Employee review on companies: Glassdoor Jobsuche | Finden Sie Ihren Traumjob

11 Sites Where You Can Find Employee Reviews – Zippia

A job review site is a place where people go to review their jobs and, most importantly, the company they work for. These company review sites should actually be a big part of your job search, especially if you’re looking for a career or a job you’ll stay with for a long time.

If you’re really interested in finding a great job that will make you feel professionally satisfied, give you the income you want, and won’t be a chore, then checking a job review site is one big step when it comes to your due diligence.

Key Takeaways:

• Job review sites can help you learn about potential employers from the point of view of the employees who work there.

• Sites where you can read employee reviews include Glassdoor, Jobcase, Comparably, and more.

• When using job review sites, it’s important to remember to take everything with a grain of salt as the reviews can be objective – if possible, it’s best to read multiple reviews on different sites.

10 Job Review Websites

These are ten of the most common and most popular company review sites. It’s best to stick with the known websites because they’re where people are most likely to comment on their job experiences.

1. Glassdoor. Probably the best-known website for employee job reviews, this is a must when it comes to a successful job hunt.

   Glassdoor has been in the business for a long time, and they have such a nice aggregate of information that they can cull it to give you even more insight and even list the pros and cons of working for different companies.

2. Fairygodboss. This is a review site that’s dedicated to the female perspective. The goal is to help women find jobs where they’re treated fairly, paid comparably, and where they’ll truly love their jobs.

   That said, while the company most definitely has a focus on females, it’s a great resource for anyone. You don’t have to be a woman to want to work in an environment where all people are treated and paid fairly.

3. Vault. Vault not only looks at employee reviews but it asks interns to review their internships, and it also looks to gather academic reviews. This can be an excellent resource for people who are looking to get a foot in a dream company and work their way through school, internships, and a professional career.

   If you can plan that far in advance and you’re laser set on your goals, this is definitely a website to reference and to start to make your presence known. It’s important to note that vault relies pretty heavily on their research into the companies they feature, not just employees.

4. Kununu. This company was founded in Austria in 2007, and it’s considered the Glassdoor of Germany. But it has expanded, so it’s not just for Germany anymore. They’ve integrated their reviews into the company profiles on another job site and helps you determine if that’s a company you’d like to work for.

   One thing they do that’s a bit different from other job rating companies is they rate the coworkers. This is clearly a pretty big benefit and can be an important part of your job satisfaction. It can also change if a “bad apple” moves on to another job or a different position, but it’s something to consider.

5. CareerBliss. The bliss score is determined by answers to questions about job satisfaction, employee happiness, and salary. They do have a job board, so you can see available jobs, but their biggest benefit to the user is the job review board which is entirely propelled by user-generated content.

   That means a company cannot control what’s being said about it, and they can’t buy a new review. The reviews come from employees.

6. Jobcase. Jobcase is a social media platform that focuses on users in the United States. There are discussion boards, company reviews, user profiles, job listings, and more.

   This site can be what you make of it. If you’re looking at several different sites, then it definitely needs to be on your radar because you can ask questions and get responses from people working in the company.

   You can also get very key information if you have any specific queries or concerns. It also gives you current and relevant information, that is, if you can find a current employee who’s willing to speak to you.

7. Blind. This is an anonymous website that encourages professionals to discuss their workplace environment, share advice, and give some feedback. They promote transparency and hope that by doing this, there can be some productive changes in workplace environments.

   It’s a worldwide organization, so it has some benefits when you’re looking at global trends, but it can also be a little harder to find the specific information you want.

8. Comparably. Comparably is known for providing a detailed breakdown of a company’s culture, compensation, and employee satisfaction. It’s definitely one to check out if you’re serious about a company or if you’re comparing a few of them and want to end up in the best position.

9. The Job Crowd. This is a website designed for users in the U.K., so if you’re not in that market right now, it’s not going to be a big benefit, but it does provide a lot of information. It doesn’t hurt to look at the conditions of jobs like yours in other countries.

   It gives you a better picture of the overall environment of many professional jobs, and since we are a world economy, this knowledge can be critical.

10. InHerSight. This is another anonymous job review site that is specifically focused on women in the workplace. They look at the opportunity, schedule and flexibility, enrichment opportunities, family importance, and company culture.

    There are places where employees can not just rate the company, but they can also comment. They also go beyond just catering for women and let you filter ratings by your career level, race, sexual orientation, and parental status.

Why Check a Job Review Site

It’s important to understand that this part of your job search is for you. The employer really doesn’t care if you take that extra step and look at what their employees think of them. In fact, some employers would probably rather you didn’t do that at all.

Your primary goal in checking a company review is to learn what people who work in the company think of them. What their real work atmosphere is like and how their employees feel.

You’ll be hearing a lot of great things from HR, the hiring manager, and recruiters about the company, but isn’t it the opinion of the actual workers that matters most?

One thing to remember when reading reviews is that you need to take them with a grain of salt; that is, you should look for an overall impression and not just one person’s sour grapes.

Think about reviewers. Often, they say something when they’re unhappy or dissatisfied. Not all reviewers are going into a review to let people know about a good or even just a mediocre experience.

Some review sites don’t rely so heavily on employee reviews; instead, they do their own checks to see how a company stacks up against the competition. This can be really helpful, but remember, these are not company insiders, so they don’t have all the information that an employee would share, which means that the following list of job review sites is great for your job hunt.

Tips for Using Company Review Boards

If you’re going to use a company review board as a part of your job search, these four tips can help you make the most of it.

• Use more than one. Don’t simply rely on one job review site to provide information. This is too one-sided, and it can be swayed by a handful of very vocal employees. It’s best to use several different sites and then weigh each one.

• Don’t take reviews as gospel. You know that your experience in life is different from everyone else’s. Even the exact same thing can be different for you than it is for another person.

  It’s good to get a heads up and know what to look for or weigh the information, but it’s not good to use information from strangers solely as your deciding factor.

