Create a rating scale

What this achieves

A rating scale defines the levels a manager can pick when rating performance. Every review, calibration adjustment, and rating record in a cycle is expressed in the scale that cycle uses.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Performance → Rating Scales.
Select New Scale.
Under Scale Details, enter the Scale name and an optional Description.
Under Levels, select Add Level for each level, entering its label, value, and an optional description.
Set Acceptable on each level.
Check the Preview as you go.
Under Availability, set Default scale and Active.
Select Create scale.

Levels are entered highest first

Levels are ordered with the highest value first, and each needs a label and a value. The description is optional and is where the scale earns its consistency.

Example: at HC Corp UK Ltd, a level described in terms of the scope someone handled and what they delivered gives Olivia Bennett something to judge James Whitfield against. A description that restates the label gives her nothing.

At least two levels are required, and the editor tells you what to fix before it will save.

Marking a level as below acceptable

Each level carries an Acceptable switch, and it is on by default. It decides more than how the level reads.

Option	Description
Acceptable on	The level sits within the acceptable range. Nothing follows from being rated at it.
Acceptable off	The level reads as below acceptable, and an employee rated at it becomes eligible for a performance improvement plan.

Eligibility is not the same as enrolment — nobody is placed on a plan automatically, and the decision stays with the people who make it. What the switch does is decide which ratings put someone in front of that decision.

Set it deliberately on the levels near the bottom of the scale. A scale where every level is left acceptable never surfaces anyone; one where the switch is turned off too high up puts people in front of a decision their rating did not warrant.

Example: on a five-level scale at HC Corp UK Ltd, the lowest level is marked below acceptable and the one above it is left acceptable. An employee rated at the lowest level becomes eligible; one rated a step above does not.

Use the preview

The preview shows what managers see when picking a rating, and it updates as you edit. Read it as a manager would rather than as the person building it — if two adjacent levels look interchangeable in the preview, they will be applied interchangeably.

Availability

Option	Description
Default scale	Auto-selected when creating a new cycle. Only one scale can be the default.
Active	When off, the scale is hidden from cycle setup but stays attached to existing cycles.

Deleting and deactivating

A scale cannot be deleted while it is in use by an active or draft cycle. Deactivating is the route for one you have stopped using.

That restriction protects your history. A rating record points at its scale, so removing the scale would leave a past rating as a number with nothing to interpret it against.

Example: HC Corp UK Ltd replaces an old scale by creating a new one and deactivating the old. Completed cycles keep reading correctly against the scale they were rated on.

Changing a scale that has already been used

Editing labels or level meanings changes how ratings already given appear, because those records point at this scale. Where the meaning genuinely changes, create a new scale instead of editing the old one — a comparison across a scale change should be a deliberate act.

What happens next

The scale becomes selectable when creating a cycle, and the default is pre-selected. Once a cycle uses it, the scale drives the manager rating field, the calibration adjustment options, and the permanent rating records written at finalisation.