Quick answer
The Talent Matrix plots employees on a 3×3 grid — performance across, potential up — for any review period. Place people from the unplaced list, move them between boxes as calibration discussions evolve, and rename axes, box labels and guidance so the grid speaks your organisation's language.
Placing people
Pick a review period at the top (quarters or the year). Every active employee appears in the Unplaced rail until you place them: choose a performance and potential level, or click a box to place someone straight into it. Placements are per period, so each quarter's talent review is preserved as its own snapshot.
Reading the grid
The classic layout puts Top Talent (high performance, high potential) in the top-right — your succession candidates — and flags the bottom-left for intervention. Every box carries short guidance text, and all of it (axis names, box names, colours, guidance) is editable in settings, because "Core Player" in one company is "Backbone" in another.
Recording a flight-risk note
Open anyone on the board and you can record a flight risk of Low, Medium or High — with a reason, which is required. The reason is shown beside the note every time anyone reads it, along with who recorded it and when, so a nine-month-old judgement reads as a nine-month-old judgement.
ASHR.work does not calculate flight risk for you. It could — it holds how long someone has been here, when they were last given a rise, and how their engagement answers have moved — and it deliberately does not, because a number derived that way would look like evidence while being a guess about a named person, shown in the room where their promotion is decided. Those signals are also misleading in a particular direction: long service without a rise reads as "flight risk" whether the cause is someone quietly looking or a manager who has not done right by them.
So the note is a person's judgement, written down and signed, and the reason is the part that matters — it is what lets whoever reads it next disagree with it.
Clearing a note removes the reason with it. On the board itself you see only a small neutral dot showing that a note exists; the level and the reason are one click away, because a calibration screen is usually being shared with the room.
Only HR admins ever see any of this: the talent matrix is an HR-admin screen and the note appears nowhere else in the product.
Downloading the board
Export CSV, at the top of the page, downloads the review period you are looking at — one row per placed person, with your own axis names and box labels, the calibration note, and the flight-risk note together with its reason, who recorded it and when. It carries the same columns the screen shows and nothing more. Someone with no note recorded gets empty cells rather than "Low", because no assessment is not a low assessment. Every download is recorded in your audit log.
Acting on it
Use the notes on each placement to record calibration decisions, then follow through in Career Growth Plans — top-right boxes usually deserve a development plan with stretch assignments.
Frequently asked questions
- Can we rename the boxes and axes?
- Yes. Open the matrix settings to rename both axes and each of the nine boxes, including the guidance text shown for each box.
- Where does the suggested performance rating come from?
- If a manager has submitted feedback for the selected review period, ASHR.work suggests a performance level from their 1–5 rating. It is only a hint — you always place people manually.
- Does ASHR.work work out who is a flight risk?
- No. A flight-risk note is something an HR admin records by hand, with a written reason that is required and is shown beside the note. ASHR.work does not derive it from tenure, pay history or engagement scores — a guess about whether someone is about to leave should not arrive looking like a measurement.
- Who can see a flight-risk note?
- Only HR admins. The talent matrix is an HR-admin screen, the note lives on it, and it appears nowhere else in the product — not on the person's profile, not to their manager, and not to them.