• Pay attention to trends. If you hear from a few job boards that the vacation sucks, then take this information with you into the interview.

  Ask what their vacation is, start negotiating with that area if it’s important to you. And this obviously doesn’t just apply to vacations, use any trend data you find to help you negotiate and make an informed decision.

• Be careful about your posts. It seems right that if you use the information from a job review site that you should also contribute. And this is probably true, but you need to also protect your professional reputation.

  Make sure you are using an anonymous site, be fair and not emotional when posting reviews, remember this is not a time to call out individuals and report on positives and negatives equally.

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6 Tips for Writing an Effective Performance Review

Employee performance reviews are important for every business, but their effectiveness depends on how they are conducted. They can empower your employees to reach new heights – or they could drive them away from your company.

A great review helps your employees identify growth opportunities and potential areas of improvement without damaging employee-manager relations, but writing a strong review isn’t easy. Managers often don’t receive enough guidance on what an effective and comprehensive review looks like.

Compounding the problem, small businesses frequently struggle with limited resources. For a company with 1,000 employees to conduct accurate and helpful performance reviews, a full-time HR staff of 14 is ideal. Even a company with 100 employees needs a full-time individual who compiles performance data from managers, who should spend an average of three hours on each employee review.

What is an employee performance review?

An employee performance review, also known as a performance evaluation or performance appraisal, is a formal assessment of an employee’s work in a given time period. In an employee performance review, managers evaluate that individual’s overall performance, identify their strengths and weaknesses, offer feedback, and help them set goals.

Employees typically have the opportunity to ask questions and share feedback with their manager as well. They may also fill out a self-evaluation as part of the performance review process.

While performance evaluations have traditionally been annual reviews, more companies are moving toward quarterly, monthly or even weekly feedback. Some organizations have fully eliminated the formal performance review process, replacing it with regular, casual one-on-one check-ins with management.

Regardless of how frequently or in what manner your company conducts performance reviews, these meetings should benefit employees and managers alike. Workers gain a better understanding of what they are doing well and where they can improve, and they can ask questions or provide feedback to their managers. In turn, managers have the opportunity to communicate expectations with their team, identify their highest performers, correct issues before they escalate, and increase engagement and motivation.

What to include in an employee performance review

Regardless of industry, most employee reviews include an assessment of these skills:

• Communication
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Problem-solving
• Quality and accuracy of work
• Attendance, punctuality and reliability
• The ability to accomplish goals and meet deadlines

A review should also include any company-specific or position-specific competencies, as well as the employee’s accomplishments and contributions to their role or organization.

After addressing the key areas of assessment, you’ll need to evaluate and weigh each to get a picture of the employee’s overall performance. How you format and organize this information is up to you and your company’s needs. Some organizations use a grading system of A through F, numerical scoring or percentages, or written descriptions (e.g., “most of the time,” “some of the time”). Whichever system you use, ensure it is objective and easy to understand.

Once you finish the grading process, set up a time to discuss your findings with each employee. It can be helpful to have a written copy of the evaluation to reference and keep your meeting on track. Be sure to deliver transparent feedback, with examples where appropriate, and allot enough time for the employee to ask questions or deliver feedback.

How performance management software can help

To reduce the financial burden on your small business, you might consider integrating performance management software into your annual review process. Companies such as Insperity, Namely and ADP Workforce Now are HR platforms that help small and midsize businesses provide effective employee feedback.

A quality performance management system delivers real-time reports and enhances collaboration between employees and managers. The platform helps you complete the process and stores the results for later review. But even with such a program, you still need to know what to say and how to say it if you want your review process to result in greater employee engagement and retention.

1. Provide regular, informal feedback.

While performance reviews typically happen once or twice a year, feedback should not be limited to those short review periods. You should offer consistent assessments throughout the year so there aren’t any surprises come review time.

“Don’t catch your people off guard in a performance review,” said Erika Rasure, assistant professor of business and financial services at Maryville University. “This should not be the first time that they are hearing from you that they are not performing as expected. Be clear in writing [and] sending calendar invites, and setting expectations and the tone for the meetings. ”

You should also take constant notes on employee performance – especially when no performance reviews are on the horizon.

“Employees deserve a robust assessment of their work for the entire period being covered,” said Gary Schneeberger, founder and president of ROAR. “Far too many performance reviews are based only on what the manager can remember from the last few weeks before the evaluations are due to HR. Managers have to be intentional about taking and filing notes.”

Don’t neglect your top performers. Suppose you’re only addressing issues or focusing on the employees who aren’t performing as well as others. In that case, you’re missing an opportunity to express gratitude to those who shape your company’s innovation, creativity, and culture. Though they may not need as much guidance as other employees, these individuals could lose their passion or motivation if they are not occasionally recognized.

“Highly valuable employees who do their job and do it well are often not the priority of concern in performance review cycles, resulting in missed opportunities to communicate how much the organization values the drive and the results of the top performers,” said Rasure. “An unexpected ‘keep up the great work’ email [or] a quick phone call or text sends a consistent signal to your employee that you are paying attention and value what they do.”

2. Be honest.

No worker is perfect, and there will always be room for improvement. Decide what is worth addressing, and don’t hesitate to bring it up. If you know an issue is affecting your team, tiptoeing around the subject won’t get you anywhere.

James R. Bailey, professor of leadership at the George Washington University School of Business, encourages being honest with workers, but not brutally. Deliver feedback in a way that you would want to receive it. The discussion is unavoidable, so choose an appropriate approach and stick with it.

“If someone is a poor performer and you don’t squarely address it, know that everyone else in the office knows that the person is a poor performer, and [employees] will brand you as weak or cowardly for not addressing the situation,” Bailey said.

Managers should also demonstrate and expect clarity, said Leon Rbibo, president of Laguna Pearl. “There needs to be crystal-clear clarity on both sides of the table, both in what the manager expects from the employee moving forward and in what the employee needs from the manager.”

