Quick answer
Open Calibration in the sidebar, click New session and pick the manager review cycle you are calibrating. Read the distribution, then work down the grid: Propose a new rating with a written reason, and Decide when the room settles. When you are done, Close session — after that the record is final.
What a session is
A session is one sitting, attached to one real manager review cycle. It is not a separate performance process — the people in the grid are exactly the people that cycle reviewed, and the rating beside each name is the one their manager gave.
Big organisations run several rooms over the same cycle, one per function. Give each one a name that says which room it was, and they sit side by side on the Calibration page.
Reading the distribution
The panel above the grid counts how many people sit at each rating, before and after. The "before" column is the ratings as the managers wrote them; the "after" column moves as the room proposes and decides.
Nothing in that panel is stored. It is recomputed from the grid every time the page loads, so the summary can never quietly disagree with the rows underneath it.
Proposing and deciding
These are two separate acts, on purpose.
- Propose records what the room thinks the rating should be, and why. You can change a proposal as the discussion moves — nothing is settled yet.
- Decide records the outcome. It stamps who decided and when, and from that moment it cannot be changed by anyone, including an administrator.
The reason is required on every proposal. It is the part of the record that is still useful a year later, when somebody asks why a rating moved.
Closing the session
Closing is the point of no return, and the confirmation says so in plain terms before you commit:
- Nothing can be added, changed or removed afterwards.
- Any proposal without a decision stays on the record as proposed and undecided. It cannot be decided later.
- Closing does not change anyone's appraisal. Calibration records what was decided; publishing a decision into a review is a separate step.
A closed session cannot be deleted either. That is not a missing feature — a record of a deliberation that can be erased is not a record.
Frequently asked questions
- Does calibration change anyone's appraisal?
- No. A calibration session records what the room decided, beside the original rating. It does not write back into anyone's manager review, and closing a session does not publish anything. Putting a decision into a published review is a separate, deliberate step.
- Why can I not propose the rating someone already has?
- Because that is not an adjustment. Keeping someone exactly where they are is recorded by leaving them without a row at all, which is what keeps the "adjusted" count honest. If you talk yourself back to the original rating after proposing a move, record that as the decision — deciding to stay put is a real outcome.
- Can I fix a decision I recorded by mistake?
- No. A recorded decision names who made it and when, and is final from that moment. This is deliberate — a decision that can be quietly edited afterwards is not evidence of anything. If a decision was wrong, the correction belongs in the review conversation and the next cycle, not in a rewritten record.
- What happens to the original rating?
- It is captured the moment the room first moves someone, and then frozen. It is never re-read from the appraisal afterwards, so if the underlying review changes later, the record still describes the argument that actually happened.
- Why can I only calibrate a manager review cycle?
- Because calibration compares manager ratings. Running a session over a self-review cycle would mean comparing people against their own view of themselves, which is not a calibration.
- Someone in the cycle has no rating. Why can I not move them?
- Their manager has not submitted their review yet, so there is no rating to calibrate. They appear in the grid marked "Not rated yet" and become movable as soon as the review is in.