Nailted gives you the flexibility to create fully customized rating scales tailored to your team’s needs. You can define each scale option with your own label, ensuring it matches the language and context that make the most sense for your organization. Additionally, you can add a personalized description for each option, which will appear as a tooltip when someone hovers over it—providing extra clarity, guidance, or context for how the scale should be interpreted. This way, your team members can respond with greater confidence and consistency.
What type of scales are supported?
Choosing the right scale in a performance review ensures ratings are accurate, fair, consistent, and actionable. The correct scale:
- Captures performance detail without oversimplifying.
- Reduces bias and confusion for reviewers
- Provides clear feedback employees can act on
- Allows fair comparison across employees.
Nailted offers three different types of rating scales to choose from: 0-10, 1-3, 1-4, and 1-5. Each scale comes with its own unique advantages and disadvantages, which can impact how users respond and how you interpret the results. To help you make an informed decision about which scale best fits your specific needs and goals, we’ll explore the pros and cons of each option in detail below.
- Scale 1-3: This type of scale is recommended for companies that are just beinning to implement formal evaluation system and prioritize a gradual adoption process.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- Simplicity and ease of use, since it is easy to understand for both evaluators and employees.
- Consistency in ratings, because having fewer categories reduces subjectivity and variation in evaluator's criteria.
- Softens the differences between "poor" and "good", which can be useful in environments with high interpersonal sensitivity.
- Disadvantages of using this scale:
- Provides little precission or differenciation, as it does not allow for distinguishing nuances in performance, and many emplyees end up in the middle category.
- Makes development decisions more difficult, as it complicates identifying those who excel or need more support.
- Risk of central tendency bias, since evaluators tend to choose the middle category to avoid conflict or extreme judgments.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- Scale 1-4: This scale is recommended for organizations that want to push clear differentiation and avoid neutral ratings.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- Eliminates neutrality as it forces managers to take a stand—either above or below expectations.
- Reduces "middle bias" as it encourages more honest differentiation between high and low performers.
- Supports clearer decisions and makes it easier to distinguish top talent from those needing improvement.
- Disadvantages of using this scale:
- It may be too rigid as managers can feel pressured to rate someone more harshly or favorably than they truly feel.
- It is difficult to show progress within performance levels (e.g., improving within “meets expectations”).
- May increase disagreement as employees might resist ratings if they feel their performance is in between.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- Scale 1-5: This scale is best for balanced performance reviews that include room for average performers without forced ratings.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- It has a neutral midpoint which allows managers to express “meets expectations” clearly, which is useful for average or consistent performers.
- This scale is commonly used, well understood, and easy to interpret.
- It has a balanced detail which is enough range to show variation without overwhelming raters.
- Disadvantages of using this scale:
- Managers often give a rating of “3” to avoid the discomfort of addressing performance issues directly.
- It can provide limited differentiation as it still compresses performance into too few buckets, especially in large teams.
- Scores can be inflated as ratings often skew high due to social pressure or lack of training.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- Scale 0-10: This scale is ideal for detailed monitoring, making comparisons, or tying scores to compensation and promotion decisions.
- Advantages of using this scale:
- It provides high granularity which enables subtle distinctions in performance, ideal for comparative or merit-based systems.
- It is useful for tracking changes over time, year over year.
- It is easier to benchmark, making it easier to compare across teams or departments.
- Disadvantages of using this scale:
- It can lead to inconsistent interpretations as one manager’s 7 could be another’s 9—harder to calibrate without clear rubrics.
- Too many options can slow down the process or feel overwhelming which can cause fatigue over the participant.
- Minor score differences (e.g., 8 vs. 9) might encourage over-analysis and be given too much weight without real meaning.
- Advantages of using this scale:
Each performance review may require a different type of rating scale, depending on the specific objective of the review. For example, a scale designed to assess technical skills might not be ideal for evaluating leadership potential or teamwork. Always take into account what you want to achieve with the review—whether it’s identifying development needs, making promotion decisions, or recognizing achievements—before deciding which scale to use.