Without clarity, Rbibo said, nothing you discuss during the evaluation will help the situation, and you’ll find yourself discussing the same topics at the next performance review. So be clear, be honest, and remember that nothing will change if it is not addressed.

3. Do it face to face.

The written review should be a brief but direct overview of discussion points, making for a more nuanced face-to-face conversation. You might want to schedule a meeting in a coffee shop or out-of-office location to provide a comfortable atmosphere. If you’re reviewing remote workers, schedule a video chat so you’re still having a live conversation. This approach leaves room for discussion and feedback on their end and prevents miscommunication.

“The only way to deliver performance reviews is face to face, with ample time to present and process, listen and respond,” said Bailey. “It’s just too important to relegate to email or telephone. Doing so would send a signal that you didn’t care enough about the subject even to take the time to meet.”

After outlining any shortcomings or mistakes, discuss resolutions to those problems, and push employees to comment on the issues you raised.

4. Use tangible, pertinent examples.

When discussing areas for improvement or things an employee has done well, make sure you have clear examples to reference. (This is why it’s important to take notes over a long period of time.)

“If you’ve got nothing to refer to, then you’re speaking anecdotally,” said Rbibo. “This prevents clarity and understanding. If an employee is falling behind in certain key performance areas, point to one or two specific examples, and address how you’d like those handled differently in the future.”

Having examples proves to the employee that you are paying attention and adds credit to your expectations.

5. End on a positive note.

Don’t leave the review without mutual understanding and respect; don’t let any employee feel like they’re in the dark going forward.

“Use the review process as an opportunity to set attainable goals specific to addressing the expectations the employee isn’t meeting, but which also makes the employee feel like they have a clear, reasonable plan of action that can get them back on track,” said Rasure.

Encouraging your employees and expressing your appreciation boosts a primarily good review or lifts your employee’s spirits after a somewhat negative evaluation. Positive reinforcement and constructive feedback can go a long way in giving workers the confidence and drive they need to perform better.

6. Choose your words with care.

Pay close attention to how you phrase your evaluations. Meaningful and action-oriented words have a far greater impact than more standard phrases such as “good” or “satisfactory”.

Here are five words and expressions that will help you effectively highlight an employee’s contributions, based on James E. Neal’s Effective Phrases for Performance Appraisals (Neal Publications, 2009).

• Achievement: Incorporate this into a phrase, such as “achieves optimal levels of performance with/for … “
• Communication skills: Phrases like “effectively communicates expectations” or “excels in facilitating group discussions” go a long way with an employee.
• Creativity: Appreciating employees’ creative side can make for happier, more motivated staff. In a performance evaluation, try phrases like “seeks creative alternatives,” followed by specific examples and results.
• Improvement: Employees like hearing that they are improving and that it’s being noticed. “Continues to grow and improve” and “is continuously planning for improvement” are two constructive phrases to use in a performance review.
• Management ability: Leadership skills and the ability to manage others are key to employee success. Phrases such as “provides support during periods of organizational change” carry weight with your employee.

Richard Grote, author of How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), said that instead of using terms like “good” or “excellent” in a review, employers should opt for more measurement-oriented language. In an interview with Hcareers, Grote noted that action words like “excels,” “exhibits,” “demonstrates,” “grasps,” “generates,” “manages,” “possesses,” “communicates,” “monitors,” “directs” and “achieves” are more meaningful.

How to implement performance management software

Mastering your language and approach are your first steps. The true cost of performance reviews to your organization is the time managers and HR staff spend gathering and writing the material that serves as the foundation for each review. That’s where performance management software can help.

Depending on your HR requirements, you can incorporate an open API system or outsource the entire process to a third party. Companies like Namely offer an open API platform that allows you to customize the software to fit the size and scope of your HR requirements.

This type of system allows managers and HR staff to set and monitor goals and to create custom reviews. It automatically solicits responses from managers, employees and peers for the review cycle. It also creates a process for an employee-centered review known as a “360 review.” Employees can use the custom-built API platform to self-serve many of their HR needs, saving your team hours each week.

Another cost-saving system is a professional employer organization (PEO) like Insperity or ADP Workforce Now. Ideal for small and midsize companies looking to reduce their HR expenditures, this option allows you to outsource performance reviews and other HR tasks through a co-employment arrangement – a contractual agreement where the provider assumes responsibility for assigned tasks.

Using the PEO company’s apps, managers and employees have real-time access to payroll, time and benefits. PEOs also provide a full range of professional HR benefits, including compliance with the latest employment regulations.

Good and bad real-life performance reviews

Good: Responsibility as a coach

Schneeberger remembered an intern who refused to accept her review because the ratings were not all “exceeds standards.”

“Her reason for the protest was that she tried really hard,” he said. Knowing her boyfriend was a basketball player, Schneeberger asked the intern if his working hard at every practice automatically meant he should start, and she was quiet.

“I pointed out that my job was the same as his coach – to help her get better so she could figuratively get off the bench and into the game as she embarked on her career. I needed to teach her how to get better – and I couldn’t do that if she was already perfect.”

Bad: Lunchtime evaluation

Sergei Brovkin, founder and principal of Collectiver, recalled a manager who held very informal, unhelpful evaluations. “[He] would do it once a year, during his lunch, while working on emails. That was one of the reasons I left the company.”

Bad: False positivity

Mike Cox, president of Cox Innovations, spoke of a time when he was serving as an HR leader and had a colleague come to him with the decision to terminate an employee. Upon reviewing the employee’s performance evaluations, Cox could not see any evidence of poor performance or mistakes.

“I was told that the employee was performing poorly at the time of the review but was considered very important to an ongoing project, so [they were given] an inaccurately positive review to avoid demotivating [the employee during] a critical period in the project.”

Cox advised against terminating the employee until a fair evaluation was given. The employee was terminated anyway and wound up suing for wrongful termination, leading to a costly settlement for the business.

