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👋 Ahoy there, explorer! This Performance Management guide is for HR admins and other curious minds wanting a peek at the maths behind scored reviews. It’s unlisted, so it won't show up in our help centre. You’ll only find it again via direct URL or buttons in related docs.
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Overview
At first glance, review scores in Indigo’s Performance Management look like simple percentages or marks out of 100. In reality, they’re built up in three layers:
Individual question scores that feed into ...
Section scores, which then combine into ...
The global performance score (the total).
Once you factor in all the customisation options—such as score weighting ⚖️, the number of questions in each section, and whether a question appears for the manager, the employee, or both—the calculations get a little more intricate.
Behind the scenes, Indigo uses some sturdy formulae 🏋️ to keep everything shipshape, logical, and fair. And if you’ve found your way to this article, you’re clearly feeling calculation-curious ... so let’s take a look!
Calculating Global Performance Scores
The goal of scored reviews is to produce a final score that shows:
How well an employee is performing according to their manager.
Whether this aligns with the employee’s own self-evaluation.
Using its built-in performance scoring calculator, Indigo calculates two global performance scores for each review:
Employee’s self-evaluation global performance score.
Managers’ global performance score evaluating the employee.
👁️ Global performance score access: Only the manager can see the employee's self-evaluation, becoming available once the review enters Appraisal Stage. Both are stored for future reference, however.
Establishing the Review's Mathematical Structure
Basic Building Blocks: Sections, Questions, and Weights
The essential elements for calculating a global performance score are questions, sections, and the weights assigned to each. Every scored performance review is built in layers:
Sections group related questions (for example, Impact and Growth).
Section weights determine how important each section is to the final score.
For example: Impact section = 2 | Growth section = 1.
Question weights determine how important each question is within its section.
For example: In the Growth section, a question on efficiency might have a weight of 2, whilst a question on communication may be weighted 3.
Percentage Conversions
Indigo converts each section and question weight into percentages. These percentages will then be combined to give each question its overall importance in the global performance score.
Converting Section Weights into Percentages
Divide each section's weight by the sum of all section weights in the template.
Sum of section weights: 2 + 1 = 3
Impact: 2 / 3 ≈ 0.6667
Growth: 1 / 3 ≈ 0.3333
Multiply each result by 100 to get a percentage.
Impact: 0.6667 × 100 ≈ 66.67%
Growth: 0.3333 × 100 ≈ 33.33%
📑 Note: Together, these add up to 100%.
Converting Question Weights into Percentages Within Each Section
Divide each question's weight by the total weight of all questions in that section.
Sum of question weights in the Growth section: 2 + 3 = 5
Efficiency question: 2 / 5 ≈ 0.4
Communication question: 3 / 5 ≈ 0.6
Then multiply by 100.
Efficiency question: 0.4 × 100 ≈ 40%
Communication question: 0.6 × 100 ≈ 60%
📑 Note: Together, these add up to 100%.
Combining Section and Question Weights
To find each question’s true impact on the overall global performance score, Indigo multiplies the question’s weight percentage (within its section) by the section’s weight percentage (within the entire review):
In the case of the ongoing example:
Growth section ≈ 33.33%
Efficiency question weight percentage ≈ 40%
Therefore: 40% × 33.33% ≈ 13.33%
Communication question weight percentage ≈ 60%
Therefore: 60% × 33.33% ≈ 20%
🏆 You’re still with us ... great! We’re halfway there.
What Indigo will have calculated so far is the maximum possible points a respondent can earn by scoring full marks on each question. In other words, using all of the steps above, you’ve determined how much each question can contribute to the global performance score.
If respondent Anthony scores full marks on the Efficiency question, he earns 13.33 out of the review's total 100 points.
If he also aces the Communication question, he adds another 20 points.
Together, that’s approximately 33.33 points, which is the total possible for the Growth section and 33.33% of the overall score so far.
The review's remaining 66.67 points are distributed among the questions in the Impact section, which is weighted twice as much as Growth.
Factoring in User Answers
So far, Indigo has established the potential maximum scores, essentially creating a mathematical framework 🗺️ to understand how actual performance answers will be processed once reviews are published. The next step is for Indigo to incorporate the actual responses provided by users—such as Anthony and his manager—for all numeric questions that have a weight greater than zero.
Each numeric question is scored within a defined range—such as 1 to 5 stars, a 1 to 10 rating scale, or multiple-choice answers ranked by how desirable the selected option is. These responses generate a raw score reflecting performance.
Indigo then converts these raw scores into percentages. Each percentage is multiplied by the question’s computed weight percentage (calculated in the previous section). Finally, all these weighted scores are summed to produce Anthony’s self-evaluation score and his manager’s global performance score.
Converting Raw Answer Scores to Percentages
To convert a question's earned score into a percentage:
Subtract the minimum score from the actual score.
Subtract the minimum score from the maximum score.
Divide the result of the first subtraction by the result of the second subtraction.
Multiply the quotient by 100 to get the percentage.
(7 - 1) / (10 - 1) = 6 / 9 = 66.67%
📑 Note 1: You might wonder why a 7 out of 10 doesn’t simply equal 70%. That’s because, unlike school tests where the minimum grade can be zero, most Performance Management questions have a minimum score of 1. Applying the formula above means slightly more precise percentages.
📑 Note 2: Some questions use an inverted scoring scale, where the lowest number (1) represents the best performance and the highest number (like 5 or 10) the worst. In such cases, the formula above is tweaked slightly:
Applying Weights
Once the question score percentage is known, Indigo multiplies it by the question’s overall computed weight (which already combines the section weight and the question’s relative weight within that section).
For example, in our ongoing hypothetical scenario:
Growth section weight ≈ 33.33% of the total review score
Efficiency question max score ≈ 40% of Growth → 33.33% × 40% = 13.33%
Communication question max score ≈ 60% of Growth → 33.33% × 60% = 20%
If Anthony scored 7 out of 10 (which we calculated earlier as 66.67%) on both questions:
Efficiency: 66.67% × 13.33% ≈ 8.89% towards his global performance score
Communication: 66.67% × 20% ≈ 13.33% towards his global performance score
Together, these add up to 22.22%. This means Anthony’s score for the Growth section is 22.22 out of 33.33 possible marks, and his global performance score is 22.22 out of 100 so far.
🏆 Almost done ..: To calculate the remainder of Anthony’s global performance score, Indigo applies the same process to the remaining section(s). Finally, it sums them all up, resulting in the global performance score.
🧠 Reminder: Indigo's one heavy lifter ... 🏋️ it computes this entire process twice per review per employee:
Once using the employee’s answers to produce the self-evaluation global score.
Once using the manager’s answers to generate the official global performance score.
Also remember that only the manager can see 👁️ the employee's self-evaluation, which becomes available once the review enters Appraisal Stage. Both are stored for future reference, however.
💡Further reading: For more on how these scores are displayed in Indigo, or to learn how to build a template designed for scored reviews, check out: