What is calibration?

Calibration ensures performance ratings are fair, consistent, and aligned across teams. It gives leaders and managers a shared foundation to review and validate ratings together before making decisions on compensation, promotion, and retention.

Use it to:

Get a clear view of how talent is distributed across your organization or team
Review and validate ratings with the right context
Align with other leaders or managers before making decisions

Note — Calibration helps you align on decisions within a review cycle. For broader analysis, data can be exported for further exploration.

Who can use calibration?

Executives and Collaborators — Configure calibration during review cycle setup, analyze calibration data across the organization, drill down into any manager's population.
Direct Managers — Access the Calibration tab for review cycles where their direct reports are included. Review and prepare ratings for their team, generate AI briefs, and write private calibration notes.

Set up calibration in a review cycle

Calibration is configured during cycle creation by Executives or Collaborators. If it is not configured during setup, the 9-box grid and calibration data are not available in the cycle, and Direct Managers cannot use calibration for that cycle.

To configure calibration:

Log in to Workleap and go to Performance.
Create or edit a review cycle.
Open the Calibration ratings step.
Select two questions:
- A performance question — used for performance rating (X-axis of the 9-box).
- A potential question — used for potential rating (Y-axis of the 9-box).

These two questions must come from manager rating questions in the review form.

Once both questions are selected, a confirmation message appears: "9-box grid analysis will be enabled for this review cycle." Calibration becomes available after reviews are submitted.

Important — Only the manager's rating is used for calibration positioning. Self-reviews and peer reviews are used for context (AI), not placement. The cycle must be launched or updated for changes to take effect.

How to access calibration

Once reviews are submitted:

Log in to Workleap and go to Performance.
Open the review cycle.
Go to the Calibration tab.

Executives and Collaborators see all employees included in the cycle. Direct Managers see only the employees in their reporting line.

Analyze calibration data

Executives and Collaborators can analyze calibration data at two levels:

Organization-wide view — See all employees in a single 9-box to understand overall talent distribution.
Manager-level drill-down — Select one or multiple managers to review their populations individually.

Direct Managers see calibration data scoped to their own direct reports.

Filter calibration data

Filters let you narrow calibration data to the segment you want to review. Filters apply to both the list view and the 9-box view.

Available filters:

Manager — Focus on one or more managers' populations.
Department — Slice by team or department.
Job Title — Focus on a specific role or job family.
Gender — Review representation across gender groups.
Tenure — Focus on specific tenure bands (e.g. new hires, long-tenured employees).

Each filter applies within your visibility scope:

Executives and Collaborators can filter across the full organization.
Direct Managers can filter within their own reporting line to prepare for their calibration conversations (e.g. filter by tenure or department to compare similar employees).

"Reviewed by me" quick filter

Use the Reviewed by me quick filter inside the filter menu to reset the view to only the employees you reviewed yourself. This is useful for managers preparing for calibration discussions, or for leaders who also conducted reviews.

Review employees

The Calibration tab offers two complementary views. Use them together to build a complete picture of your team before calibration discussions.

List view

Review and compare employees individually. Selecting an employee opens an inspection panel with the following sections.

Score and averages

Shows the employee's performance and potential scores (e.g. 3/5) alongside department and role averages.

Note — Averages are hidden when fewer than 4 people are included in the cycle, to protect individual ratings.

Compare to previous cycle

View how ratings have changed over time, one cycle at a time.

AI-assisted calibration brief

Generate a concise, evidence-based summary from the employee's performance data to help prepare for calibration discussions.

To generate a brief:

Select an employee in the list view.
Click Generate now.

The AI provides a structured summary including performance positioning, key evidence, context and comparisons (when available), and areas that may be challenged during calibration.

Calibration notes

Add private notes for each employee to prepare your talking points. Notes are only visible to the author.

If a manager changes during the cycle, notes are automatically transferred to the new manager.
If a temporary manager is assigned, notes are shared. The last edit is saved and all changes are timestamped with the author's name.

Note — Calibration notes are only available to managers who reviewed the employee.

View review

Opens the employee's full review. Ratings are not adjusted directly in the calibration view — to update a rating, open the review via View review.

9-box view

Visualize how employees are distributed across performance and potential.

The grid is organized with Performance (Low / Med / High) on the X-axis and Potential (Low / Med / High) on the Y-axis. Each cell includes a label (e.g. Core Contributor, Top Talent). Employees appear as avatars in their assigned cell.

To interact with the 9-box:

Select a cell to focus on a specific talent group — the employee list updates to reflect that group.
Select an employee (from the grid or the list) to open their inspection panel.

How ratings map to the grid

Ratings are normalized into three buckets on each axis: Low (~22%), Medium (~56%), High (~22%). Because the Medium bucket is the widest, most employees land in the center cell (Core Contributor).

Here is how individual ratings map to Low / Medium / High for common rating scales: