Verified Readiness · Reviews & goals
Performance reviews and 360 feedback built on evidence, signed by a manager
Ascend drafts each employee's manager review from their verified record, collects 360 feedback that only colleagues write, and publishes nothing to the employee until their manager has approved every section.
The manager review
The first draft comes from what the record shows.
When an admin opens a review cycle, every employee in it gets a manager review drafted automatically, including people who have no manager on file. Nobody has to remember to start one.
- The draft is written only from the employee's verified record: skill levels earned through graded Understanding Checks, the level their job role requires, training completed and in progress, certificates, and any check that was unlocked without a pass.
- Four fixed sections: skills, training, strengths and growth areas. A growth area points at a concrete gap, such as a skill below the role's required level.
- It does not search company documents or infer attitude, effort or personality. A thin record produces a short draft, not a padded one.
- A second pass checks the draft against the same record and sends it back if it claims anything the record does not support.
- The record the draft was written from is frozen onto the review, so what the AI agent saw can be inspected later.
360 feedback
Colleagues write the feedback. The AI agent never does.
A machine-written “colleague's opinion” about a named person would be fabricated testimony, so peer feedback has no drafting route at all. People write it, and the AI agent only helps the manager read it.
- Employees nominate colleagues to review them. Their manager approves or rejects each nomination, and a nominated colleague can decline.
- Anyone can also write uninvited feedback about a colleague while a cycle is open, limited to one piece per person per cycle.
- Before writing, a reviewer is told plainly that this is not anonymous: their name is shown to the subject's manager, not to the subject.
- On submission, a guideline check flags possible abuse, mentions of a protected characteristic, or unsubstantiated allegations. It raises concerns; it decides nothing.
- The manager reads every input with its author and can exclude one only with a written reason. Nothing is deleted, and every exclusion is listed for admins.
- The AI agent then summarises the kept feedback into two sections, what colleagues highlighted and what they suggested, without being told who wrote what.
The gate
Nothing reaches the employee until a manager publishes it.
The review, the feedback summary and the goals section are one document. The employee sees only that document, and only after their direct manager has approved each section and pressed publish. Both actions are recorded with who took them.
- Managers can edit any section, or regenerate a drafted one, before approving it.
- Performance is one of three areas the autonomy dial can never set to autopilot. The block is enforced in the database, not only in the settings screen.
- A manager's own managers can read reviews about people further down their line. Excluding, approving and publishing stay with the direct manager.
- Once published, the employee can attach a written response. It sits beside the review and never rewrites it; the manager acknowledges reading it, which is not the same as agreeing.
- Closing a cycle stops new feedback, while reviews already in progress can still be summarised, approved and published.
What the AI agent does here
The AI assistant has no tool that drafts, approves, edits or publishes a review, or writes feedback. Around a review, it answers questions from the record, as the person asking.
- “Who reports to me?”Lists the caller's direct reports. Someone with no reports gets an empty list, not an error.
- “Who is overdue on their training?”Managers and admins. A manager sees only their own reporting line, which is the training record a review draft will read.
- “What insights are waiting for my team?”Managers and admins. Open findings for the manager's reporting line, oldest first. The assistant reads them; it does not act on anyone's review.
| Question | Annual review form | Ascend |
|---|---|---|
| Where the first draft comes from | A blank form and the manager's memory of the year | The employee's verified skill levels, role requirements and training record, frozen onto the review |
| Who writes peer feedback | Colleagues, or whoever is chasing the form | Colleagues only, nominated by the employee and approved by the manager; no route exists for the agent to write it |
| Inappropriate comments | Found, if at all, after they have been read | Flagged at submission for the manager, who can exclude with a recorded reason |
| What the employee sees | Whatever version was sent | One published review, after every section is approved by their manager |
| Goal status | Self-reported | Derived from the record when a goal names a training program or skill level; otherwise labelled as the employee's own account |
| The employee's reply | An email, or nothing | A written response attached to the review, acknowledged by the manager |
Goals
Goals that say where their status came from.
- Goals are set per goal period, which runs separately from review cycles, so closing a cycle does not close goal-setting.
- Employees write their own goals and their manager approves each one. Editing an approved goal clears the approval.
- Company and divisional goals are shown beside the editor as guidance, not as a required link, so individual goals are not rolled up into a company total.
- A goal can name a training program, or a skill and the level to reach. Its status is then read from the record, and the employee cannot set it by hand.
- Status is a plain state: not started, in progress, achieved, missed or dropped. There are no progress percentages.
- Owners and managers log check-ins against a goal: what is on track, what is blocked, what support is needed. The manager replies on the same thread.
- Goals reach the review in their own section, titled “Goals this period, as they reported them”, with each goal marked self-reported or evidence-backed.
In practice
One review cycle, from open to published.
Questions
What buyers ask about reviews and goals.
- Does AI write our employees' performance reviews?
- It writes a first draft of the manager review from the verified record, and a summary of feedback colleagues wrote. The manager edits, approves each section and publishes. Peer feedback is never written by an AI agent.
- Can reviews be set to publish automatically?
- No. Performance cannot be set to autopilot on the autonomy dial, and a review cannot be published until every section has a human approval.
- Is 360 feedback anonymous?
- Not to the manager. The employee never sees who wrote what, but the reviewer's name is recorded and shown to the employee's manager, and reviewers are told the record may have to be disclosed if the law requires it.
- Is there a self-assessment?
- No, by decision. The review is built from the record, the manager's judgement and colleagues' feedback, and the employee's voice comes in through their goals, their check-ins and a written response to the published review.
- Can we see how every goal rolls up to company objectives?
- Not today. Company and divisional goals are shown to employees as guidance rather than as a required link, so there is no rollup and no completion percentage.
Start
Bring one job role. We'll run the loop on it.
Thirty minutes, your own documents, one job role. You'll see the company brain built, the drafts it produces, the sources behind them, and where the autonomy dial sits before anything publishes.