How to run a performance review cycle on Starch

A performance review cycle is how you formally assess how people on your team are doing, set expectations for what comes next, and make decisions about compensation, role changes, or development. Most operators run them once or twice a year, and most operators find them harder than they should be — not because the conversations are easy, but because the logistics fall apart before you get there. Scheduling, collecting input, tracking who's submitted what, synthesizing feedback into something usable, following through on the action items that come out of the conversation. The mechanics eat weeks.

What this looks like in practice depends on your team size, your industry, and how structured your process already is. A 12-person services firm running 360 reviews has a different problem than a 30-person e-commerce brand doing manager-only assessments. The spokes below go deeper on each of those variations.

On Starch, the cycle stays organized without you holding it together manually. Review requests go out on schedule, meeting notes from each 1:1 are captured and archived, follow-up tasks land in the right person's queue automatically, and the documentation for each employee lives in one searchable place — not scattered across your inbox and a shared drive you'll never find again. When the cycle closes, you have a clean record of what was said, what was decided, and what happens next.