Making Informal Performance Management Work in the Workplace

T he annual review, a much anticipated but often dreaded corporate ritual, is slowly being cast aside. Instead, companies are turning to informal conversations to satisfy their employees’ desire for frequent feedback related to job performance. Industry giants like IBM, General Electric, Microsoft, Accenture, and Adobe, along with many small and midsize companies, are moving away from traditional performance reviews due to their complexity and cost, as well as growing employee dissatisfaction with the practice. More than 70% of companies interviewed for Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report confirmed they were in the process of reinventing performance management practices to provide more multidirectional feedback and coaching.