For HR and administrators

This section covers what HR administrators can do.

Users

Manage everyone from /users. Add people one at a time with Invite User, or import a CSV (below).

Filters: search by name, email, employee # or job title, and filter by department, role, who they report to, classification and status. Department, Reports to and Classification each start with a No … option — No Department, No report, No classification — to find people missing one. "No report" includes people whose only manager has been archived. The counts at the top, the export and "select all" all follow the filters.

The person dialog: click anywhere on a person's row to open it — Start or Continue review, Add a goal, Add a note, their 1:1s, and Edit user at the bottom. The same dialog opens from a person's card on a department's People tab. It only offers what you're allowed to do for that person — Edit user is for HR.

Bulk edit: tick people (or Select all N matching these filters) to set their department, role, classification or reporting line in one go — replace their manager, add another, or remove one. Your own role is never changed.

You can export the list to Excel. The export honours your current filters and sort, and a file exported from here re-imports unedited.

Invitations: pending people have a per-person Invite/Resend button, or use Invite all pending (n), which emails 40 people every 10 minutes until the queue is drained.

Employee classifications are managed from the gear icon beside the Classification filter.

Importing people

Users → Import CSV takes a spreadsheet saved as CSV (up to 2 MB). Drop the file on the page or pick it; the row count shows straight away, then an upload bar and a processing bar while it runs.

Columns are matched loosely — case, spaces and punctuation don't matter, so an HR system's export usually works unedited:

Field	Headers it accepts
Name (required)	first_name / given_name with last_name / surname, or one name / full_name column
Email (required)	email, email_address
Employee #	employee_number, Employee #, emp #, employee_id
Job title	job_title, title
Role	role — employee, manager or hr
Department	department, dept, department_code — the name or the code
Classification	classification, employee_classification, class — the key or the label, any case
Reports to	reports_to, manager, supervisor, and their _email / _name forms

Reports to can be an email, an employee #, or a name written any way — "Dana Dean", "Dean, Dana", or a display name. A manager listed anywhere in the same file is found, above or below their reports. If a name matches two people, it isn't guessed: the row is flagged and asks for the email instead.

Update existing people (a checkbox on the import page) fills in details for people already on the roster — role, job title, department, classification, employee # and reporting line. Only what the row states changes: names are never overwritten, a blank cell never clears anything, and no invitation is sent. Without it, rows for existing people are skipped.

What's skipped, and why — each with a note in the results:

• an email that belongs to an archived person (restore them from the Archived tab instead);
• an email that appears twice in the file (the later row);
• a row with no first name or email, or an invalid email.

A department, classification or manager that doesn't match is left blank and reported — never guessed. An employee # someone else already has, a role that isn't employee/manager/hr, or a name or job title too long to store is noted too. The whole file is imported in one go: if something goes wrong part-way through, nothing is saved, and invitations are only sent once the import has succeeded.

The results

After an import, the People page shows the results above the list:

• Tiles — added, updated, skipped, invitations sent, and how many departments, classifications and managers matched.
• How to fix — one card per kind of problem, listing each value and how many rows had it ("Fine Arts" × 80). For a department, classification or manager that didn't match: create it (or add the manager), then re-import the same file with Update existing people ticked — or fix it now with the card's No Department / No classification / No report link, select all, and Bulk edit. The results stay above the list while you work through them.
• Every row — folded; opening it lists each row, problems first.

The results are kept for a week. Hide leaves a one-line "Last import" summary with View results; Dismiss clears it. Each HR admin sees only their own imports.

Archiving and deleting people

Archive is how someone leaves. They drop off every list and can't sign in, and everything they're part of — reviews, goals, notes, 1:1s — is kept. Archive from the ⋮ menu on their row, or several at once from the bulk bar; you can't archive yourself. The Archived tab lists them, and Restore brings them back.

Delete permanently is for mistakes, such as people imported by accident. It only appears on the Archived tab, per person or for everyone selected, and asks you to type DELETE to confirm. It only works for someone with nothing on record — no reviews, goals, notes, team notes, 1:1s, cheers, milestones or other history. Anyone with history is kept archived, and the message says what they have on record.

Review templates

On the Reviews page — and your /me home — HR admins get a gear menu (⚙️) just right of New Review, holding Manage cycles and Manage Templates.

Templates support rating scales with per-level rubrics, yes/no questions, short and long text questions, and section headers. Drag questions to reorder them.

Set which employee classifications each template applies to, and activate, deactivate, duplicate or delete templates.

Running reviews

Go to Reviews → New:

• Pick the employee and a template — one is suggested based on their classification. Anyone can be the subject, including managers and other HR, so peer and leadership reviews work the same way.
• Set the review period and due date. Periods are the cycles set up on the Cycle page's Manage cycles tab; set the cycle up there first if it doesn't exist yet.
• Add one or more reviewers, choosing one as primary — the primary reviewer also rates the employee's goals. Someone can't review themselves.

Emails go out automatically at each step: reviewers when assigned, the employee once all reviewers submit, and everyone gets the completed PDF. Upcoming and overdue reviews are chased with a weekly Monday digest to whoever's blocking, plus a dedicated reminder to the blocker and HR once past due.

Whether HR admins and/or managers may start reviews is set under Site settings → System Functions. A role that's switched off won't see the New Review button.

Started one by mistake? Open it and use Archive review at the foot of the page — a reason is required. Archiving removes it from everyone's lists, reports and reminder emails, and it stays visible to HR under the report's Archived filter. Completed or appealed reviews can't be archived, and archiving can't be undone.

Appeals

An appealed review is blocking — the employee can't sign until it's answered.

Whoever Settings names as the acknowledger (HR admins, the employee's manager, or both) gets two actions:

• Reopen for changes — unlocks the reviewers' forms so they can edit, and sends it back for sign-off once they resubmit.
• Respond without changes — requires a written response and returns it for sign-off as it stands.

Either way the employee is notified, there is no second appeal, and the whole exchange stays on the review and its PDF.

Reports

/reports/reviews shows review completion with filters (period, status including Archived, department and template), charts, and an xlsx export. Click a row to open that review.

Need the documents themselves? Tick the checkboxes beside completed reviews — the header checkbox selects all completed in the current filter — and press Download ZIP for their PDFs in one file.

The Goals report covers goal status across the organisation, with filters for period, status, department and manager, also exportable to xlsx.

Site settings

/settings/site has three tabs, each saving on its own:

Branding — site name, logo, login tagline, footer, and brand colours used for buttons and links.

System Functions — document storage (internal server or object storage; credentials are tested when you save); who can start reviews; whether employees may add their own goals; whether they may appeal instead of signing off; and who acknowledges appeals; whether 1:1s are used at all, and whether managers can draft them from meeting transcripts. The toggles all default on.

Notifications — turn past-due review reminder emails on or off. The due-date sequence always runs regardless.

Demo data

Every Strive site ships with a Demo Employee account carrying a completed review, goals with a progress journal, milestones and notes — a fully populated example of everything described here. Find it via Users or Reviews.

There is also a hosted demo at strive.standardop.com if you want to look around before rolling Strive out, without touching your own data.