Performance review examples and templates

The entire performance review process can be difficult for managers and employees, especially when they don’t have an established framework to guide the conversation. A review template is necessary to ensure successful interactions throughout your organization.

If you’re struggling to write a template for companywide use, consider these four performance review templates to get you started:

• Smartsheet: Annual employee review template
• Workforce: Three-month performance review
• GroSum: Quarterly performance review
• SHRM: Self-performance review

Sammi Caramela and Kiely Kuligowski contributed to the reporting and writing in this article. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

Job Reviews | Monster.com

Which employers should you really be targeting? The answer becomes much clearer with a little insider info from those already in the know.

Job reviews give you an insider’s point of view.

Reading job reviews is a must for all job seekers. No matter how expertly crafted a job description is, there are bound to be some very important details left out. What are the hours like? (No, seriously.) What would your annual pay increase be? (No, seriously.) What’s the work-life balance like? (You get the idea.)

I can tell you from my 15-plus years as a recruiter that a big gripe among job seekers is the lack of transparent information about companies and jobs they are considering applying to. So it’s no surprise to learn that job seekers seriously struggle with misleading information, according to a survey published by kununu, a global leader in employer transparency. Nearly one in four respondents have been intentionally misled during a job interview, and three in 10 said it’s difficult to receive honest, here’s-what-it’s-like-on-the-job facts. Worse, nearly one in five made a decision to accept a job they later regretted.

How can you avoid this kind of misfortune? Go to the source—employees who have been there, done that. In the age of consumer-review sites, including Monster’s Company Profile page, it’s no surprise to discover that over half of potential hires said they would trust a company’s current employees for an accurate and honest review of the company itself. That’s higher than the number of people who would trust either the company’s HR team or website. 

If you use consumer-review sites to help you decide on what restaurant to try next or what movie is worth the ticket price, you should be doing the same with potential employers. After all, these are the people you’ll spend the majority of your waking hours with.

Want to know how to make the most out of the rich, useful information available for free? Read on!

Start with the big number

The first number you see on a job-rating site is likely to be the company’s overall rating. To figure out what it means, you’ll need to put it into context by comparing its rating with those of its competitors. How’s the one you’re considering doing in relation to its peers? This nugget of information can be helpful in your decision-making process, and may help you discover other potential employers. As you evaluate various profiles, have a look at their job openings, as well as jobs that the site recommends to you—you might discover some interesting opportunities to pursue.

Dig deeper into the insider info

The main rating is important, but it is just the tip of the company-rating iceberg.

You really get to be a fly on the wall at a prospective company by reading individual job reviews, which include the comments of current and former employees. There are basic numerical ratings for things like compensation and benefits, but the juiciest (and potentially most valuable) details are in the sections where reviewers sound off on what they like and dislike about a company, as well as suggestions for improvement.

Some reviewers share exactly what they think, no holds barred. Here’s an example: “Pathetic management! NO consideration for top performers! Just a ‘good ole boy network’…” And another: “A great environment and people to work with.” Home in on what is said about a company’s stance on leadership, culture, equality, career development, and social awareness, as well as the working conditions, as these are the critical characteristics that will help you determine whether or not a job will align with what works for you.

Go as deep as you can into profiles—if the company you’re searching has more than one location, click on the location you’re pursuing. Look at the employees’ titles—someone in a leadership position will likely have a different perspective than someone who’s in another role. Identify more closely with the titles you’re pursuing.

Use job reviews as interview fodder

As you interview, start asking questions and making comments about things you noticed on company-review sites. Be specific. It not only shows you did your due diligence, it also demonstrates you’re truly curious about the company. State something like, “I noticed on kununu there was a low rating for leadership. With all due respect, I was just curious how that’s being addressed?”

If a company you’re pursuing is truly transparent with its current employees, they should be as honest as possible with prospective ones, too. And if the interviewer doesn’t respond positively to your question and disregards the feedback of the company’s employees, this is a huge red flag indicating you should look elsewhere. Plus, interviewers should already be aware of what’s being said online, even anonymously. And if they’re not, that also says something about devaluing their employees’ voices.

You can also make comments during the interview to let the interviewer know you’ve done your homework and have your eyes on them—a strategy I have always highly recommended, as this proves to employers that you are on top of your game. You could say, “I noticed that your company’s compensation and benefits was very highly ranked on Monster. Sounds like everyone’s pleased with that!” Think of it as name-dropping, only with employer insight instead.

Look at it this way—employers are doing their diligence on you. They’re perusing your social media profiles and calling references. They don’t want to make a bad hiring decision because that costs them a lot of money, time and effort.

You absolutely must do the same on your end. Do as much groundwork as you can to be well-informed about your next potential employer. Base your questions on information you gleaned from the company’s reviews and take it from there to probe further. Ultimately, your goal is to make stronger, better-informed decisions of which employers to not only pursue but also work for.

And hey, don’t forget to pay it forward and rate your current and recent past companies. Your experiences may help someone else make a critical decision—and you can influence who does or doesn’t end up joining you at the next department happy hour.

Choosing a company is one of the biggest decisions you’ll face, so you want to be as informed as possible. Could you use some more help beyond job reviews? Join Monster for free today. As a member, you can upload up to five versions of your resume—each tailored to the types of jobs that interest you. Recruiters search Monster every day looking to fill top jobs with qualified candidates, just like you. Additionally, you can get career advice and job search tips sent directly to you inbox to keep you on the cutting edge.  

Monster’s career expert Vicki Salemi has more than 15 years of experience in corporate recruiting and HR and is the author of Big Career in the Big City. Follow her on Twitter at @vickisalemi

5 Great Company Review Sites for Prospective Employees

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These sites reveal the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

This article originally appeared on InHerSight.com, a website where women rate the female friendliness of their employers and get matched to companies that fit their needs.

