Calibration

Review and adjust performance ratings in Windmill calibration sessions to ensure fairness, consistency, and shared standards across managers and teams.

After managers submit their reviews, cycle admins and calibration committees compare ratings side-by-side, identify outliers, and make adjustments before reviews are shared with employees. See Access and permissions for who can see and edit a calibration.

The Calibration Board is desktop-only. Open the Windmill Dashboard on a desktop browser to calibrate ratings.

What is calibration?

Without calibration, performance ratings often suffer from inconsistency. Different managers have different standards for what “exceeds expectations” means. Some rate everyone highly, while others are more conservative. Calibration helps correct these biases by:

• Creating shared standards — Leadership aligns on what each rating level means
• Reviewing evidence together — Decisions are grounded in feedback, outcomes, and context
• Ensuring fairness — Comparing similar employees across teams to confirm consistency
• Balancing distributions — Avoiding clusters where everyone is rated the same

Access and permissions

Calibrations are created from inside a performance review cycle after managers submit their reviews. HR or admins who are cycle admins for that review cycle can open the cycle, go to the Calibrations tab, click New Calibration, and configure the calibration name, participants, and rating questions.

Creating a calibration and seeing inside a calibration are separate permissions. The roles below control who can view or edit an existing calibration.

Calibration access is role-based and per-calibration. You only see inside a calibration if you’re explicitly added to it as a facilitator or committee member.

• Workspace HR Admin / Admin: NOT automatic for viewing inside a calibration. Must be added to a calibration to see inside.
• Cycle admin: NOT automatic. Cycle admins can create calibrations and see participant lists/coverage in the cycle Analytics tab, but cannot see inside a calibration unless they’re added.
• Facilitators: view and edit ratings. Can start, submit, cancel, and regenerate the pre-read report. The creator of a calibration is auto-added as a facilitator.
• Committee members: read-only access — they can view the pre-read and packets but cannot edit ratings.
• Reviewees (the people being calibrated): no access to the calibration. They only see their final rating once their manager shares the review.
• Managers of reviewees: no access unless added as a facilitator or committee member.

The pre-read report is visible only to facilitators and committee members of the calibration. Windy automatically DMs facilitators and committee members 24 hours before the calibration meeting with the pre-read — that’s the only built-in distribution. There is no Windy command or admin action that shares the pre-read with the broader team, with reviewees, or with cycle admins who aren’t on the calibration. The pre-read text itself isn’t directly editable — facilitators can click Regenerate to refresh it from the latest data, but the text can’t be edited inline.

Action	Who can do it
Create a calibration	Cycle admins
Start, submit, cancel, regenerate pre-read report	Facilitators only
Edit (adjust) ratings on the board	Facilitators only
View the pre-read report	Facilitators and committee members
View packets and propose adjustments	Facilitators and committee members
See who’s in a calibration (participant list)	Cycle admins (via Analytics tab)
Be reviewed in a calibration	Anyone in the cycle (no access)

Rules when creating a calibration:

• The creator must be a cycle admin and must add themselves as a facilitator.
• The creator cannot also be a reviewee in the same calibration.
• A reviewee cannot also be a facilitator or committee member of the same calibration.

Calibration access is independent of cycle admin status — being a cycle admin doesn’t automatically put you on a calibration, and being on a calibration doesn’t make you a cycle admin elsewhere. See Who sees what for how this interacts with visibility of individual review answers.

Creating a calibration

Calibration should happen after manager reviews are submitted, so ratings can be reviewed and adjusted before they’re shared with employees. Cycle admins create calibrations from inside the corresponding performance review cycle:

1. Go to the cycle

   Navigate to Performance Reviews and select the cycle.

2. Open the Calibrations tab

   Inside the cycle, open the Calibrations tab. This is the entry point for setting up a calibration.

3. Create calibration

   Click New Calibration and configure:

   Name — A descriptive name for this calibration session

   Participants — Who will be involved (facilitators, committee members, reviewees)

   Questions to calibrate — Which rating questions to review (typically overall performance rating). You can select up to 2 rating questions. If you select only 1, the grid view will not be available—use table view instead.

4. Launch calibration

   Once created, the calibration board becomes available for participants to review and adjust ratings.

The Calibration Board

The Calibration Board is a visual workspace where leadership compares employees side-by-side based on their ratings.

