Admin members on Peakon have the ability to make changes to attributes, segments, and employee records. For all other users with access to a dashboard, permissions will vary based on what access permissions the account admin has granted certain users.
If you do not have access to update employees, you will need to send your request to your Peakon administrator who can help you with this.
This article will cover:
- Updating employee or team details
- Making retroactive changes
- Backdating best practice
- Troubleshooting incorrectly uploaded data
Updating employee or team details
After adding your employees to the system, it is possible to edit their details and teams to reflect real-life changes for that employee. This could be their email address, department they are part of, their last day, and more. These changes can also be done on team level, by updating all employees within a certain segment.
When an employee is moved into a new segment, their current scores will automatically move with them, in order for there to be actionable data in the new segment. Their comments will not move with them, as this is considered to be sensitive data and therefore remains in the previous segment.
Updating employees individually
To update an employee:
- Go Administration, then Employees
- Find the employee you wish to update and click on their profile
- Find the field you wish to edit, make the update and click on Save changes
Updating employees in bulk
- Go to Administration, then Employees
- Find the employees you wish to update either by using the filters on the left side or manually selecting them
- Click the green Edit button to open the bulk edit page
- Find the field you wish to edit, make the update and click on Save changes
Updating all employees within a segment
On Peakon, it’s possible to make bulk changes to employee records at segment level, whether it involves updating all employees within the segment or moving them to another segment.
- Go Administration, then Employees
- Find the segment you wish to update either by using the filters on the left side and selecting all employees, or by switching your context to that segment, then selecting all employees
- Click the green Edit button to open the bulk edit page
- Find the field you wish to edit, make the update and click on Save changes
Updating employees via a data upload
Admittedly, the easiest way to make changes to employees details or segments is via an employee data upload. This allows you to make changes to multiple employees across different teams at the same time, and simply re-upload the data into the system.
When working with existing data, it is advisable to first export the current data and update it from there. This is because when importing the file back into the system, the system looks for a match to the unique identifier (email address or employee ID) within the Peakon account.
Making retroactive changes
By default, all changes are effective from now onwards. Employees can also be backdated to populate the segment dashboard with historical survey results. Without backdating, only the current scores are moved to the new segment. With backdating, all historical scores and comments are moved to the new segment.
The typical uses for this feature are:
- A new manager had already started managing the selected employees before a survey went out
- Assigning a manager to a specific team who mistakenly had no manager assigned
- Two departments/segments have merged together, and there is a need for a consolidated view of survey responses
Backdating changes is made under Administration > Employees as this entails updating the employee records associated with a specific segment.
It is possible to backdate an employee to the Start (the date their employment started), or to a Custom date. We recommend using the Custom date option and backdating it to a specific date (eg. the day the change happened, or the day before a specific survey launched).
Backdating an individual employee
It is possible to backdate attribute data on an individual employee. To do this, simply click the small clock icon above the field you wish to edit for that employee, and select when it should be valid from.
Please note, backdating one employee should only be done if they were in the wrong segment by mistake. Doing this can can be a risk to anonymity, as it would automatically bring over historic scores and comments just for that one employee, which could become a risk to their anonymity.
Backdating a segment
When making changes to segments, it is possible to ensure the changes have a retrospective effect by backdating the employees. It is also possible to retrospectively backdate employees in a segment that they are already in, to further the amount of historical data within the segment.
In the below example, the Content Marketing and Community Marketing teams have merged and survey data needs to be moved to the Marketing department. To ensure that this change has a retrospective effect, it also needs to be backdated to align historic data with the correct department.
- Go Administration, then Employees
- Find the segment you wish to update either by using the filters on the left side - in this case we click the Department attribute and select Content Marketing and Community Marketing
- Select all employees (click the Select all button if there are more than 50)
- Click the green Edit button to open the bulk edit page
- Find the attribute you are updating (in this case Department), and choose a new segment, if necessary
- Click the small clock icon to bring up the backdating options
- Choose from when this change should be valid from
- Save your changes
Backdating through an employee data upload
It is also possible to backdate via an employee data upload.
- Go to Administration and then Employees
- Click on the Import option
- When importing your file, tick the Set valid from box to set a retrospective date from when your changes should be valid from
Best practices for backdating
The three main things to remember when it comes to backdating are:
- Avoid backdating employees to a time that does not reflect reality
- When backdating, opt for the 'custom date' option and backdate the employee to the day before a specific survey date
- Backdating can be a risk to anonymity, especially when only backdating a small group of people
Considerations
- Higher survey frequency will likely reduce the need to backdate since employee records are frequently being updated
- When using only a small set of attributes it is always possible to add more attributes later and backdate their values to populate the new segments retrospectively
- Backdating will not automatically recalculate strengths & priorities and highlighted segments as these are calculated at the end of the survey round, however a recalculation can be requested by contacting the support team (support@peakon.com)
Scenario: new manager taking over a team
It is generally not recommended to backdate historical results to the start of time when a new manager takes over a team. This is because the feedback may not be relevant or actionable to them, and it could contain sensitive information that was intended for the previous reporting lines. Furthermore, these old scores will also be included in the new manager's dashboard even though they are not reflecting the new manager's efforts.
The workaround:
- Share the old manager's dashboard with the new manager using the sharable dashboard feature.
- Download powerpoint presentation from the old manager's dashboard which contains a summary of scores, topics, actions etc.
- If the new manager also needs the old comments, they can export the comments from the old manager's dashboard
- To gain full dashboard access to the old manager's results, consider adding the new manager to the old manager's segment. That way the new manager will have full access to the old scores without needing to backdate anything.
Troubleshooting incorrectly uploaded data
Imagine that you uploaded a CSV file containing a number of employees who were reporting to the wrong manager on the file. There were two survey rounds that went out before the mistake was spotted.
Backdating the affected employee records to reflect the correct manager from the day the CSV file was uploaded, or to a date before the two survey rounds went out will place their survey results into the correct segments.
Some suggestions:
- Try to establish the exact date the data was uploaded incorrectly. If it's a small change that can be easily rectified from the employee page using the filters and backdate option, this option is advisable. Backdate the change to the exact date the error was uploaded into Peakon.
- Backdating will place survey scores into different segments, so knowing the exact date the "error" was uploaded to Peakon or the dates of the affected survey rounds will allow you to backdate the change to a date that precedes the affected survey rounds. That way you are able to place the survey results that came through into the correct segments.
- For larger issues, you can backdate via a CSV file upload. Backdating via a CSV file upload means that all the data on the file will be backdated. Where possible, isolate the data to only include the data that needs changing on the file i.e. removing unnecessary columns and rows. The employee ID or email address, fist and last names, and the column/s containing the attribute values that need backdating should suffice.
Article: Adding employees manually
Article: Adding and updating employee records via CSV file
Article: Setting the employee timezone and language preferences via an Excel import
Article: Sharing your dashboard's results
Article: Downloading a presentation of your dashboard results in PowerPoint
Article: Viewing and exporting comments
Article: Granting segment access to managers
Article: Key drivers of engagement: priorities and strengths
Article: Review your highlighted segments