Departments and the org chart

Who can use this: Org admins only.

How you group and connect your employees shapes everything else in Performance Blocks: who managers see in their team views, who skip-level summaries roll up to, what filters work in the audit log, what scope a review cycle covers. This article covers two adjacent concepts:

• Departments — flat buckets you slice the org by (sometimes called cost centers or business units).
• Reporting hierarchy — the manager-of relationships that form a tree.

They are independent. An employee belongs to exactly one department and reports to exactly one manager; the two relationships do not need to align. Marketing employees can report to a Marketing manager who reports to a Product VP — perfectly fine.

Departments

Departments are how you slice the org horizontally. Common naming patterns:

• Functional: Engineering, Marketing, Sales, People, Finance, Operations.
• Business unit: Consumer, Enterprise, Platform.
• Cost center: matches your finance system's GL codes.

Pick a scheme and be consistent. Performance Blocks does not enforce a particular pattern.

Creating a department

1. Open Admin → Settings → Departments.
2. Click Add department.
3. Enter:
   • Name (required, unique).
   • Optional description.
   • Optional cost-center code (used in CSV imports and exports).
4. Save.

The department becomes available immediately in employee record selectors and in CSV imports.

Editing a department

To rename or update a department:

1. Open the department from the list.
2. Edit fields as needed.
3. Save.

Renames propagate everywhere — historical observations and summaries that referenced the department will display the new name. The audit log records the change.

Archiving a department

When a department no longer exists (a reorg merged it into another, or a business unit was sold), archive it:

1. Open the department.
2. Click Archive.
3. Confirm.

You cannot archive a department that has active employees — reassign them first, either individually or in bulk via the Employees page or a CSV reimport. Archived departments stop appearing in selectors but remain in historical records.

Departments and HRIS sync

If you have HRIS sync enabled (Agentic plan), departments can be:

• Mirrored from HRIS: the HRIS owns the list. Adding or removing departments in Performance Blocks is disabled; everything flows from HRIS.
• Mapped from HRIS: HRIS values map to Performance Blocks departments via a translation table. Useful when your HRIS uses internal codes you'd rather not expose.
• Independent: HRIS doesn't model departments, so you maintain the list manually.

The mode is set when you connect HRIS. See Integrations → HRIS.

The reporting hierarchy

The reporting hierarchy is a tree built from one field per employee: their manager. It powers:

• Manager team views (the manager sees everyone who reports to them).
• Skip-level summaries (when skipLevelSummaries is on).
• The org chart view.
• Default scope for review cycles.

Setting a manager

The simplest way to set or change a manager is on the employee record. See Managing employees for the full lifecycle.

You can also:

• Drag an employee under a different manager in the org chart view.
• Bulk-update via CSV reimport.
• Bulk-select on the Employees page and apply Reassign manager.

What makes someone a manager

Two things together:

1. They have the manager role on their employee record.
2. At least one other employee has them set as their manager.

Either alone is incomplete. Someone with the manager role and no reports sees no team view. Someone listed as a manager-of without the manager role can't view their reports' content.

When the two diverge (someone gains reports without the role, or vice versa), the Admin → Employees page surfaces a warning. Resolve before running a review cycle.

Orphans

An employee with no manager set is an "orphan." Orphans are common for:

• The CEO or top of the tree (always at least one orphan in any org).
• Newly imported employees whose manager isn't in the system yet.
• Mid-reorg states where you're staging changes.

The org chart shows orphans grouped at the top. Review periodically and assign managers as needed.

Circular reporting

Performance Blocks blocks circular reporting at save time. If you try to set Alice's manager to Bob and Bob's manager (directly or transitively) to Alice, the change fails with an explicit error. Resolve by breaking the cycle first.

The org chart view

Open Admin → Org Chart to see the full reporting hierarchy as a tree.

Features:

• Pan and zoom to navigate large orgs.
• Click any node to jump to that employee's profile.
• Filter by department to highlight a subset.
• Filter by location if you've mapped a location custom field.
• Filter by role to surface only managers, only admins, etc.
• Search by name to jump to a specific person.
• Toggle "Show inactive" to include deactivated employees.
• Export as PNG or SVG for offline reference.

The org chart is read-only by default. Click Edit mode to enable drag-and-drop reassignment. Edit mode is logged separately in the audit log so changes from this surface are easy to identify.

Performance with large orgs

For orgs with over a few thousand employees, the full chart can be slow to render. Use the department or location filter to scope down — most admins want to see one department at a time anyway.

Permission implications

The reporting hierarchy directly affects what each user can see.

What managers see

A user with the manager role can see:

• Their own data (as an employee).
• Observations, conversations, summaries, and objectives for any employee who reports to them directly.
• If shareConversations is enabled, conversations their reports have shared with them.
• If shareSummaries is enabled, summaries their reports have shared with them.

Managers do not see peers' data or other teams' data.

Skip-level visibility

When skipLevelSummaries is enabled (which requires teamSummaries), a manager can see one level deeper:

• A VP who has Director reports can see the Directors' team summaries.
• The VP cannot see individual observations or conversations on the Directors' reports — only the rolled-up team summary.

Skip-level visibility only applies to summaries, not to other artifacts.

What org admins see

Org admins see everything regardless of reporting line. The hierarchy doesn't restrict them; it just helps them navigate.

What employees see

Employees see their own data. If employeePortal is enabled, they also see summaries that have been shared with them, observations they've authored or been the subject of, conversations they're a participant in, and any 360 feedback they've requested. The reporting hierarchy doesn't grant them visibility into peers.

HRIS sync and the hierarchy

When HRIS sync is on, the reporting hierarchy mirrors what your HRIS provides. Practical implications:

• Manager changes you make in Performance Blocks may be overwritten on the next sync. Make changes upstream.
• Employees added to your HRIS appear with their manager already set, provided the manager exists in Performance Blocks.
• If an HRIS-provided manager isn't in Performance Blocks (e.g., because they're an executive who doesn't use the tool), the report becomes an orphan until the manager is added.

You can override sync for a specific employee's manager field in Admin → Employees → [employee] → Override HRIS. Use sparingly; overrides drift from your source of truth.

Departments versus reporting hierarchy: how they interact

Departments and the hierarchy are independent. A department contains employees from any part of the tree; a manager's team can span multiple departments (rare in functional orgs, common in cross-functional ones).

Where they interact:

• Review cycles can scope to a department, to a manager's team, or to specific employees.
• Team summaries roll up by manager (the team), not by department.
• Filters in dashboards and reports usually offer both axes.

If your org structure is heavily matrixed (e.g. dotted-line reporting, cross-functional pods that don't map to departments), Performance Blocks models the formal hierarchy. Use observations and conversations to capture cross-functional feedback; your formal review still flows up the formal tree.

Frequently asked

Can a department have its own admin? Not as a built-in role. The org_admin role is org-wide. For department-level admin needs, give the appropriate person the manager role for the relevant subtree, or contact support about scoped admin (currently a limited preview).

How do I move a whole sub-tree under a different manager? Reassign the top of the sub-tree; the rest follows automatically. Or use a CSV reimport with updated manager_email values for the affected employees.

Why is my org chart missing some people? Check (a) Show inactive is toggled appropriately, (b) the filter set isn't excluding them, (c) they have a manager set if you're filtering for non-orphans.

Can I have department managers separate from people managers? No — Performance Blocks has one manager-of relationship per employee. If a department head needs visibility across the department for performance management, they need to be in the reporting tree.

Next steps

• Building the attributes library — define the competencies you'll measure across departments.
• Custom fields — add more dimensions like location or employee type.
• Running review cycles — scope cycles by department or hierarchy.