
Should the manager share the review before or after the face to face review meeting?
Table of Contents
Well, it depends!
To play it safe, you may want to let managers only share the written feedback after the meeting. This way you prevent unwanted circumstances, for example if a manager writes harsher feedback than they mean to, and the employee gets upset or scared the day before the meeting.
On the other hand, once managers have some experience writing reviews, it may be fairer to provide the feedback before the meeting so the employee can prepare accordingly. If you want to share before, we’d recommend sharing it an hour or two before the meeting, but not the day before. This prevents a misunderstanding from turning into a big issue and a sleepless night. If there’s misunderstanding, it will be resolved at most 2 hours later.
Discover more resources

Performance reviews for all organizational structures
With the launch of Custom Reviewers, a powerful addition to our Performance Reviews module, Small Improvements now supports performance evaluations for all types of organizational structures.

Facilitate regular 1:1s with better meeting insights
We’re thrilled to launch today a new 1:1 Meeting Insights Dashboard, designed to improve how People Operations leaders manage and facilitate regular 1:1s.

The 10 Best Performance Management Tools in 2025 (And How to Choose the Right One for Your Team)
Why companies are rethinking performance right now? Performance management has come a long way from the once-a-year review and vague development goals. Many teams are moving away from rigid processes and starting to ask a more useful question: how can we help employees grow while still hitting goals as a company?
The “4 Cs” of Management: A Monthly Rhythm to Fix Your Broken 1:1s
Stop the “status update trap” and transform your management style. Learn the 4 Cs Framework—Clarity, Coaching, Care, and Celebration—to build a high-performing team and fix your broken 1:1 meetings today.

How to grow and scale culture the Reddit way
Small Improvements invited Reddit’s People & Culture team to Berlin for an evening of informative conversation packed with actionable tips for HR managers.

Status update: Secondary Reviewer for performance reviews, threaded discussions for objectives
Secondary reviewer We’ve re-branded the (somewhat hidden) review advocate into a proper “secondary reviewer”. The secondary reviewer can access a person’s performance review and contribute, but neither share nor sign the review. So it’s very useful when a staff member has just switched the team, and the “old boss” should be contributing, but the “new…