Recurring 1-to-1s, goals and recognition that feed simple, signed-off reviews - with 360s and your own competency framework when you need them, and an ACAS-aligned improvement-plan trail with PDFs when it matters. All on the same employee record you recruit, train and schedule on. Not an enterprise OKR project nobody finishes.
| Date | Type | Rating | Status | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Feb 26 | ANNUAL | 3.0/5 | Completed | S. Owens | |
| 15 Aug 25 | MID-YEAR | 3.4/5 | Completed | S. Owens | |
| 22 Mar 22 | PROBATION | 4.0/5 | Completed | L. Ash |
A Word-document annual review nobody opens until January. A free Lattice or 15Five trial that never finished its rollout. "I'll have a chat with them" management that nobody writes down. The annual review opens every January, the manager promises themselves they'll do better next time, and by March nobody has run a single 1-to-1. Each one costs an unsupportable dismissal where the question is "what evidence led to this?", a high-performer who left because nobody told them they were valued, a capability conversation that escalated to a disciplinary because no record of support existed. Each disappears when 1-to-1s auto-schedule, reviews build from what already happened, and the record sits on the same employee profile as HR, Training and the rota.
Cost:A blank page every January, ratings nobody can defend, and a "development plan" forgotten by February.
Fixed:A configurable review template and a cycle that runs on schedule, pre-filled from a year of 1-to-1s, goals and recognition - so the review is a summary of what already happened, not an annual invention.
Cost:Months with no manager conversation, problems found late, and good people leaving because nobody asked.
Fixed:A recurring 1-to-1 schedule per employee - weekly to quarterly - generated automatically, with an agenda, notes, private notes and action items, and an overdue alert when one slips.
Cost:A great year reduced to what the manager can remember in the last week, and feedback that's all correction and no credit.
Fixed:Continuous feedback - praise, constructive, observation - captured the moment it happens, categorised, and linked into the review so the appraisal is balanced and evidenced.
Cost:A dismissal you can't defend, no record of support offered, and a tribunal you should have won.
Fixed:An ACAS-aligned performance improvement plan - objectives, support, a meeting frequency, dated checkpoints, an extension if needed and a recorded outcome with who decided it - exported to PDF, optionally linked to the disciplinary record.
Cost:No history when the next manager takes over, no proof the employee ever saw the rating, and disputes you can't answer.
Fixed:Every review on the employee's record with self-assessment, manager assessment, a second-reviewer where needed, dual sign-off with timestamps and a PDF - and full reassignment when a manager moves on.
Cost:Probation reviews missed, annual cycles drifting, and compliance you can't evidence to an owner or an auditor.
Fixed:A review cycle launched across the business or a group with reminders and a live view of who's done and who's outstanding - overdue and pending sign-off surfaced, not chased by spreadsheet.
Cost:No progress, no accountability, and "objectives" that were theatre for the appraisal.
Fixed:Goals with SMART fields, a progress history, dated checkpoints, a status, and a link back to the review or the competency they came from - tracked between reviews, not just at them.
Cost:A manager's blind spot becomes the employee's record, and supervisors are never assessed by the people they lead.
Fixed:360-degree feedback - invite peers, reports and managers, optionally anonymous, aggregated into a report - so the picture is rounded, not one person's opinion.
AssistantManagerHQ Performance is two things at once. It is light-touch enough that managers actually use it - recurring 1-to-1s that generate themselves, goals that get tracked, recognition captured as it happens, and a simple review that's a summary, not a blank page. And it is defensible when it has to be - self and manager assessment, a second reviewer, dual sign-off with timestamps, review and PIP PDFs, and an ACAS-aligned improvement-plan trail. It runs on the same employee record you recruit, train and schedule on, so it's part of the operation, not a separate HR project nobody finishes.
| A. Fairweather | Done |
| J. Patel | Scheduled |
| M. Jenkins | Overdue |
Build a review template and scale, schedule the cycle, set up recurring 1-to-1s, and define your competency framework - once.
1-to-1s generate on cadence with agendas and actions; managers log praise and constructive feedback as it happens; goals are tracked between reviews.
Self and manager assessment pre-filled from the year, a second reviewer where needed, dual sign-off and a PDF on the record.
Launch a 360 for a fuller picture, or an ACAS-aligned PIP with checkpoints and a recorded outcome - all on the same record.
Configurable scales and sections; cycles launched business- or group-wide with reminders.
