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
Tip: Calibration helps you align on decisions within a review cycle. For broader analysis, data can be exported for further exploration.
How Review Score and Calibration work together
Review Score is the authoritative performance number for a cycle, used wherever an employee score appears.
Calibration is where leaders align on where people land before decisions.
For Performance, calibration can reuse that Review Score, so the 9-box runs on the same number you report on elsewhere, or use a custom formula you define just for the 9-box. Potential stays separate.
Who can use calibration?
Executives and Collaborators — Configure calibration during review cycle setup
Only Executives can analyze calibration data across the organization and narrow it to any segment using filters.
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 setup step.
Enable Performance and choose how its score is calculated (X-axis of the 9-box):
Reuse the selected Review Score — applies the Review Score already configured for this cycle.
Custom — pick specific rating questions, set each one's review type, and assign a weight.
Then choose the Reporting scale for the score (for example, Out of 5).
Enable Potential and choose how its score is calculated (Y-axis of the 9-box):
Single question to score it from one rating question and its review type.
Custom to pick specific rating questions, set each one's review type, and assign a weight.
Then choose the Reporting scale.
Enable both Performance and Potential to turn on the 9-box grid analysis.
Note: Only rating questions feed a calibration score; open-text and multiple-choice questions don't. Existing cycles were migrated automatically with no change to their scores — previous single-question setups keep working exactly as before.
Important: In Custom mode, weighting is all-or-nothing per dimension: either every question carries a weight and the weights sum to 100%, or none do and the questions count equally. A cycle can't launch until each enabled dimension's setup is valid. You can edit the configuration on a launched cycle — scores recalculate automatically.
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 see all employees included in the cycle. Direct Managers see only the employees in their reporting line.
Analyze calibration data
Executives review calibration data across the whole organization in a single 9-box, then narrow it to any segment — one or more managers, departments, job titles, and more — using filters (see Filter calibration data below).
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 — Select one or more departments to review them together.
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 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
Each axis uses the configured score for that dimension — the score you set up (reused from the Review Score, a single rating question, or a custom weighted formula), expressed on the reporting scale you chose at setup.
That score is 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 a score maps to Low / Medium / High for common reporting scales:
Reporting scale | Low | Medium | High |
Out of 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Out of 5 | 1 | 2–4 | 5 |
Out of 7 | 1–2 | 3–5 | 6–7 |