Reviewing an employee who changed manager part-way through the year

A team moves under a new director in March. In November the review cycle opens, and the new manager has to write up twelve months of work, seven weeks of which they actually saw. The previous manager has moved to another division and is busy. The employee has spent the year doing good work for an organisation that is about to forget most of it.

This happens on every reorganisation, every promotion and every resignation, and it is the most common way a year of evidence disappears. This article covers who should write the review, what has to be handed over, what should not be handed over at all, and how to rate a period you did not witness. It describes the position in Great Britain and the UK and is general information, not legal advice.

The handover problem is structural rather than personal. See how New Dynamics multi-manager reviews keep one record of a person's work when the reporting line moves.

Decide who owns the review, before anything else

Three models work. Pick one deliberately rather than letting the deadline pick for you.

The current manager owns it, with written input from the predecessor. This is the right default in most cases. The person who owns the next twelve months should own the conversation about them: the objectives, the development plan, the pay recommendation and the rating all point forward. What they do not own is the evidence for the months before they arrived, which has to come from the previous manager in writing.

Split by period. Where the change fell near the middle of the year, the previous manager writes up the period they managed as a closed section, and the current manager writes their own period plus the overall summary. The employee sees both. This is more work and more honest, and it suits long cycles and senior roles.

Written jointly. Both managers draft, one meeting, one agreed rating. Reserve this for the cases where the split is close to even and the two assessments disagree, because that disagreement is information and should be resolved before the employee hears it, not during the meeting.

What does not work is either extreme: the new manager writing the whole year from impressions formed in six weeks, or the previous manager writing the whole thing because "they knew them better". The second is the more tempting error, and it hands the next year's objectives to somebody who will not be there to support them.

The handover pack: six things that must move

Do this in the first fortnight after the change. A handover done in review week is a memory test, and the previous manager has usually stopped answering emails by then.

1. The objectives as they were agreed, with their dates and any amendments. Not the headline, the wording.
2. Any ratings already given, and the evidence behind them. A rating without its evidence is a number the new manager cannot defend and should not repeat.
3. Notes from one-to-ones. Acas treats the written record as part of the job, saying "it's important to keep a written record of what is discussed" and that it should be shared with the employee afterwards. Those records are the handover.
4. Anything promised. Training, a secondment, a review of pay at a certain point, a move after a project ends. Unwritten promises die with the reporting line, and the employee remembers every one of them.
5. Any live performance issue, and which kind it is. Acas separates capability, "someone's ability to do their job", from conduct, "someone's behaviour at work", and says "what kind of problem it is affects how employers should respond". A new manager who inherits "there have been some issues" with no classification is likely to respond wrongly, and will certainly respond late.
6. What has already been said to the employee. This is the one most often skipped. If the previous manager raised a concern verbally in July, the employee is expecting it to appear in the review. If they praised something, the employee is expecting that too.

What should not be handed over

A team change is not a reason for a new manager to receive a person's whole file. The ICO lists "appraisal or performance review records" as one kind of employment record alongside sickness and injury records, disciplinary and grievance records, interview notes and occupational health material. They are not one object, and they do not all travel together.

Its guidance says employment records must "only be accessed, altered, disclosed or deleted by those who are authorised to do so", giving as an example "ensuring that access to employment records systems is limited to HR staff only, and that managers only have access to the information they need to meet their obligations". The data minimisation principle sits behind it: information held must be "adequate, relevant, and limited to what you need for your purposes".

In practice that means the performance record moves with the reporting line, while sickness absence detail, occupational health reports, grievance history and anything a colleague said in confidence stay with HR. If a new manager needs to know that an adjustment is in place, they need the adjustment, not the diagnosis behind it.

The verbal version matters as much as the written one. A handover conversation that opens with an opinion of each person, delivered before the new manager has met any of them, installs the previous manager's judgement as the starting point for the next year. Hand over evidence and leave the conclusions to be re-earned.

Ask the employee first

The one person who was present for the entire period is the employee. When a manager has changed, their self-assessment stops being a formality and becomes the spine of the review.

Ask for six things in writing, a fortnight before the meeting:

• What they committed to at the start of the period, in their own words.
• What they delivered, with links or examples a stranger could verify.
• What changed: priorities dropped, work added, projects stopped mid-flight.
• Who else saw the work closely enough to comment on it.
• What they were told at the time, by whom, and whether anything was promised.
• What they want from the next period.

