In Work.software you have a choice of when to display the grades for your direct reports or at the department level. This is how easy it is to manage that functionality.
You need to either have an Admin or the Lead role in order to turn grades on or off at either at the personal level or at the department level.
Go to the Company Settings page and scroll down to the left hand side of this section. By default all the grades have been disabled (unchecked) when you first log into the platform.
When you are ready to enable the grades, simply check the appropriate boxes and then save.