi-rater (360) reviews.
Retention is proposed, never executed automatically. There is no cron that deletes reviews. A person runs a dry run, reads what it lists, and confirms. See Confidentiality.
A review under legal hold is never purged and never deleted, whatever its retention date says.
A trial-period termination records the fact, not a justification. See Trial-period reviews in Hungary.
The employee’s disagreement is recorded in their own words. Sign-off is not a checkbox that says the employee agrees; it is a record that they were shown the review, with room for what they think of it.