Then check the claims rather than accepting or dismissing them. Two or three short conversations with named colleagues will settle most of a year, and our guide to manager performance covers how to gather that input without turning it into a popularity contest.

Rating a year you did not see

• Rate the evidence, not the relationship. Six weeks of a good working relationship is not performance data, and neither is six weeks of friction.
• Do not reset the clock. If an improvement process was already running, it continues from where it got to. Starting again looks generous and is not: it costs the employee the progress they had already made, and it leaves the organisation managing the same issue for twice as long.
• Do not rate down for the gap. Where evidence genuinely does not exist, that is the handover's failure, not the employee's. Record what was assessed and over what period, and say plainly that an earlier period could not be evidenced.
• Narrow the period if you have to. An honest review of four months beats an invented review of twelve.
• Calibrate. Compare the rating against peers before it is final, because a manager new to a team has no internal benchmark yet and will usually anchor on whoever they met first.

Acas also says objectives "should be fair and reflect the employee's usual tasks and workload". A manager who arrives mid-year and immediately replaces the objectives has to decide whether the year is judged against the old set, the new set or both, and the employee should be told which before they are measured against it.

Three traps

The reset. New manager arrives, changes the objectives in month seven, then rates the full twelve months against objectives that existed for five. If the objectives change mid-cycle, close the old ones with a short written assessment and start the new ones from that date.

The clean slate that is not clean. A documented concern is left out of the handover because the new manager "should form their own view", then reappears at the review as a surprise. For the employee, the first they hear of a problem is a rating, which is exactly what a review process exists to prevent.

The inherited verdict. The predecessor's summary becomes the review. This is how a single bad quarter follows someone for years, and it is also how a comfortable favourite stays comfortable. Inherit the evidence, write your own conclusion.

Short cycles make all three traps smaller, because less time passes between the work and the assessment of it. Our guide to performance review frequency covers how to choose a rhythm, and a handover is a good moment to shorten it.

Frequently asked questions

Who should write a performance review when the employee changed manager?

Usually the current manager, because they own the objectives, development and decisions for the next period. The previous manager supplies written evidence for the months they managed rather than the verdict. Where the change fell mid-year, splitting the write-up by period and sharing both sections with the employee is cleaner, and where the two assessments disagree it is worth drafting the review jointly and settling the disagreement before the meeting.

What should a manager hand over about their team when they leave?

The agreed objectives with their dates, any ratings already given and the evidence behind them, notes from one-to-ones, anything that was promised, any live performance issue with its classification as capability or conduct, and what has already been said to each person. Acas advises keeping a written record of performance discussions and sharing it with the employee, so most of this should already exist.

Can a new manager see an employee's old performance reviews?

Generally yes, where they need them to manage the person. The ICO says access to employment records should be limited to those authorised, and that managers should only have access to the information they need to meet their obligations. Performance records normally qualify. Sickness detail, occupational health reports and grievance history usually do not, and should stay with HR. This is general information, not legal advice.

How do you rate someone you have only managed for a few months?

Use the evidence rather than the relationship: the employee's self-assessment with verifiable examples, the written record from the previous manager, and short conversations with colleagues who saw the work. Where an earlier period cannot be evidenced, say so and state the period your assessment actually covers. Calibrating against colleagues before the rating is final matters more than usual, because a new manager has no internal benchmark yet.

Should a new manager restart an existing performance improvement process?

No. It continues from the point it reached, with the same expectations and timescales, and the new manager should read the record before the next meeting rather than after it. Restarting looks generous but discards the progress the employee has already made and extends the period they spend under scrutiny.

What if the previous manager has left the organisation entirely?

Work from what was written down, and be explicit about the limits. Use the objectives on file, any completed reviews, the employee's own account with evidence attached, and colleague input. Then record which period you assessed and which you could not. A review that names its own gaps is defensible. One that quietly fills them is not.

Your next step: fix the handover, not the review

1. Write down which ownership model your organisation uses by default, and put it in the manager guidance before the next cycle opens.
2. Make the handover pack a checklist with six items and attach it to every internal move, promotion and leaver process.
3. Set a two-week deadline for handover after any reporting-line change, and make HR the backstop when a manager has already gone.
4. Check who can see what. If every manager can open every record, that is a data protection question as well as a fairness one.

When several managers share a person's year, the ownership and input model is the whole answer. Read and download our multi-manager performance guide for the version you can hand to line managers. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.

Want objectives, notes and evidence to survive a reorganisation? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your current handover process. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.