It’s no secret that companies aren’t always completely transparent with prospective employees during the recruiting process. Sure, you know that you’ll be analyzing industry data reports or crafting pithy article headlines, but does your interviewer tell you how the boss really treats their employees or how equal the opportunities are for men and women seeking to rise in the ranks? Doubtful.

Fear not — that’s where company review sites come in handy. In the golden age of third-party review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor, it comes as no surprise that prospective employees often turn to review sites for deeper insider info on a company and its culture. These crowdsourced reviews from both current and former employees can help you gain more insight into the work-life balance, management’s attitude, and the company’s stance on equality. Just like how companies may scope out your social media accounts to make sure you’re a fit, you should do the equivalent and scope them out on company review sites.

Image source: Getty Images.

There’s a dizzying amount of information on the internet, which can make it hard to distinguish which sites to trust. Every site has its pros and cons, and we’ve compiled a list of five great, trustworthy company review sites that excel in different categories for you to peruse before you accept your next job.

1. Glassdoor: Best employee narratives

Glassdoor is one of the most well-known company review sites — it has everything from salary reports to interview questions to pictures of the offices. Out of all the perks, the best part of Glassdoor are the comprehensive company reviews. Of all the company review sites, Glassdoor has the most in-depth and insightful reviews from employees. This is the site where you’ll find the most personal information, like how an employee was treated after a family member passed away or how well the salary actually pays the bills.

2. Indeed: Best coverage

With 72 million company ratings (compared to 40 million on Glassdoor) and 9.8 jobs added per second globally, Indeed has positioned itself as the largest job site. Similar to Glassdoor, it has salary reports and photos, but it also has a Q&A section where prospective employees can ask questions of current or former employees — and with reviews in 63 countries, you’re likely to get a quality answer. So if you’re looking for a site with extensive range or job searching internationally, Indeed is your destination.

3. Kununu: Best well-rounded information

Kununu’s mission is to spread transparency through company reviews and data — in every aspect. In addition to the standard sections regarding the company’s environment, career development, etc., Kununu goes the extra step to include categories you might not think about, like workplace safety, parking accessibility, environmental friendliness, desirable office location, and how challenging the work is.

4. Comparably: Best comparison functionality

Comparably is the perfect embodiment of its name — it allows users to slice and filter company data from every perspective and compare it to other companies. The site gives an overall company culture score that’s derived from employee ratings and reviews in different categories like leadership, diversity, and compensation. You can see a breakdown of the data and view culture scores by department, how different departments rank the CEO, and more. You can also see how the overall company culture score stacks up to other similar-sized companies in the United States, similar-sized companies in its area, and its industry competitors.

5. InHerSight: Best female-friendly perspective

InHerSight seeks to promote gender-diverse workplaces by helping women find female-friendly companies. The site focuses on 15 key metrics that matter most to working women, like flexible work hours, maternity and adoptive leave, management opportunities for women, and more. Women can anonymously rate their employers based on these metrics and also have the opportunity to get matched with companies that align with their interests. These female-centric metrics allow InHerSight to hold a unique position in the company review sphere.

The Motley Fool is an investor in InHerSight, and an officer of its affiliate, Motley Fool Venture Partners, sits on its board.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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If you’re planning to implement performance reviews for the first time, want to overhaul your company’s approach or just need a reference guide, here’s everything you need to know to create a foolproof system. Plus, we’ve included some performance review sample questions you can start using today.

What is a performance review for employees?

A performance review is a formal regulated assessment mechanism in which managers and other key stakeholders evaluate an employee’s work performance. The purpose is to learn more about their strengths and weaknesses, offer constructive feedback for skill development in the future, and assist with goal setting.

Whichever methodology you choose for performance reviews, a well-planned and executed performance review boosts employee engagement and sets the tone for creating a culture of feedback and ongoing development at your organization.

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Types of performance review

Weekly or fortnightly performance evaluation

Weekly or fortnightly performance reviews don’t need to collect a vast amount of data each time or be particularly goal-oriented. They are helpful for record-keeping and making sure a project – especially an agile or fast-moving one – stays on track week by week

Monthly performance appraisals

These are especially useful for businesses who employ people on short-term contracts or freelancers, and for new hires during their onboarding process, as they go from job description to actual performance.  New projects also benefit from monthly employee reviews so that they stay on track and organizational goals are met. Some employees typically prefer monthly check-ins over annual reviews.

Quarterly performance evaluations

Companies divide their business year into quarters (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4), with set goals, targets, and budgets. It makes sense that assessing performance is run alongside these. Three months is sufficient time for an employee to achieve their goals and targets, as well as hone their organizational skills.  You can also aggregate weekly/fortnightly or monthly reviews together each quarter to create a report of an employee’s progress, ready for a review meeting.

Annual performance review

Some businesses still conduct an annual review, but it is increasingly being replaced, or at least supplemented, by pulse surveys and 360 reviews throughout the year. These traditional and formal performance reviews tended to become overblown, with too much information on them to be manageable, or to be a fair evaluation of an employee’s efforts. They looked back on past performance rather than forwards to future performance, and a year is far too long for employees to go without feedback.

That said, reviews and feedback throughout the year collated into one 12-month overall performance report are a useful bank of information, provided all the feedback has had actions attached to it.

Who runs an employee performance review?

It’s usually the person’s line manager, as they know most about the employee’s role and their current work. In some cases, a leadership group, team leader, or a more senior leader may lead the review or someone from human resources.

Why are performance reviews important?

As well as long-term positive outcomes, performance reviews offer an immediate lift – not only for businesses but for employees who want an overview of their strengths and weaknesses and progress in their careers. Here are some of the benefits performance reviews can offer:

1. Aligning personal roles to business goals
A job performance review is a chance to make sure everyone understands the organization’s vision and goals and how their work fits into the bigger picture. Individual performance drives organizational performance.

