In, out, or unresolved — the third answer that matters

Deciding who is in a review round sounds like a filter. Tenure over three months, employment status active, and so on. Run the rules, get a list.

The trouble is what happens when a rule cannot be answered. Somebody's start date is missing. Their employment status was never filled in. The rule is active, but the record has nothing to compare against.

Two outcomes hide the problem

With only in and out, an unanswerable rule collapses into out. An employee with a blank cell is silently dropped from their own performance review — no warning to them, no flag to HR, no trace. They simply do not appear, and in a large organisation nobody notices until they ask why they were skipped.

Being left out of your own review is a real event with real consequences. It affects progression, pay conversations and how a year gets remembered. It should never be the side effect of an empty field.

The third verdict

Eligibility in Persohap returns three outcomes per person, never two: in, out, or unresolved. Unresolved means a rule is active and we genuinely cannot answer it for this person.

A round is then blocked from launching while anyone is unresolved, and the system names them. Somebody has to look at each one and decide. Every override carries a written reason.

Why refusing to launch is the right behaviour

It is tempting to let the round start and warn afterwards. But the moment a round launches, the omission is invisible — the person is simply not there. The only point at which the problem is cheap to fix is before launch, so that is where the system stops.

The same evaluator drives the launch guard, the preview screen and the readiness checklist, so what an administrator sees on the Launch Pad is literally what launch will do.