We publish the review formula before anyone is scored

Most performance systems can tell you your score. Far fewer can tell you, in advance, exactly how that score will be produced — and almost none fix the rewards before the scoring starts.

Persohap computes a performance index from three parts. Goal progress is 30% and counts itself: it is the average across the goals you set, and every check-in you log moves it. Kudos and collaboration are 15%, computed from the attributed recognition colleagues sent you. Your department's own review yardsticks are the remaining 55%, graded by your manager on a five-rung ladder.

Why the weights are visible first

A number nobody can reconstruct is not feedback, it is a verdict. When the recipe is published before the round, three things change. People know which behaviours the organisation is actually paying attention to. A manager cannot quietly reweight toward the thing their report happens to be bad at. And an unexpected score becomes a conversation about evidence rather than about motive.

The weights are also normalised across whichever parts have a score. If one part is unscored it does not silently drag the total toward zero — the remaining parts simply carry more of the weight. A missing input should never look like a bad result.

The department writes its own yardsticks

The 55% is not a fixed list handed down from HR. Each department writes its own review criteria, and every person in that department is measured against the same list. A finance lane and an engineering lane are measured on different things, which is correct — they do different work. What must not vary is the list inside a lane, and whether people could read it before scoring began.

Persohap ships a starter catalogue for departments that want somewhere to begin. Most edit it. That is the point.

Rewards are fixed before scores exist

This is the part we would defend hardest. The reward scheme is set during cycle setup — before anybody has a number. Fixing the rules up front is what keeps them honest: nobody can be scored to fit a payout that was decided afterwards.

It also means the suggestions the system produces are advisory. Persohap proposes; an administrator decides. Employees see labels, never amounts.

What this does not solve

A published formula does not make a bad manager a good one. It does not remove judgement from the 55% that a person grades. What it removes is the argument about the arithmetic, so the conversation can be about the work.