Using the Form Authoring Coach

Introduction

With a PerformYard Talent Development license, administrators can utilize PerformYard's Form Building Coach to create stronger, more effective review forms. Rather than relying solely on their own judgment, admins receive targeted feedback in the moment, helping ensure review forms are clear, well-structured, and set up to capture meaningful feedback. This feature is available in your company settings when creating or updating a form.

Disclaimer: This feature uses artificial intelligence to generate its content. While it aims to provide concise and accurate insights and coaching recommendations, it may not always capture the full nuance or context behind that information. Please review the generated insights and recommendations before relying on them for interpretation or decision-making.

Form Building Coach

To receive feedback on the form you're creating or updating, simply open Ask PerformYard and either click the suggested action "Suggest improvements for my form" or type and submit a prompt like "Help me improve my form." This will kick off Ask PerformYard's form coaching feature.

Form Building Coach analyzes review questions as they're written, checking for common pitfalls that can undermine the quality and fairness of feedback. Beyond flagging issues with individual questions, it also evaluates the form holistically, looking at question types and overall structure, to help admins build forms that are clear, balanced, and easy for respondents to complete.

• Double-barreled questions (e.g., "Does this person communicate well and meet deadlines?"): Flags any question that asks about more than one distinct behavior, trait, or outcome. A question is considered double-barreled if a respondent could reasonably answer "yes" to one part and "no" to the other. Suggests how to split it into separate questions.
• Vague criteria (e.g., "Is this employee a good worker?"): Flags any question where the criteria for a good or bad response is undefined or subjective, such as words like "good," "effective," "strong," or "professional" used without further definition. Suggests more specific, observable, or behavioral language.
• Leading questions (e.g., "Don't you think Sarah exceeds expectations?"): Flags any question that implies a preferred answer, contains assumptive language, or uses framing that pressures the respondent toward a particular response. Suggests a neutral rewrite.
• Recency bias traps (e.g., "How has this employee performed?" with no time boundary): Flags any question that asks about performance, behavior, or contributions without anchoring to a specific time period. If the review period is known, checks whether the question references it, and suggests adding an explicit time boundary.
• Question type mismatches: Evaluates whether each question's current format, open text, rating scale, multiple choice, etc., is the best fit for what's being asked. Flags mismatches and suggests a more appropriate type, with a brief explanation of why.
• Form balance and fatigue risk: Analyzes the form as a whole, flagging if the total question count exceeds reasonable limits for the respondent type, if any single competency or theme is over-represented, or if the distribution of question types creates a repetitive or cognitively taxing experience. Provides a brief structural summary with specific recommendations.

Applying a Suggested Improvement

Once Ask PerformYard finishes analyzing your form, it returns a list of Suggested Improvements, each one tied to a specific question. Every suggestion includes a brief explanation of the issue it identified, such as a missing time anchor, a duplicated question, or a leading phrasing, along with a suggested rewrite shown directly below the explanation. Admins can review each suggestion individually and decide whether to apply it, dismiss it, or leave the question as-is. To apply a suggestion, simply click the Apply Change button below it. 

Doing so automatically scrolls the form to the relevant question, opens it for editing, and populates the updated text, marking it with an "Improved with AI" badge so it's clear the field reflects an AI-suggested change. From here, the admin still needs to review the update and click Update (or Save) to save it to the question; applying a suggestion updates the field but does not save the change on its own.