Feedback that doesn't wait for annual reviews

Instant feedback includes the following key features:

• Give feedback: Send direct, specific feedback to any colleague, peer, manager, or cross-team, at any time. No formal review cycle, no approval required.
• Request feedback: Ask anyone for input on your work. Set an optional due date, add context for what you're looking for, and define visibility before sending.
• Managers request on behalf of reports: Managers can initiate a feedback request directed at someone on their team, gathering input from collaborators the employee might not have thought to ask.
• Team feedback dashboard: A dedicated view for managers showing all feedback across their direct reports, with filters by report and time period.
• Visibility controls: Public (visible to the recipient, their manager, reviewers, and admins) or private (feedback requester and giver only, or, for manager-requested feedback, the feedback giver and manager only).
• Feedback feed: A searchable, filterable history of all feedback given, received, and team feedback, with author, date, visibility label, and full text.
• Native Slack integration: Give feedback, request feedback, and receive real-time notifications directly from the Deel Plugin for Slack. Every input syncs back to Deel automatically.
• Surfaced in review cycles: When writing a formal review, all instant feedback the reviewee received during the review period appears automatically in the context panel, ready to use, no copy-paste needed.

Instant feedback is built into Deel HR. That means feedback accumulates on the same platform where reviews are run, development plans are managed, and career progression is tracked. Specifically:

• Feedback surfaces automatically in the review context panel when a formal cycle opens
• It will also appear in the AI-generated review summary 
• The same worker profile carries feedback history, goals, and performance data in one place (which can be further linked to compensation review cycles) The more of Deel HR your team uses, the more useful the feedback record becomes, it's one connected picture of each person's development, not a snapshot from a separate tool.

Managers typically go into review cycles with thin notes and a strong recency bias, they remember what happened last month, not last quarter. Instant feedback changes that in three specific ways:

• A running record of documented observations accumulates throughout the year, automatically surfacing inside the review when it's needed
• The “Team feedback” dashboard shows who has received feedback recently and who hasn't, before review season, so managers can address gaps proactively
• Managers can request feedback on behalf of their direct reports from project collaborators, gathering input that the workers might never have asked for themselves The result: review conversations become a summary of what already happened, not a high-stakes reconstruction.

A culture of feedback doesn't come from mandating a review cycle. It comes from making feedback easy, frequent, and consequential. Instant feedback addresses all three, and becomes more powerful when used alongside the rest of Engage:

• Easy: Feedback flows in any direction, from Deel or Slack, with no cycle to open and no admin to approve it. Lower friction means higher frequency.
• Frequent: Because feedback isn't locked to a review window, it accumulates naturally throughout the year. Managers can see who's receiving input regularly and proactively build the record for people who aren't.
• Consequential: This is where the Engage ecosystem makes the difference. Instant feedback doesn't disappear after it's submitted; it surfaces in the review context panel when a formal cycle opens, informs development plan conversations, and connects to the performance data managers use to make compensation and promotion decisions. The result is a feedback loop that's genuinely closed: give input, document it, surface it at the right moment, and act on it. That's what makes feedback a cultural habit rather than an annual event.

The two modules are built for different moments, and they're more useful together than either is alone.

Reviews is a structured, scheduled process. It runs on a defined cycle—quarterly, bi-annually, or annually—with configurable feedback types, anonymity settings, rating scales, calibration steps, and formal analytics (9-box, skills matrices, radar charts). It's designed for a thorough, bias-aware evaluation of performance against goals and competencies. It requires coordination, preparation, and time.

Instant feedback is none of those things by design. It's asynchronous, unscheduled, and frictionless. Anyone can give or request specific input at any point, after a project wraps, when something goes well, when a collaborator's perspective matters, without opening a cycle or involving HR.

**How they work together: **The distinction matters most at review time. When a manager sits down to write a formal review in Engage, all the instant feedback the reviewee received during that review period surfaces automatically in the context panel. The informal observations, coaching moments, and peer input that accumulated throughout the months are already there, organized, searchable, and ready to inform the evaluation.

That means: Reviews become more accurate, because they reflect what actually happened across the year, not just what the manager remembers from the last few weeks Managers spend less time reconstructing context and more time having a meaningful conversation Workers experience review outcomes as fair, because the evidence behind them was built continuously, not assembled under pressure.

Yes. Instant feedback works for any team structure, flat, hierarchical, or distributed across multiple countries. Feedback can flow peer-to-peer, upward, downward, or cross-team, in any direction, without a reporting relationship required. Managers at any level can use the team dashboard and request feedback on behalf of their reports. The Slack integration also means adoption doesn't depend on getting everyone to change their habits, feedback happens inside the communications tool your team already lives in.