2. A clear understanding of job roles
Performance management empowers individuals to think about their role within the organization and clarify any areas where they have questions. When employees and supervisors can clearly understand and own their specific job duties, any ambiguities in the workplace are eliminated. Each person is accountable for their work and responsibilities.

3. Regular feedback about performance
Regular feedback contributes to better all-around communication in the workplace. Performance reviews help to identify an individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly, give employees a better understanding of the expectations that they are being held to.

Performance management can be a motivational tool, encouraging employees not only to feel more satisfied in their work but to take action beyond what’s expected.

4. Career development
The performance review presents the opportunity to plan for and set objectives to further develop an employee’s career. Performance management will also help them gain any additional training or mentoring which can act as a basis for HR’s development of future succession plans.

5. Rewards for good performance
Performance management offers a variety of rewards beyond just compensation that show gratitude for a job well done, such as time off and bonuses. The prospect of a better than ‘exceeds expectations’ performance appraisal – one where it is recognized that you’ve gone above and beyond – is an incentive to perform well and may open the door to career advancements in the future.

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What’s the best approach for performance reviews?

With so many practices, HR policies, tools, and tech­niques involved, no two per­for­mance man­age­ment programs will look the same. Some have grading systems. Others have question and response formats, while others are expected to be free-form.

Just like your com­pa­ny cul­ture, your per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem will be unique and spe­cif­ic to your val­ues, your goals and your pur­pose.

How­ev­er, every good employee per­for­mance review process seeks to improve how the overall organization performs while sup­port­ing the per­for­mance, development, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and well-­be­ing of its employees.

Despite this common goal, data suggests that traditional approaches to performance management can be demotivating, uninspiring, and make people want to give up rather than work harder and progress.

In fact, traditional performance management (PM) is universally disliked by both managers and employees. It is seen as having little value and has failed to meet its intended goal of improving performance. According to research reported in the Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology:

• Among managers, 95% are dissatisfied with their PM systems.
• Among employees, 59% feel PM reviews are not worth the time invested, while 56% said they do not receive feedback on what to improve.
• Almost 90% of human resources (HR) heads report that their PM systems do not yield accurate information.

It’s time to make the case for change and redesign performance management. Instead of an annual performance review, a better performance management system frequently engages its employees to better gauge their work satisfaction levels. 

So rather than focusing on past performance in a yearly review, a better employee performance evaluation system incorporates continuous feedback. Research from Josh Bersin estimates that about 75% of multinational companies are moving toward this model.

What should a performance review look like?

Performance reviews based on a continuous feedback philosophy are more likely to be future-focused and geared towards promoting growth and development. Rather than rating employees against a one-size-fits-all standard based on their past performance, continuous performance management treats each employee as an individual whose full potential can be maximized.

However, adopting continuous feedback doesn’t mean removing measurement and metrics from your performance review process and reports altogether – it just means you should be using them in a different way. Metrics and measurements can provide valuable clarity and focus for employees and managers, acting as a framework for planning and prioritizing future efforts.

To be useful and realistic, measurements for progress need to be balanced across all the relevant elements of performance. Appropriate measures might cover a range of aspects like quality, quantity, timeliness, and/or cost-effectiveness of the work.

Expectations placed on employees also need to be credible – the employee can visualize the results and the means of achieving them, and feel confident about getting it right.

To that end, performance expectations must be:

• based on job function
• clear and understandable
• specific
• reasonable and attainable
• measurable – observable or verifiable
• results oriented
• communicated in a timely fashion
• geared towards fostering continual improvement in productivity and skill development

How to set the right goals in a performance review

When it comes to employee goals, striking the right balance is everything. Goals can’t be too easy, or they won’t leave employees feeling sat­is­fied — most peo­ple enjoy a chal­lenge. They want to be stretched, expand their knowledge, and devel­op new skills. Equal­ly, how­ev­er, goals that are too chal­leng­ing can be demotivating. Employees will burn out try­ing to accom­plish them, or they won’t try at all, believ­ing them to be impossible.

Effec­tive goals should be set col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly between man­ag­er and employ­ee. They should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Based) and tracked reg­u­lar­ly. In addition, reg­u­lar meet­ings should be held to dis­cuss goal progress and what can be done to sup­port the employee in meeting the target.

Performance review templates

Nobody can, or should, conduct an off-the-cuff performance review. It’s essential to use customizable templates that cover all the necessary feedback areas and metrics,  and also deliver a positive review that energizes, motivates, and engages individual employees.

Read more about performance review templates

Performance review examples: phrases and questions

Whichever performance review model you’re working within, providing feedback with clear, positive language is the key to keeping the review goal-focused and productive. Writing performance reviews requires managers and other raters to be specific with their feedback, stay constructive, and provide solutions needed to help the employee grow.

You’ll find criteria will vary depending on the size, scope, and culture of your organization. However, there are a few elements that come up for almost all companies. Here are a few sample areas of focus to get you started with planning your employee evaluation criteria:

Accomplishing goals

• Sets challenging goals for him/herself
• Helps others achieve their objectives
• Prioritizes his/her work based on the needs of the organization and its customers
• Achieves his/her objectives even when faced with obstacles and challenges

Leadership qualities

• Takes team members’ ideas and opinions into account when making decisions
• Helps team members resolve work-related problems
• Holds team members accountable for achieving their objectives

Communication

• Actively listens to others
• Tailors his/her communication to the needs of the audience
• Communicates clearly and concisely

Teamwork

• Collaborates effectively with other team members
• Gives constructive and helpful feedback to others
• Treats others with respect
• Values and respects differences among team members
• Actively listens and participates in a work-related discussion

Culture/Values

• Lives company values every day
• Acts as a role model
• Creates a positive work environment

The content of a performance review will vary depending on job role and organization, but it may be valuable to develop some universal questions for managers to ask, such as:

• What is [Subject’s Name] greatest strength and what can he/she continue to do to grow?
• What is [Subject’s Name] greatest opportunity and what can he/she do to improve in the area?

