Alternatives to annual reviews – Wharton

Employers including Adobe, Deloitte and PwC have all ended the practice of annual performance reviews in the past couple of years, but what are they replacing them with and how effective are the alternatives? This Knowledge@Wharton article explores the ‘revolution’ in performance management in companies such as GE and Cisco, concluding that the most effective solutions involve shifting to more regular conversations with employees that are focused less on the past and more on the future.

Successful firms are giving managers the skills to be coaches rather than ‘task masters’, according to Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli. Apps are also a feature of the performance management revolution, enabling managers to give real-time feedback to employees and to create a record of performance that is more reliable than the manager and employee’s memory several months later.

The potential for apps and people analytics to transform the performance management field is enormous and might provide managers with the ability to measure why employees perform as they do, and where they are contributing to the organisation’s productivity.

‘The End of Annual Performance Reviews: Are the alternatives any better?’, Knowledge@Wharton, 19 September 2016: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-end...