Changelog

Recognition shouldn't wait for review season. We're introducing Shoutouts — a built-in way for teammates to celebrate wins, acknowledge great work, and build a culture of appreciation in real time, right inside Baxo.

Performance isn't just about scores on a quarterly cycle. Some of the most impactful moments happen between reviews — a teammate who catches a blocker before it becomes a crisis, someone who goes above and beyond to keep a project on track, or a colleague who consistently shows up with clarity when things get messy. Shoutouts give those moments a permanent home.

Too often, great work goes unnoticed simply because there was no easy place to capture it. By the time a performance review cycle rolls around, those moments are forgotten or hard to articulate. Traditional performance management tools focus almost entirely on structured evaluations and end-of-cycle reports, leaving a massive gap in how teams recognize and reinforce great behavior in the moment. Shoutouts fill that gap by making real-time employee recognition as easy as sending a message, while building a running record of the wins that define your team's culture over time.

• Give a shoutout to any teammate directly from the Shoutouts feed. No setup, no friction — just type your message and send it. Whether someone crushed a deadline, communicated exceptionally well under pressure, or simply made your week easier, Shoutouts give you a fast and meaningful way to say so.

• Tag a skill category like Quality or Communication to connect the recognition to a specific area of performance. This creates a richer, more structured picture of how your teammates show up over time and makes it easier to see patterns when review season arrives.

• React to shoutouts with emoji to amplify recognition and let teammates know their work is being seen by more than just one person. A single shoutout can turn into a team-wide moment of appreciation in seconds.

• Leave comments to add context, share your own experience working with that person, or build on the recognition with a specific example of your own.

• See all team recognition in one feed so nothing gets buried in a Slack thread or lost in an email chain. The Shoutouts feed is a living record of the moments that matter most.

Shoutouts are visible to the whole team, creating a shared feed of recognition that builds momentum and keeps morale high between performance cycles. Over time, the Shoutouts feed becomes one of the most honest reflections of how your team actually operates — who steps up under pressure, who communicates well across functions, and who consistently makes everyone around them better.

Research consistently shows that employee recognition is one of the strongest drivers of engagement and retention. Teams that celebrate wins regularly outperform those that don't. With Shoutouts, that kind of culture isn't something you have to build manually — it's built into the platform you're already using for performance management.

This is just the beginning for Shoutouts. We have a lot more planned around how real-time recognition connects to your broader performance data over time, so that the work your team does between cycles doesn't just live in a feed — it informs how growth is measured and rewarded.

Baxo now works beautifully on your phone. We've completely redesigned the mobile experience from the ground up, giving you a fast, clean, and intuitive way to stay connected to your performance and your team — wherever you are.

The original Baxo experience was built for desktop, which worked well for managers running performance cycles and reviewing AI-generated reports. But performance is something people think about all the time, not just when they're sitting at a desk. You might want to check your scores after a big project wraps up, send a shoutout while something fresh is on your mind, or quickly complete an evaluation before a meeting starts. The new mobile experience makes all of that possible without compromising on the quality or depth of the Baxo platform.

• A redesigned dashboard greets you with a personalized performance overview the moment you open the app. See your overall score, track how you're trending over time, and get a clear picture of where you stand — all above the fold, without any scrolling or digging.

• Performance trend controls let you filter your score history by 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, 1 year, or all time. Whether you want to see how a recent cycle impacted your trajectory or zoom out to understand your long-term growth, the controls are right there.

• Self Score tracking gives you a dedicated view of how your self-assessments compare to your overall performance score, helping you stay honest and self-aware throughout the year rather than only during formal review periods.

• A dedicated Evaluations tab makes it easy to see which evaluations are pending, in progress, or completed — so you never miss a deadline and can complete feedback quickly from wherever you are.

• The Shoutouts feed on mobile means you can give and receive recognition on the go. Spot a great moment? Give the shoutout right then, before the feeling fades.

• A clean, minimal navigation bar with Dashboard, Evaluations, Shoutouts, and Account tabs keeps everything one tap away without overwhelming the screen.

Setting up a performance cycle just got significantly faster and more powerful. We've rebuilt the cycle creation flow from the ground up to make it more intuitive, more flexible, and better suited to the way real teams run performance reviews.

