Cornerstone FAQ

In order to allow someone to align a goal to you, the “visibility” checkbox needs to be marked upon creation of the goal. Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase for a detailed walkthrough regarding goal alignment.

Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

In order to provide mid-year feedback for your employee and their new supervisor to see, you can do so by leaving a comment on individual goals within their performance plan. These comments will carry over with the employee’s performance plan and be visible to the new supervisor. They will also be accessible to the new supervisor for the final year-end evaluation task, to take into consideration before selecting a final rating. However, the comments will not appear on the final pdf document of the year-end evaluation task unless they are copied and pulled into the task directly.

Click on the hamburger menu and select “Performance Reviews.” This will pull up the list of currently active and non-complete tasks, however you also have the option on this page to check a box for viewing completed tasks.

Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

A task will appear under your task list and is an outstanding item that requires action within a certain timeframe. There are 3 kinds of tasks for both University and Classified Staff: the coaching session task, the performance planning task, and the final year-end evaluation task. A Performance Plan is what you create at the beginning of a performance cycle and contains a particular number of goals, job duties, or competencies; progress of these items can be tracked throughout the year. Eventually, the tasks will require you to either create, reflect, or evaluate these Performance Plan items.

In order to delete a goal and remove it from view, you will need to cancel it. When on the performance planning page, find the goal you wish to remove and click on the dropdown carrot to expand the options menu. Select “Cancel” and confirm the decision to remove the goal.

Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

When you are creating a goal and wish to have it appear in the live environment for your employees, you need to submit it. When you save the goal as a draft, it only appears for you to see. Below is an image showing what a goal that is saved as a draft will look like in your performance plan.

You can find goals previously created for an employee by clicking the “Performance Planning” tile, then clicking the “Team Performance Plan” tab. This will list all your direct reports, and you can click the dropdown carrot for each employee to see their goals.

Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

Please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

Once you have finished submitting your goals and you see that they are pending modification approval by your supervisor. This will trigger an email to let them know they need to go into Cornerstone and approve your goals. You can refer more about this topic in our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

This is discretionary based on your department requirements, however the weighting of all goals in a performance plan must equal 100.

As a supervisor you have access to reporting tools. If you click the hamburger menu and select “Reports” then “Standard Reports” you will be presented with a variety of reports to help you keep track of your employees. The report for this scenario that you would want to run is called “Performance Review Step Status Report.” When you open the report, you can select which performance review task you would like to check the status of. You do not need to change anything in the “User Criteria” or “Display OU” fields. Once the task is selected, click on the button that says “Export to Excel.” You can learn more about reporting abilities on our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

We will need to set up the permissions based on your department requirements. Please submit a ticket to us by clicking on the Help tile from the Cornerstone homepage and then clicking on the technical support link.

Unfortunately Cornerstone uses an employee’s job code as an identifier, not their position number. We are unable to change this particular setting within Cornerstone. The nightly feed takes data directly from HCM, so if you see something wrong in Cornerstone, please make sure it is right in HCM.

Click on the hamburger menu and select “My Account” with the gear icon next to it. Once on this page, hover your mouse over your profile photo icon and a dropdown carrot will appear. Click on the dropdown carrot and select “change” to begin the process of uploading your profile picture.

No, they will not need to complete any tasks or use Cornerstone, however, we still include them in the user data feed to represent an accurate reporting relationship in your hierarchy.

No, comments you add to performance plan items are meant for tracking progress throughout the year and to facilitate back and forth conversation between supervisor and employee regarding performance feedback. Such examples would be quarterly coaching notes or self evaluations. In the final evaluation task, you have the option to view all comments made and can then choose which ones you would like to appear in the final evaluation print-out, which will eventually be the official file tied to the employee’s personnel record.

Since there is currently no official task for self evaluations, we advise users to use the comment feature on individual performance plan items to track progress throughout the year, and to also use this section as a place for a self evaluation on each competency, job duty, or goal. Comments made here can act as an ongoing conversation between employee and supervisor and will not show up in the final evaluation print-out at the end of the year, unless copied into the final evaluation task. For further guidance and a step by step walkthrough on how to complete self evaluations, please refer to our Cornerstone Knowledgebase.

Note that if an employee switches supervisors, the new supervisor will be able to see all comments made prior (including comments made by the previous supervisor).

Competency: The skills and behaviors employees develop and demonstrate to execute their goals and job duties. While goals and job duties articulate “what” is to be done, competencies provide guidelines for “how” that work gets done.

Job Duty: The general tasks and day-to-day operational responsibilities of a given role, the work generally outlined in a position description. While goals tend to be specific projects to be delivered during specific time frames, job duties remain fairly constant for a given position over time.

Goal: Observable and measurable future results to be achieved within a reasonably specific timeframe. CU Boulder employees should plan and execute 1-3 team or individual goals during a given performance period.

If the employee is leaving the University, then no closeout evaluation is necessary in Cornerstone. However, if the employee will remain on campus and the only change is in supervisors during the performance cycle year, we advise supervisors to leave closeout feedback as comments on individual goals within that employee's performance plan. This will allow the new supervisor to view progress and feedback for that employee and enable them to take that into consideration for the final year-end evaluation.