Setting Up Manager Ratings – Prosper

Manager Ratings bring structure and consistency to your performance reviews. By assessing employees against clear criteria — capability, delivery, and behaviour — you reduce subjectivity, drive fairness across teams, and surface the strengths, development needs, and skill gaps that matter.

Who this is for: Administrators (setup) and Managers (day-to-day use)

Read time: 6 minutes

Why Manager Ratings matter

Used consistently, Manager Ratings support better decisions around development, pay, promotions, and succession. They give every reviewer a shared language for performance, guide more meaningful 1:1 and review conversations, reinforce expectations across the business, and help leaders build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

This guide covers two parts:

Part 1 — Adding Manager Ratings (admin): how to build manager rating questions into your review templates.
Part 2 — A Manager's View: how managers apply ratings and control visibility during the review process.

Prerequisites

Administrator's permission to manage Performance Review templates.
Managers need at least one direct report assigned to them and an active review in progress.
The Performance Reviews module must be enabled for your organisation.

Part 1 — Adding Manager Ratings

Manager Ratings are added as part of a Performance Review template. This means you decide, at the template level, which questions a manager will rate against — giving every review across the business the same structure.

Step 1 — Open the template you want to edit

From the Prosper main menu, navigate to Performance.
Select Manage Reviews to view, edit, or create performance reviews.

Step 2 — Open the template for editing

Find the template you want to update in the templates list. Select ⋮ > Edit icon.

Step 3 — Add a Manager Rating to a question

Scroll to the question you want to attach a manager rating to.
Select Add Manager Rating.

Tip: Attach Manager Ratings to questions where a structured judgement adds value — for example, capability, delivery against goals, or behaviour against values. You don't need a manager rating on every question; reserve them for the criteria you want to track and report on over time.

Step 4 — Select the Answer Type

Choose how the manager will respond — for example, a numeric or descriptive rating scale, multiple choice, or another answer type configured for your organisation.

Step 5 — Populate the Manager Rating question and answers

Enter the Question the manager will respond to, and populate the Answers where applicable (for example, the labels for each point on a rating scale).

Write rating questions in a way that prompts a specific judgement. "How consistently does this employee demonstrate capability in their core duties?" is stronger than "How capable is this employee?"

Step 6 — Repeat for additional Manager Ratings

Repeat Steps 3 to 5 to add Manager Ratings to other questions in the template.

Step 7 — Preview the template

Once you're satisfied with the Manager Ratings, scroll to the top of the review and select Preview to check the template from the manager's perspective before submitting.

Walk through every section and confirm:

Each Manager Rating question is clear and unambiguous.
Answer scales are consistent across similar questions.
Nothing is missing or duplicated.

Step 8 — Save the template

Continue editing if you need to adjust anything, or scroll to the bottom of the review and select Save Template.

Step 9 — Enable the template

Switch the Disabled toggle to the enabled position.
A confirmation modal will appear — select Confirm.

The review is now enabled and available to managers when they begin a performance review.

Part 2 — A Manager's View

Once a template with Manager Ratings is enabled, managers will see the rating questions as part of any performance review they conduct.

Applying a Manager Rating

For each Manager Rating question, the manager:

Selects a rating from the configured answer type (for example, a point on the rating scale).
Adds a comment explaining the rating. Comments turn a number into context — they're what makes the rating useful in a coaching conversation later.

Controlling what's shared with the employee

Managers can choose whether to share each rating and comment with the employee using the available toggles. This gives managers control over what feedback is visible and when, helping ensure timing and communication align with the review process.

Typical use cases:

Share immediately — when the rating reinforces a conversation the manager has already had with the employee.
Hold until the review meeting — when the manager wants to discuss the rating in person before the employee sees it written down.
Keep private — for ratings intended to inform calibration, succession, or pay decisions only.

Tips for writing strong rating questions and comments

Anchor to behaviour. Rating questions land better when they reference observable behaviour rather than vague traits.
Use consistent scales. Mixing scale styles within one template makes reporting harder and confuses managers.
Comment every rating. Even a single sentence captures the "why" — invaluable at calibration time.
Calibrate across managers. Run a short calibration session before review periods so managers apply the scale consistently.

Troubleshooting

I can't see the Add Manager Rating option on a question.
Make sure you're in Edit mode on the template, not view mode. If the option still doesn't appear, the question type may not support manager ratings — try changing the question type or contact your administrator.

The Enable toggle is greyed out.
The template likely has a validation issue — usually a missing question, empty section, or incomplete rating scale. Look for red indicators in the template editor and resolve them before enabling.

A manager says they can't see Manager Rating questions in a review.
Confirm the review was started against an enabled template that includes Manager Ratings. Reviews started against an older version of the template won't pick up new rating questions added afterwards.

Can I change a Manager Rating question after the template is enabled?
Structural changes to an enabled template are restricted to protect reporting integrity. The recommended approach is to clone the template, edit the new draft, disable the original, and enable the new version. See Administrator's Guide to Publishing Performance Reviews for the full versioning process.

Can employees see a rating I haven't toggled on?
No. Ratings and comments are only visible to the employee if the manager has switched the share toggle on for that specific question.

Administrator's Guide to Publishing Performance Reviews
Creating a Performance Review Template
Running a Calibration Session
Exporting Performance Review Data

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