The old flow got the job done, but it had friction. Steps felt disconnected, and teams with more complex structures — particularly those who needed manager reviews or upward feedback — had to work around limitations in the system. As Baxo has grown and we've learned more about how different organizations run performance management, it became clear that the creation flow needed to reflect that complexity without adding unnecessary burden to the people setting cycles up.

• A streamlined step-by-step setup walks administrators through the entire cycle creation process in a logical, linear sequence. Each step builds on the last, so nothing feels out of order or confusing.

• Select Members and Managers in one step rather than configuring participants across multiple screens. Choose who's being evaluated and who's responsible for reviewing results at the same time, making it easy to map your org structure without extra back-and-forth.

• Schedule your cycle with precision by setting a start date, end date, and deadline for evaluations. The system handles the timing logic automatically, sending notifications and reminders at the right moments so administrators don't have to manage it manually.

• AI Question Generation is now fully integrated into the flow. Once your cycle is configured, Baxo's AI automatically generates custom evaluation questions tailored to your team's context and the goals of the cycle. You don't have to write a single question from scratch.

• Support for manager reviews means managers can now be formally evaluated as part of a cycle, not just serve as reviewers. This is essential for organizations that want a complete picture of leadership effectiveness alongside individual contributor performance.

• Support for upward reviews allows team members to provide structured feedback on their managers, creating a two-way feedback culture that most traditional performance management tools don't support well. Upward feedback is one of the most valuable and underutilized inputs in performance management, and it's now a first-class part of the Baxo cycle.

• Automated notifications go out to all participants as soon as the cycle launches, so administrators don't have to chase anyone down or manually send reminders.

The updated flow reflects the full Baxo cycle lifecycle in one clear sequence: Create Cycle, Select Members and Managers, Schedule Cycle, AI Question Generation, Notifications Sent, Evaluations Completed, Review AI Report. Every step is intentional, and every step moves the team closer to the insights that actually matter.

For organizations that have struggled to get consistent participation in performance reviews, a well-structured and automated cycle creation process makes a measurable difference. When the setup is easy and the process is clear, people actually follow through.

Evaluation ratings just got a lot more meaningful. We've updated the rating scale across all Baxo evaluations to make scores clearer, more consistent, and more useful for both the people giving feedback and the people receiving it.

The old rating system used numbers, but numbers alone don't tell a story. A 3 out of 5 means something different to every person who gives it. Without shared definitions, scores become inconsistent across evaluators, and the resulting data loses much of its value. When you're trying to synthesize feedback from self-evaluations, peer reviews, and manager assessments into a single coherent picture of performance, inconsistency in how people interpret the scale is a serious problem.

The improved rating scale solves this by giving every number a name and every name a definition.

• 1 — Needs Development: Performance in this area falls below expectations and requires focused attention and improvement.

• 2 — Meets Expectations: Performance is solid and consistent. This person is reliably delivering what's expected of them in this area.

• 3 — Exceeds Expectations: Performance regularly goes above and beyond. This person isn't just meeting the bar — they're raising it.

• 4 — Sets a New Standard: Performance in this area is exceptional and sets the benchmark for what great looks like on the team.

Each rating also includes a short contextual description that appears below the selected score during an evaluation, reinforcing what the rating means in the moment of selection rather than requiring evaluators to remember definitions from a rubric they read once.

• A "No answer for this question" option is now available for every evaluation question. Sometimes a peer genuinely doesn't have enough visibility into a particular area to provide a meaningful rating. Rather than forcing a guess that skews the data, evaluators can now indicate that honestly — keeping results clean and trustworthy.

• Importance tags appear on each question to show evaluators which areas the cycle is prioritizing. Questions marked as High Importance carry more weight in the overall analysis, and seeing that label helps evaluators understand where to invest their attention and be most thoughtful.

• The comment field is available on every question, allowing evaluators to add written context to any rating they give. Comments are optional, but they're where some of the most valuable feedback lives — the specific examples and observations that turn a number into actionable insight.

• Keyboard-friendly navigation lets evaluators move through questions quickly using number keys to select ratings and Enter to advance, making the evaluation experience faster and more fluid for people who prefer not to use a mouse.

A well-designed rating scale is one of the most foundational elements of effective performance management. When evaluators share a common language for what scores mean, the data becomes more reliable, comparisons across team members become more valid, and the AI-generated reports Baxo produces become significantly more accurate and actionable. This update is an investment in the quality of every evaluation that runs on the platform going forward.