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Performance Review Score

Learn what the Review Score is and how it's calculated on a review cycle

The Review Score is a single number that summarizes how an employee was rated across a review cycle. In Workleap Performance, you decide how that number is calculated. This article explains how to set up a Review Score formula, exactly how the score is calculated, when it updates, and how it appears on the Performance Overview.


What the Review Score is

The Review Score (the Overall Score) is calculated for each employee, in each review cycle, from the rating questions answered in that cycle. It gives your organization one consistent, configurable measure of performance instead of an opaque average.

Each cycle carries one Review Score formula that defines how the score is computed for everyone in that cycle. A formula has a mode, an output scale, and — for custom formulas — a set of weighted components.

Note: The Review Score is not shown as a separate number on the review itself. It powers the Performance Overview.


Who can configure and view the Review Score

  • Executives — Configure the Review Score formula on any cycle and see scores across the entire organization.

  • Collaborators — Configure the formula in a cycle's Review Score section and see scores across the entire organization.

  • Direct Managers — View the resulting score on the Performance Overview, scoped to their reporting line. They don't configure the formula.

  • Employees — Their score is computed and stored, but isn't shown to them in this release.


How to set up a Review Score formula

  1. Log in to Workleap and go to Performance.

  2. Open the review cycle you want to configure, or create a new one.

  3. Go to the Review Score section.

  4. Choose a mode: Average of all rating questions, Average of manager rating questions, or Custom.

  5. For Custom, select the rating questions to include — across any review type — and assign a weight to each one. The indicator shows when your weights total 100%.

  6. Select the output scale for the score (any value from 2 to 10).

  7. Save the cycle.

When all the questions you select share the same scale, that scale is proposed by default. When the cycle's questions use more than one scale, you choose which scale the Review Score is expressed on, and the system adjusts each score onto it.

Custom weighting is all-or-nothing: either every question carries a weight and they add up to 100%, or none do and the questions count equally. A cycle can't launch until its formula is valid. While the cycle is still a draft, your changes are saved automatically — even an incomplete formula — so you can configure it over time.


How the score is calculated

The Review Score is calculated for each employee from their submitted reviews. Answers are converted so that questions on different scales compare fairly, then weighted according to the formula, and the result is shown on the scale set for the cycle.

How the answers are combined depends on the formula's mode:

  • Average of all rating questions — averages every rating question in the cycle, no matter which review type it belongs to (self, manager, peer, or upward).

  • Average of manager rating questions — averages only the rating questions from the manager review.

  • Custom — combines the selected questions by their weights, or equally when no weights are set.

Only active rating questions count — open-text and multiple choice questions don't feed the score, and a question removed from the cycle stops counting.

When the score updates

The Review Score is always recalculated by the system — it's never edited directly.

It updates as reviews come in: when a review is submitted, or a rating answer on an already-submitted review is changed, the affected employee's score is recalculated automatically.

The formula is also not locked at launch. You can change it on a live cycle, and every score recalculates automatically — so a Review Score can keep moving after the cycle starts.

One thing to keep in mind: if you remove a rating question that a custom weighted formula relies on, the formula is no longer valid, and you can't update the cycle until you fix it (for example, by reassigning that question's weight).

Every cycle has a formula

Every cycle that has rating questions has a Review Score formula — there's always a score, whether you set it or not.

Existing cycles were given a default automatically, and any new cycle you create gets one too if you don't configure your own.

  • The default is Average of manager rating questions if the cycle includes a manager review, otherwise Average of all rating questions.

  • It's shown on the most common scale among the cycle's rating questions. If two scales are equally common, the default uses the higher one.

  • This default scale only applies to the built-in default.

Important: When you configure a formula yourself, you choose the scale — and your setup is never replaced by a default.


How the Review Score appears on the Performance Overview

The configured Review Score drives the Performance Overview. The Overview shows average review scores for your organization, with the highest and lowest rated teams and people.

How the numbers are built:

  • One common scale. The Overview shows every score on a single scale — the most common scale among the cycles' Review Score formulas (for example, /5). Each score is adjusted onto that scale so cycles that used different scales stay comparable. The scale in use appears next to the heading (for example, "Average review scores (/5)").

  • Aggregated across cycles. When an employee has scores in more than one cycle, the Overview combines them — either as the average across cycles or the value from their most recent cycle, depending on the view.

  • Team and manager rollups. A team's or a manager's number is the average of the Review Scores of the people in that group.

Because the Overview now uses your configured Review Score instead of a plain average across every question, the numbers may look different than they did before. That's expected — the scores now reflect how your organization chose to measure performance, not a generic average across every question.

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