Getting started

Most review tools ask you to fill in a form from memory once or twice a year. Growth Record works differently: it puts the expectations for someone's level in front of both people while they write, asks for a real example whenever a rating goes off the middle of the scale, and keeps a running plan and evidence log going between reviews instead of starting from nothing each time. The result is a review conversation specific enough that both people could defend it a year later.

Three things make that possible: a framework (what good looks like, by level and by area of work), a review cycle where a manager and an employee each assess independently and then meet, and a plan the two of you keep between reviews. None of it is computed. No scores, no rankings — the tool structures the conversation, and the judgment stays with the people having it.

#The three roles

Everyone in a workspace is invited as an employee, but three roles can sit on one account at once. Being a manager doesn't take your own employee access away, and admins keep their own record too if someone reviews them. What you see depends on which of these apply to you:

• Employee — you have your own record: a self-assessment to write, a plan to work from, evidence you or your manager have logged, and the expectations for your level.
• Manager — you run reviews for the people who report to you, and see the same things about them that they see about themselves.
• Admin — you own the framework, the people list, the teams, and the workspace's settings and billing. You never see what's written inside a review.

Growth Record calls these three lenses perspectives. If more than one applies to you, they show up as separate entries in the sidebar: My Growth, My Reports, Organization. See Roles & perspectives for how they fit together.

For the whole arc from one side rather than a tour of the screens, read As an employee, As a manager or As an admin. They link out to the pages below for the detail.

#Setting up a new workspace

Three things put your organization into the product. Organization → Getting started walks through them in order, and they're all an admin's own work, so the list finishes without waiting on anyone else:

1. Create your teams. From Organization → Teams. A team is a name, a team lead, and its members, and teams can nest. Naming the team lead here is what gives everyone you add a reporting line, which is why it comes first. See Teams.
2. Invite your people. From Organization → People, by email or CSV import. Pick the team someone joins as you invite them and their reporting line arrives with them. Everyone arrives as an employee; manager and admin access is granted afterwards from the same table.
3. Set who reports to whom. Anyone who didn't arrive through a team, or who reports to someone other than their team's manager, gets a manager set directly on their record. Reviews run along reporting lines rather than team membership, and being given a report is what makes someone a manager here.

Two more things have to happen before a review can open, and neither is on that list:

• Decide what people are assessed against. Either publish a framework — from a built-in starter, a markdown document you already keep, a few guided questions, or an empty grid — or skip it and have managers write expectations for one person at a time. Nothing is published, and nobody is assessed against it, until you say so. See The framework.
• Managers place their reports on a track and level. This is the one step an admin can't do: the manager sets the level, because they're the one about to assess against it. Organization → People shows what each person is assessed against and lets you filter to whoever is still unplaced.

#Running your first review

Go to My Reports and use Start a review. You'll pick the person, confirm the framework version and level they're about to be assessed against, name the review, and set a conversation date — nothing is enforced on it, it's just what you're both aiming for. Starting the review emails the employee that one has opened, naming the level but nothing else, since nothing else has been written yet. From there, see Reviews and Assessments.

#Reading your own record

Go to My Growth. If a review is open, your assessment is waiting there. Otherwise you'll find your plan, your evidence log, your review history, and the expectations for your level, all in one place. See My Growth.