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Peer reviews consist of two phases: nominations and feedback. This ensures employees give feedback to colleagues they’ve actually worked with.

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How peer reviews work

The peer review process unfolds in two distinct stages:

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Nomination phase

Windy prompts employees to nominate peers for review. Using existing work context around collaboration, Windy can suggest relevant peers based on:
  • Shared projects and meetings
  • Slack conversations and channels
  • Connected tool activity (Jira, GitHub, shared docs)
Employees can accept suggestions or nominate other colleagues. Once nominations are submitted, they determine who provides feedback to whom.

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Feedback phase

After nominations close, Windy opens peer feedback conversations. Each employee receives a Slack thread for each peer they’re reviewing. The conversation is interactive—employees respond to questions, and Windy asks follow-up questions to ensure feedback is specific and actionable. Windy follows up on vague responses to ensure feedback is specific and grounded in concrete examples.

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Visibility and privacy

The subject of peer feedback never sees what was written about them. Peer feedback goes into the Performance Review Packet for the subject’s manager, skip-levels, and cycle admins, who use it when drafting the manager review. For the full picture of who sees what — including how visibility applies to cycle admins and calibration committees — see Who sees what.

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Configuring peer reviews

When creating a performance review cycle, you configure the questions for peer feedback—the prompts Windy will guide employees through. Peer reviews support the same question types as all other review types:
  • Text questions — Open-ended written responses
  • Rating questions — Single-select ratings (e.g., 1-5 scale, Exceeds/Meets/Needs Improvement)
  • Yes/No questions — Boolean responses

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Creating questions

You configure questions directly in the cycle creation wizard when setting up the peer feedback stage. Example peer feedback questions:
  • What are this person’s greatest strengths when collaborating on projects?
  • Can you share a specific example of this person’s impact on a recent project or outcome?
  • What’s one area where this person could grow or improve?

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Best practices for questions

  • Keep it conversational — Write questions as if you’re asking them in person
  • Focus on specifics — Ask for examples, projects, or outcomes
  • Limit to 3-5 questions — Windy will follow up naturally based on responses
Windy is trained to ask follow-up questions if responses are vague, so you don’t need to include every possible follow-up in your question set.

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Scheduling and participants

When configuring the peer feedback stage:
  • Nomination schedule — Set when nominations open and when they’re due
  • Feedback schedule — Set when feedback conversations open and when they’re due
  • Who participates — Optionally filter to a subset of employees for this stage (or use the cycle-level filter)

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Editing responses

After completing peer feedback in Slack, employees can still edit their responses in the Windmill platform up until the deadline. Windy sends a link to the written feedback with full edit access.

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FAQs

Not at the moment. Windy encourages employees to nominate 2-5 peers, which keeps the volume of incoming review requests manageable in practice.
Yes. Any active member of your Windmill account can be nominated as a peer reviewer, even if they aren’t a participant in the cycle itself. This is useful for getting feedback from cross-functional collaborators—for example, a partner on another team who worked closely with the subject but isn’t being reviewed in this cycle.Once nominated, the peer receives the standard Slack prompt from Windy to provide feedback. Their feedback flows into the subject’s Performance Review Packet just like feedback from in-cycle nominees.
Yes. You can always nominate more peers at any time. Open the Peer Nominations tab in the Windmill platform and follow the Slack link to add additional peers.
Yes. After completing peer feedback in Slack, employees can still edit their responses in the Windmill platform up until the deadline.This allows employees to:
  • Refine answers after reflecting further
  • Add examples they remembered later
  • Adjust phrasing for clarity
When collecting feedback, Windy is trained to ask for more specific, constructive input. If responses are vague, Windy follows up with prompts focused on work products and outcomes rather than personalities.For example, when collecting peer feedback, Windy might ask:
  • “What project or outcome are you referring to?”
  • “Can you share a specific example of their impact on a recent project?”
  • “In which ways did they make the process smoother?”
By encouraging feedback focused on work products rather than personalities, Windmill ensures that performance reviews are more actionable, fair, and grounded in reality.
Peer feedback goes to the subject’s manager, skip-levels, and cycle admins, and is included in the Performance Review Packet. Peer feedback is never shared with the subject.Managers synthesize peer feedback with other signals (self review, upward feedback, system data) when drafting reviews. See Who sees what for the full breakdown.
Yes. When creating a cycle, you configure the questions for peer feedback. These are the prompts Windy uses to guide the conversation in Slack. Peer reviews support text, rating, and yes/no question types.Questions are fully customizable to match your company’s review process.Learn more in Cycles.
Nominators are still prompted to provide feedback on the departed employee. The peer feedback slot does not disappear when someone is archived—their historical record, including peer feedback collected about them, is preserved in Windmill.This ensures cycle data remains complete and that managers and skip-levels still receive the context they need when reviewing the departed employee’s tenure.
If a deadline passes and peer feedback is still not submitted:
  • The status changes to overdue in the tracking views
  • Cycle admins can see who’s behind in the All Employees view
  • The employee can still submit after the deadline
Windmill sends automated reminders before and on the deadline to minimize late submissions.