Performance
Goals, KPIs, competencies and continuous review cycles.
Performance gives the organisation one consistent, repeatable way to measure and discuss how people are doing, instead of an ad-hoc form circulated once a year. It brings appraisal cycles, individual reviews, a KPI library and a competency framework together in a single module, drawing its people from the same employee directory as the rest of Nexa People.
At its centre is the review record: an employee, an optional reviewer, a named period, a rating on a five-point scale and a written summary of outcomes and feedback. Each review moves through a deliberate draft, submitted and finalised lifecycle, and the server enforces every step — a review cannot skip a stage, and it cannot be finalised without a rating.
Around the reviews sit the structures that make appraisals comparable. Appraisal cycles set the rhythm — annual, half-yearly, quarterly or probation — and opening one announces it to the whole organisation. The KPI library records each person's indicators along classic balanced-scorecard lines with targets, weightages and periods, while the competency library keeps a shared vocabulary of the behaviours and skills appraisals refer to.
Access follows the same form-level permission matrix as everything else in Nexa People. HR administrators manage cycles and configuration, tenant roles see the module only when their role template grants it, and employees never encounter it unless they have been given a specific HR-side form.
How Performance works
Appraisal cycles set the rhythm
A cycle is created with a name, a type — Annual, Half-Yearly, Quarterly or Probation — and optional from and to dates, and it starts life as a draft. The cycles list shows each one with its type, date range, workflow status and the action available next, so the state of every cycle is visible at a glance.
Cycles follow a strict draft, active, closed workflow. Activate opens a draft cycle; Close ends an active one; and the server refuses any transition out of order, returning a conflict rather than quietly accepting it. Because a cycle belongs to everyone rather than one person, opening or closing it raises an in-app notification fanned out across the whole organisation — nobody has to be told separately that appraisal season has started.
A review from draft to finalised
The New review dialog opens a review for an employee chosen from the directory, with an optional reviewer picked the same way, a free-text period label such as 2026-H1, an optional rating from one to five and a summary of key outcomes and feedback. Every review starts as a draft.
The appraisals table lists each review with the employee's name, period, rating out of five, summary and a colour-coded status badge, and the action column always shows the one step available: Submit moves a draft on, Finalize completes a submitted review. Ratings display as a score out of five, and a rating or summary not yet entered shows as a quiet dash rather than a blank. The rules live on the server, not just in the interface — only drafts can be submitted, only submitted reviews can be finalised, and a review with no rating is rejected at finalisation until one is recorded.
A KPI library, kept per employee
Each KPI is assigned to an employee and records the indicator itself, a perspective drawn from the four balanced-scorecard perspectives — Financial, Customer, Internal Process and Learning & Growth — a target, a weightage percentage and the period it covers. Status tracks the outcome: active while in play, then achieved or missed.
The library is a working list, not a static one. KPIs are added, edited and deleted from the same table, with a confirmation before anything is removed, and the employee column shows names resolved from the directory rather than bare identifiers.
Competencies as a shared vocabulary
The competency library holds the behaviours and skills your appraisals refer to, each with a category — Core, Leadership, Technical or Behavioural — a free-text description, and an active or inactive status so retired competencies drop out of use without being lost.
Keeping the definitions in one maintained list means every reviewer is describing the same thing when a competency comes up, rather than each department inventing its own wording.
Settings that hold your conventions
The settings page records how your organisation runs appraisals. General settings cover the appraisal side — a rating scale of 1–5, 1–10 or 1–100, whether self-appraisal is enabled, and whether reviewer approval is required — and the cycle side, with a default cycle of annual, half-yearly or quarterly and an auto-close-on-end-date preference.
Two further tabs maintain named lists: Appraisal Templates, for the review formats your organisation uses, and Rating Labels, so a score can carry a meaning such as Exceeds Expectations rather than a bare number. Everything is stored in your organisation's settings and saved in a single update, so the whole configuration lives in one place and survives in one place.
Who can see and do what
Performance appears in the navigation only for organisation roles whose role template grants at least one form in the Performance module — untick the whole module in the Role Templates grid and the route disappears for that role, with direct URL access held to the same rule. Employees are confined to their self-service surface unless an HR-side Performance form has been explicitly granted to them.
The permission catalogue breaks the module into individual forms — Reviews, Evaluations, KPI Library, Review Category, Performance Approval, Performance Settings and Performance Setup among them — so access can be granted one form at a time rather than all or nothing. Every API call resolves the organisation from the caller's login, keeping each tenant's records strictly its own.