What appears on the board

The board displays employees in a grid or table layout:

• Grid view — Available when calibrating single-select (rating) questions. Shows employees positioned by their rating with drag-and-drop adjustment.
• Table view — Shows all questions and answers in a table format for detailed review.

Each employee card shows:

• Name and role
• Current rating for each question
• Manager name
• Department and team

Using the Calibration Board

1. Open the board

   Navigate to the calibration from the cycle page.

2. Review the distribution

   Look at how ratings are distributed. Are too many employees rated “Exceeds”? Are there outliers with high ratings but limited evidence?

3. Filter and compare

   Use filters to view specific subsets:

   • By department
   • By team
   • By manager

   This helps you compare similar employees and ensure consistency.

4. Review employee details

   Click into any employee to open their full review packet:

   • Self review
   • Peer feedback
   • Upward reviews
   • Manager’s submitted review
   • Supporting evidence and context

   This lets you verify that the rating is grounded in data.

5. Adjust ratings

   If a rating needs adjustment, drag and drop the employee card to a different rating level (in grid view) or edit directly (in table view).

   When you adjust a rating, the system prompts for a reason. This note is audit-logged but not visible to the employee.

   Changes save automatically.

6. Finalize calibration

   Once the team agrees on all ratings, close the calibration. Ratings sync back to employee reviews and the board locks.

What can be adjusted during calibration?

• Rating question answers — Adjust single-select ratings (e.g., move from “Exceeds” to “Meets”)
• Participant list — Add or remove employees from the calibration
• Committee members — Adjust who has access to view or propose changes

Text answers and written feedback are not editable during calibration—only ratings can be changed.

To confirm everyone you intended to calibrate is included, see Checking calibration coverage.

After calibration closes

When calibration is finalized:

• Updated ratings sync back to employee reviews — The rating in the manager’s review is updated to match the calibrated rating
• The board is locked — No additional adjustments can be made
• All changes are audit-logged — Windmill tracks what was changed, by whom, and when
• Cycle admins proceed to sharing — Reviews are ready to share with employees

Employees only see the final approved rating and feedback once their manager shares the review. They do not have visibility into calibration discussions or adjustments.

Common scenarios

Scenario 1: Rating is too high for the evidence

A manager rated an employee “Exceeds Expectations,” but peer feedback is mixed and there’s limited evidence of exceptional impact.

Action: Adjust the rating to “Meets Expectations” and document: “Peer feedback indicates solid performance but not exceptional. Rating adjusted to align with evidence.”

Scenario 2: Ratings vary across managers

One manager rated all direct reports “Exceeds,” while another manager rated similar performers “Meets.”

Action: Compare employee details side-by-side. Adjust ratings to ensure consistency across managers and teams. Discuss with managers to align on rating standards for future cycles.

Scenario 3: High performer on a strong team

An employee is rated “Meets Expectations,” but their performance is actually strong—they’re just on a team full of exceptional performers.

Action: Review the evidence. If the employee’s impact is genuinely high, adjust to “Exceeds Expectations.” Calibration should ensure high performers aren’t penalized for being on strong teams.

FAQ

When can HR or admins create a calibration?

Create calibrations after managers submit their reviews, before reviews are shared with employees. Open the performance review cycle, go to the Calibrations tab, click New Calibration, then configure the calibration name, participants, and rating questions to calibrate. The person creating the calibration must be a cycle admin for that cycle.

How can I check whether I added everyone to a calibration?

Use the cycle Analytics tab. Open Admin → Analytics, and in the Calibration section click Employees in calibration reviews to see every employee currently included (with the calibration they belong to), or Calibrations scheduled to see each calibration session and its participant list. Cross-reference against All Employees to spot anyone missing. See Checking calibration coverage for the full flow.

How many rating questions can I calibrate at once?

You can select up to 2 rating questions per calibration. If you select only 1 question, the grid view is not available—use table view to review and adjust ratings.

Best practices

• Start with outliers — Review employees with potential rating misalignments first
• Use evidence, not opinions — Base decisions on peer feedback, self reviews, and system signals
• Compare similar employees — Use filters to view employees in similar roles across teams
• Document adjustments — Always include a reason when changing ratings for transparency
• Align on definitions — Before starting, ensure everyone agrees on what each rating level means

Related reading

• Performance Reviews — Overview of the complete review process
• Manager reviews — How managers draft reviews and assign ratings
• Sharing reviews - Share finalized packets after calibration
• Progress tracking — Monitor review completion before calibration
• Cycles — Set up calibration as part of your cycle