To help you in composing your employee evaluation criteria, you can download free performance review templates from Qualtrics.

Performance review phrases to avoid

Although performance review templates and performance reviews themselves are customizable, it’s important to be mindful of the messages you are giving out. Great review conversations nurture an employee’s performance, development, and manager-employee relationship, whereas thoughtless ones can damage employee engagement and even business success as your top people leave.

Here are some real howlers – while some of these may seem a little over the top, they do demonstrate neatly what NOT to say, and why not:

“You do so brilliantly, I have nothing to give you feedback on”

Even your very top talent will have some areas they can improve or develop skills in. Comments like this give the impression you haven’t bothered to look at their work in any detail.

“If you double your targets this year, then we might look at promotion to the C-suite next year”

Avoid ‘if/then’ statements, as they sound like empty promises, based on unattainable goals.

“You’re never at your desk on time. And you’re always late to meetings”

Avoid absolute words such as ‘always’ and ‘never’ – no one is late 100% of the time.

“You’re a great employee. Keep it up”

 This says nothing about what the employee does that is great, how they can be even greater, or what they can do to ‘keep it up’. You need to explain in detail what the employee did that was great and their development goals to continue their good work

“I heard you handled that financial services account badly, which was disappointing, to say the least”

The reviewer is relying on hearsay here rather than first-hand observation and gives the employee no chance to put over their version before being criticized. True, it may be peer observation, but using 360 feedback rather than the office gossip mill is much more constructive.

“You knocked the other two designers into a cocked hat. Their prototypes were trash compared with yours.”

Comparing colleagues and co-workers in a performance review is a big NO. You’re reviewing only one person’s achievements, so leave the disasters (and triumphs) of others to their own, separate performance discussions.

“I can’t believe you! I thought you would do a good job of this, but it’s very poor”

The reviewer is bringing emotion into this feedback, which will only upset or rile the employee having the review. There is no constructive feedback and this level of hostility is likely to drive the employee to look for another job.

“You’re lucky to get this promotion. Don’t waste the opportunity”

Condescending and begrudging much? You never want to undermine your employees but rather praise them and encourage their successes. Forcing employees into a promotion does not mean its the best option for them, they deserve to choose.

How to prepare to conduct a performance review

If you’re a manager or team leader tasked with running appraisals for your team, you’re likely to have an established performance review process to guide your approach. However, you can still make the review experience go as smoothly as possible by preparing in advance.

Clear your calendar

If you’re going to be meeting with team members one on one, make sure you won’t be distracted or interrupted by other priorities during the meeting. Try to minimize commitments earlier in the day to reduce the risk of getting waylaid and having to postpone the review or turn up late. This way, employees know that the review is as important to you as it is to them.

Brush up on your employee experience data

Before the meeting, look through your notes from the most recent review with the employee to see what happened last time. What were the main themes of the meeting? Was there anything either of you said you’d follow up on?

Be ready to take feedback as well as give it

Make sure you allow enough time for the employee to share their feedback with you regarding the way you manage and bring a laptop or notebook to record it so that you can follow up later.

Prepare for curveballs

Although you shouldn’t be telling the employee anything they don’t already know about their performance, it’s very possible that they’ll bring up matters that are news to you. Because they’re private one-to-one exchanges, reviews may be seen as an opportunity to raise issues or share news. While it might not be pertinent to the review itself, be receptive to whatever the employee brings up and table it for a later conversation if required.

Performance review pitfalls to avoid

As you’re planning or reviewing your performance review process, you can save time and expense by being aware of these potential failure points.

1. Losing the link between process and purpose
Make sure the goal of your performance management systems drives the process, and be ready to make changes if required. Understanding how well your organization’s goals line up with the day-to-day work of individuals and teams is key here.

2. Not prioritizing a culture of feedback
If you don’t already have a culture of feedback, invest time and resources on the front end to communicate the true purpose of performance reviews and build trust in the process to develop a feedback-based culture.

3. Failing to engage your stakeholders
Getting decision-makers and business leaders on board right from the very beginning will improve buy-in, increase participation rates, and set your program up for success.

4. Not building in a support network
Follow-up and feedback need to be built in at the forefront of the project. Set expectations for employees and managers early on so they know who they can go to for advice and support

5. Lack of communication
Communication is the most critical component of implementing a new or improved performance management system. Per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tems suc­ceed when com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the process is authen­tic and trans­par­ent.

6. Insufficient training and enablement for managers
No per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem will be suc­cess­ful if the peo­ple involved don’t invest in the process. If employ­ees sense that their man­agers are apa­thet­ic about the per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem, they will mir­ror this atti­tude. Man­agers need to take con­trol and lead by example, and they need support and adequate training to do so.

Alternative ways to collect feedback

For many businesses, performance reviews are the most helpful way to share and collect employee feedback. But thanks to the uptick in experience-led business and a new understanding of the value of employee experience, new methodologies are emerging.

360 feedback

In a 360 feedback, staff members can receive feedback not only from managers, but from peers and junior staff members. They can also review themselves, resulting in a complete – or 360 degree – view of their strengths and opportunities. However, this kind of program should only ever be used for development, not to gauge performance.

Continual feedback

Some companies prefer to avoid the formal structure of a performance review and instead share feedback on a continual ad hoc basis. This might be a suitable option for very small businesses and new start-ups. However, there is a risk that without a formal checkpoint, staff lack clarity on how they’re progressing and what they need to work on.

Employee pulse reviews

The employee pulse review can be seen as a happy medium between continual feedback and a big once-a-year performance review. It’s a smaller-scale employee review that’s conducted on a more frequent schedule, such as monthly or quarterly. Pulse feedback is more commonly associated with employee engagement surveys, but it works just as well for sharing feedback in the other direction since it offers clear measures and is quick and easy to complete.

