The Grid (most common type is the 9-Grid) is a widely recognized talent management tool designed to help organizations assess and develop their workforce more effectively.

With this tool, organizations can take a structured approach to identifying high-potential employees, addressing development needs, and ensuring that talent decisions align with business goals, and in turn, enhance workforce planning, leadership development, and long-term organizational success.

Grids commonly consider current employee performance as well as the potential for future growth. It tends to focus on two key areas:

In the sections below, you will see how to Create and Edit Grids, as well as collect performance data, filtering and sorting of the data, and more.

Creating a Grid is simple, first, navigate to Admin > Journeys > New Journey > Insights.

Here, you will see the option to Create a Grid. Click + Create grid.

Here, you can see all the options available. First, you will need to give your Grid a name. For both the X-axis and Y-axis, you can choose the number of Rating Steps. Manage this by sliding the slider and increase or decrease the number of grading steps accordingly. You can change the Rating Labels by clicking on them and replacing the text.

Notice how the Grid in the "Name the Boxes" section changes size depending on the number of Rating Steps you choose. In the current implementation, we only support up to 4x4 Grids. Keep in mind, you can name the boxes whatever you want to suit your needs.

At the bottom of the Grid modal, Admins can decide whether Managers are allowed to calibrate direct reports ratings by toggling ON/OFF the setting "Enable manager calibration".

Only when turned ON, will Managers be able to rate or change existing rating of their direct reports outside of the Journey.

Once you have completed the Grid, click Create.

In case you need to edit or delete your Grid, click the three dots (...) in the top right, and click Edit or Delete.

Keep in mind, that if deleted, it is not possible to restore it.

After the Grid has been created, Admins have the ability to connect the Grid with Rating Scales in a Journey Template and start collecting data. Click to Edit the Journey Template you want to add the Grid into, then add a Rating Scale. Once added, click the Gear, and here you can choose to link the Rating Scale to a Grid. Click the Link to grid option, and you will see the X and Y axis' you created in the Insights tab, select one then add it to the Template.

Once added to the Journey Template, you will see an indicator showing it is a part of a Grid. If you need to unlink it, click the Gear icon then select the Unlink option.

You can add a second Rating Scale, and then add the other axis to it. Keep in mind that you can only add one of each axis to a Template.

Once the Journey is created and assigned, depending on the settings, both Admins, Managers and Employees can get access to rate Employees respectively. Focusing on the Admin perspective, you must go to Performance > Journeys > Insights > Grid.

Here, Admins will have visibility of the data on the Insights page.

If the Employees and/or Managers have been granted access to calibrate ratings, the Admin will see the data populate immediately in the Grid on the Insights page once the respective Journey step has been completed. If any Employees are missing a rating, Admins can manually calibrate them as illustrated both above and below:

In the Grid table, Admins will find two Views to toggle between in the top right. By default, you will see the Percentage (%) view, but clicking the toggle will bring you to the Employee view.

Percentage (%) View:

Employee View:

You can click any user in the Admin view to change their ratings if needed:

There are some filtering options in the Employees section of the page, click Filter and see the options below:

You are able to filter based on Manager, Progress, and Status. Any of the filtering options you choose will affect both the Grid as illustrated above and the list of Employees as illustrated below. Additionally, you can sort via Progress and Status.

Clicking the Download button will download a Journey overview report with a new tab called "Grid". This will show the following information:

You will see data for:

Columns F and G will show the corresponding name of the X and Y axis you created, and column H will show the rating based on the scale and what you chose to name the Grid boxes.

Managers can navigate to Teams & People > Journeys and click the Details button of a Journey configured with a Grid. Here, the Manager can (1) review the Employee list or (2) click to open the Grid visualization.

In the Employee list illustrated below, Managers can quickly compare the Employee Performance to other assigned Employees in the small Grid indicator.

Clicking the Grid button will open the Grid visualization allowing you to view the Grid in full. If the Manager calibration is toggled ON in the Grid settings, the Manager will see a Calibration button in the bottom of the Grid visualization. By clicking this button, the Manager will have access to rate and/or change the rating.

If the Manager calibration is toggled OFF in the Grid settings, the Manager will not have access to Calibrate their Employees. In this case, the only way for a Manager to rate their Employees, is by opening the Journey template. Thus, they will still be able to evaluate their Employees, but they will be prohibited from doing Calibrations outside of the Journey template.