Self-assessment, manager assessment and a second reviewer where needed.
Employee and manager sign-off with timestamps, and a review PDF on the record.
Weekly to quarterly schedules generated automatically, with overdue alerts.
Pre-meeting agenda, discussion notes, private notes and tracked action items.
SMART fields, a progress history, status, and links to reviews or competencies.
Praise, constructive and observation feedback, categorised and review-linked.
Define your own competencies, assess employees, see a team heatmap.
Invite peers, reports and managers; optional anonymity; aggregated report.
Objectives, support, checkpoints, extension, recorded outcome and PDF.
Rating distribution, 360 participation, competency heatmap, goal completion, 1-to-1 cadence.
Managers see their own people; reassign reviews, 1-to-1s and PIPs in bulk.
Skim the themes on the left, or scroll the full set. Each capability surfaces the specific frustration it removes and a real-world use case.
Build the review your business actually does - choose the rating scale, define the sections, decide whether it includes a manager assessment - and use it for annual, probation, mid-year, quarterly, project or custom reviews. Launch it as a cycle across the whole business or a single group, with a window and reminders, and watch a live count of who's completed, who's overdue and who's pending sign-off. The appraisal stops being a date everyone misses.
The employee completes their self-assessment, the manager completes theirs, a second reviewer (a skip-level or HR) can be added where it matters, and both employee and manager sign off with a timestamp. Strengths, areas for improvement and agreed objectives are captured, attachments are stored, and the whole thing exports to a PDF. When a rating is challenged a year later, the answer is a signed document, not a memory - and when a manager leaves, every review reassigns in bulk.
Set a 1-to-1 schedule per employee - weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly, with a preferred day, time and duration - and meetings are generated automatically, in bulk, for everyone who should have one. Each meeting carries a pre-meeting agenda, discussion notes, manager-private notes the employee never sees, and action items with a follow-up date. When one slips it's flagged overdue on the dashboard. The conversation that prevents most people problems finally happens on a cadence, not when there's a crisis.
Set goals with real SMART fields - success criteria, a target and current value, a category, a priority and dates - and record progress updates over time with a status (on track, at risk, behind) and notes, not just a tick at the next appraisal. A goal can carry a link back to the review it was agreed in or the competency gap it's meant to close, so you can answer "is this development actually working?".
Capture feedback the moment it happens - praise, constructive, observation or a manager note - categorised by what it was about (teamwork, initiative, quality, customer service, leadership, punctuality), and optionally linked to a specific review. By appraisal time the manager isn't staring at a blank page trying to remember the year; the evidence is already there, and it's balanced because the good was captured too.
Define the competencies your roles actually need as your own framework - not a rigid template imposed on a pub or a care home - and assess an employee against it on a date, by an named assessor, with the result available to feed into a review. See where the team is strong and weak on a competency heatmap. A development goal can be aimed directly at a competency that scored low, so growth is targeted rather than generic.
When one manager's view isn't enough - a supervisor, a team lead, someone whose impact is sideways and downward - launch a 360: invite peers, direct reports, managers and external respondents, each tagged by relationship, with anonymity on by default so people answer honestly. Responses are collected against a due date and aggregated into a report you can tie to the formal review. The blind spot stops being the record.
When support is needed, a performance improvement plan does it properly: a reason, objectives, the support being offered, a meeting frequency, a start and end date, and dated checkpoints where progress is recorded by the manager and the employee. It can be extended with a reason, the outcome is recorded with who decided it and when, and the whole plan exports to a PDF. Where formal action follows it can be linked to the disciplinary record for one audit trail. Capability is handled fairly - and defensibly.
The reports a board or an owner asks for: rating distribution across the business with bands, 360 participation against target, a competency heatmap by team, goal-completion trend over a rolling window, and 1-to-1 cadence adherence by manager - each exportable to CSV, Excel or PDF. You manage performance by evidence, and you can prove the process ran.
Performance runs on the same employee record as HR, Recruitment, Training and Scheduling - the person you hired, the person on the rota and the person being reviewed are one record, scoped to the business and to the manager's own people. It is also deliberately kept separate from absence: under UK practice capability and conduct are not attendance, so Bradford Factor scoring lives in its own module and a PIP references the disciplinary record only where formal action genuinely follows. Appraisals, the new-starter journey and absence each have their own module - Performance does performance, on the shared record.
Answers from our UK-based onboarding team. Need something not covered? Book a walkthrough →