The Performance Review is Over

It’s On: Job-Based Performance Feedback Vital for Success

Accenture ended it. Adobe did away with it. Even Deloitte broke up with its broken process. Adios, performance review.

As a young professional in the early 2000s with a team of 15 people I loved working with, the one aspect of leading I did not enjoy was the annual performance review.

While my company at the time required a self-evaluation to begin the process, which made for collaborative discussions of self-accountability and growth, the endless ranking and reviewing was burdensome.

More importantly, most of the team, while eager for a pay increase, seemed less genuine about making any impactful changes suggested in the review. It was an amateurly orchestrated ballet we were all made to don tutus and perform in annually.

Today, the most innovative companies balk at the suggestion of a formal bureaucratic review. Over the last several years, the annual performance review has only grown in its irrelevance and outdated symbolism.

As one thought leader quipped at a leadership event I attended earlier this year, “Would you sit down once a year with your spouse and provide him or her feedback on their performance in the last year? Then why would you do it with someone who works for you?”

If you work with anyone younger than 35, you likely know why this practice is dying.

Millennial workers want to know how they are doing — today, and then again two days from now, and then again next week. In detail.

Basically, you cannot communicate too much about their progress on the job, what they need to do more of, and what will get them to the next level.

As a leader, I find this refreshing and challenging — in a very good way. (Their constant openness to growth causes me to consider how I am growing as well.)

When I began working with TTI Success Insights, I was pleased to learn this philosophy of continuous feedback was easy to implement.

That’s because we use our job-related assessments to learn about people during the application and interview phase. Then, harnessing our patented job benchmarking process, we match them to work that is intrinsically rewarding to them during the hiring phase.

Once they are hired, those same assessments — which tell how we behave, why we behave the way we do and which measures whether our skills are well-developed, moderately developed or need development — form the basis for job-related on-boarding and training.

So, don’t panic about the demise of the performance review.

In the end, communicating regularly with your team about how they can build job-related skills to achieve better results will not only help them grow and earn experience, but will also keep them more engaged in their work.

And no tutus are required.