Features
Cycles with a real lifecycle
Appraisal cycles are named, typed and dated, and move through a draft, active, closed workflow with the next action always one click away. The server rejects out-of-order transitions, so a closed cycle stays closed and nothing activates twice.
Organisation-wide announcements
Opening or closing a cycle fans an in-app notification out to the whole organisation, filed under the performance category. Everyone learns the cycle has started from the system itself, not from a forwarded email.
A guarded review workflow
Reviews move draft to submitted to finalised, and each step is enforced on the server. Finalising demands a rating — a review can never be closed off as an empty form — and finalised reviews show a clear status badge in the list.
Balanced-scorecard KPIs
Each employee's indicators carry one of four perspectives — Financial, Customer, Internal Process, Learning & Growth — plus a target, a weightage percentage and a period. Status moves from active to achieved or missed, so the library records outcomes as well as intentions.
A maintained competency framework
Competencies are categorised as Core, Leadership, Technical or Behavioural, each with its own description. Marking one inactive retires it from use while keeping the definition, so the framework can evolve without rewriting history.
Templates and rating labels
Settings keep named lists of appraisal templates and rating labels alongside general preferences such as rating scale, self-appraisal and reviewer approval. Your conventions are recorded once, centrally, instead of living in a document nobody can find.
Names, not identifiers
Reviews and KPIs are keyed to real employee records, chosen through the same selector used across Nexa People. Names are resolved from the directory — including In-Active staff — so an old review remains readable after its subject has left.
Form-level permissions
The Performance module is carved into individual forms in the Role Templates grid, from Reviews and KPI Library to Performance Settings. Grant a role exactly the forms it needs; a role with none granted loses the module's route entirely.
Used by: HR administrators manage appraisal cycles and configuration.
Works with the rest of Nexa People
Performance reads its people straight from Employee Management. The employee and reviewer on a review, and the owner of each KPI, are picked with the shared employee selector, and the appraisals list resolves names from the same directory — including the In-Active pool, so reviews written for former staff keep their names rather than decaying into identifiers.
Cycle activity writes into the shared notifications system: opening or closing a cycle raises an organisation-wide notification under the performance category, delivered to the same notifications page every role already checks for approvals and requests.
Configuration sits in the organisation's central settings store, saved through the same endpoint the other modules use, and access is governed by the Role Templates permission grid maintained in Employee Management — one matrix decides who sees Performance, form by form, alongside every other module.
Frequently asked questions
What does a performance review record contain?
The employee under review, an optional reviewer — both chosen from the employee directory — a free-text period label such as 2026-H1, an optional rating on a five-point scale, a written summary of key outcomes and feedback, and a status of draft, submitted or finalised. The list shows all of this at a glance with a colour-coded status badge.
Can a review be finalised without a rating?
No. Finalising is a server-side rule, not just a button: only a submitted review can be finalised, and if no rating has been recorded the server rejects the request until one is added. Equally, only drafts can be submitted, so the workflow cannot be short-circuited from any client.
What happens when we activate an appraisal cycle?
The cycle moves from draft to active and an in-app notification is fanned out to the whole organisation announcing that the cycle has opened; closing it announces the same way. Only draft cycles can be activated and only active cycles closed — anything else is refused with a conflict.
How are KPIs organised?
Each KPI belongs to an employee and records the indicator, a perspective from the balanced-scorecard four — Financial, Customer, Internal Process or Learning & Growth — a target, a weightage percentage and a period. Its status starts active and is later marked achieved or missed, so the library doubles as a record of results.
What is the competency library for?
It is the shared vocabulary appraisals draw on: each competency has a title, a category of Core, Leadership, Technical or Behavioural, and a description of what it means in your organisation. Competencies can be retired by marking them inactive, keeping the definition without keeping it in circulation.
What can we configure in Performance Settings?
General preferences — a rating scale of 1–5, 1–10 or 1–100, whether self-appraisal is enabled and whether reviewer approval is required — plus cycle conventions such as a default cycle type and auto-close on end date. Two list tabs maintain your named appraisal templates and rating labels, and everything is stored in the organisation's central settings.
Who can access the Performance module?
Organisation roles whose role template holds at least one Performance form — the module is split into forms such as Reviews, KPI Library and Performance Settings in the Role Templates grid, so access is granted per form. Employees stay on their self-service surface unless an HR-side form is granted, and direct URLs are checked by the same rules as the menu.
Related modules
See Performance in your own setup
We'll walk you through the modules you care about and email you login credentials to try it yourself.