Sabina Bystrevskaia
  Info

Performance reviews and engagement surveys.

01
/ Intro

Reviews and surveys that work for the person who runs them and the person who answers.

Zelt needed performance reviews and engagement surveys inside its HR platform. I designed both from first concept to launch, working directly with the CEO and Head of Product.

02
/ Who it is for

One process, three people, three different jobs.

For HR this is the work itself: finding who is unhappy, who has a problem, where attention is needed. For an employee it is a chance to be heard — to rate their manager, give feedback on the work, ask questions, and learn how they can grow, how they are judged, and whether pay is reviewed. For a manager it runs both ways: feedback, motivation, and growth areas for the team, and feedback on how they are doing from their own manager and the team.

03
/ Building it

The people running it are HR, not researchers.

Their job is to help employees, not to write good questionnaires. So reviews and surveys share one fixed sequence and start from templates and a question library: HR chooses and adjusts instead of writing from a blank page. The goal was a useful result, not a filled-out form.

04
/ Questions

A table of averages doesn’t tell you where to look.

Every question carries a factor — engagement, leadership, management — so HR sees themes and where to focus, not just a long list of scores.

05
/ Trust

Honest answers depend on a promise people can believe.

To rate a manager or say what is not working, an employee has to trust the answer cannot be traced back. Anonymity is set per survey, with a threshold, so filters like department, gender, or tenure cannot unmask a small group. In reviews the sensitive moment is different: when results are released, and to whom.

06
/ Reading it

The hard part of feedback isn’t collecting it — it’s understanding what to do with it.

HR looks across the company for who needs attention and where to focus. A manager looks at how their team, and they themselves, are doing. Reviews put results next to benchmarks; surveys show participation, which questions move a chosen factor the most, and a heatmap that compares groups.

07 
/ Outcome

Shipped in 3 months. Still live today.

From first concept to working product — performance reviews, surveys, visibility settings, and results, all inside one system.



Zelt