Incorporate 360 feedback in a performance review

Many clients ask us about the ideal use case for a 360 assessment. Some of them use it for performance management while others purely for development. With performance reviews moving away from critique of workers and more towards continuous development and employee engagement, 360s are a valuable part of performance management software.

At Qualtrics, we believe that 360 is ideal for development because feedback should be seen as an investment into an employee through feedback from peers, direct reports, managers, leaders, and customers rather than a tool that determines their pay, performance, or promotion. To ensure fidelity of responses and to be seen as an authentic review (not a political tool), our recommendation is to incorporate 360 into your performance management software as a review process for developing your employees and not evaluating them.

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This article was written by the EmployeeXM team

Our EX Scientists are a global team of Employee Experience consultants who deliver advisory services for our clients to help them design and deliver world class EX strategies & programs. They provide empirically driven, best practice solutions.

This post was originally written June, 2019 and was updated August, 2021.

References:

Bersin Josh. (2018). We wasted ten years talking about performance ratings. The seven things we’ve learned. Josh Bersin Institute: Retrieved March 18th from https://joshbersin.com/2018/11/we-wasted-ten-years-talking-about-performance-ratings-the-seven-things-weve-learned/#_ftn1

Capelli, P & Tavis, Anna (2016) Assessing Performance: The Performance Management Revolution. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved March 18th from https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-performance-management-revolution

Enderes, K., & Derunts, M. (2018). Seven Top Findings for Enabling Performance in the Flow of Work, Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Kathi Enders (2018) Performance Management, Disrupted: Enabling Performance in the Flow of Work. Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Pulakos, E. D., Hansen, M. R., Cargill, A. S., Moye, N. (2015). Performance Management can be fixed: An on the job experiential learning approach for complex behavior change. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol 8(1), 51–76.

Rodgers, R., & Hunter, J. E. (1991). Impact of management by objectives on organizational productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 76(2), 322–336.

Smith, M. and Bititci, U. (2017), “Interplay between performance measurement and management, employee engagement and performance”, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol 37(9), 1207-1228.

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The Future of Performance Reviews

Idea in Brief

The Problem

By emphasizing individual accountability for past results, traditional appraisals give short shrift to improving current performance and developing talent for the future. That can hinder long-term competitiveness.

The Solution

To better support employee development, many organizations are dropping or radically changing their annual review systems in favor of giving people less formal, more frequent feedback that follows the natural cycle of work.

The Outlook

This shift isn’t just a fad—real business needs are driving it. Support at the top is critical, though. Some firms that have struggled to go entirely without ratings are trying a “third way”: assigning multiple ratings several times a year to encourage employees’ growth.

When Brian Jensen told his audience of HR executives that Colorcon wasn’t bothering with annual reviews anymore, they were appalled. This was in 2002, during his tenure as the drugmaker’s head of global human resources. In his presentation at the Wharton School, Jensen explained that Colorcon had found a more effective way of reinforcing desired behaviors and managing performance: Supervisors were giving people instant feedback, tying it to individuals’ own goals, and handing out small weekly bonuses to employees they saw doing good things.

Back then the idea of abandoning the traditional appraisal process—and all that followed from it—seemed heretical. But now, by some estimates, more than one-third of U.S. companies are doing just that. From Silicon Valley to New York, and in offices across the world, firms are replacing annual reviews with frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees.

As you might expect, technology companies such as Adobe, Juniper Systems, Dell, Microsoft, and IBM have led the way. Yet they’ve been joined by a number of professional services firms (Deloitte, Accenture, PwC), early adopters in other industries (Gap, Lear, OppenheimerFunds), and even General Electric, the longtime role model for traditional appraisals.

Without question, rethinking performance management is at the top of many executive teams’ agendas, but what drove the change in this direction? Many factors. In a recent article for People + Strategy, a Deloitte manager referred to the review process as “an investment of 1. 8 million hours across the firm that didn’t fit our business needs anymore.” One Washington Post business writer called it a “rite of corporate kabuki” that restricts creativity, generates mountains of paperwork, and serves no real purpose. Others have described annual reviews as a last-century practice and blamed them for a lack of collaboration and innovation. Employers are also finally acknowledging that both supervisors and subordinates despise the appraisal process—a perennial problem that feels more urgent now that the labor market is picking up and concerns about retention have returned.

But the biggest limitation of annual reviews—and, we have observed, the main reason more and more companies are dropping them—is this: With their heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and their end-of-year structure, they hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future, both of which are critical for organizations’ long-term survival. In contrast, regular conversations about performance and development change the focus to building the workforce your organization needs to be competitive both today and years from now. Business researcher Josh Bersin estimates that about 70% of multinational companies are moving toward this model, even if they haven’t arrived quite yet.

The tension between the traditional and newer approaches stems from a long-running dispute about managing people: Do you “get what you get” when you hire your employees? Should you focus mainly on motivating the strong ones with money and getting rid of the weak ones? Or are employees malleable? Can you change the way they perform through effective coaching and management and intrinsic rewards such as personal growth and a sense of progress on the job?

With traditional appraisals, the pendulum had swung too far toward the former, more transactional view of performance, which became hard to support in an era of low inflation and tiny merit-pay budgets. Those who still hold that view are railing against the recent emphasis on improvement and growth over accountability. But the new perspective is unlikely to be a flash in the pan because, as we will discuss, it is being driven by business needs, not imposed by HR.

First, though, let’s consider how we got to this point—and how companies are faring with new approaches.

How We Got Here

Historical and economic context has played a large role in the evolution of performance management over the decades. When human capital was plentiful, the focus was on which people to let go, which to keep, and which to reward—and for those purposes, traditional appraisals (with their emphasis on individual accountability) worked pretty well. But when talent was in shorter supply, as it is now, developing people became a greater concern—and organizations had to find new ways of meeting that need.

TIMELINE

Talent Management

The tug-of-war between accountability and development over the decades

• Accountability
• Development
• A hybrid “third way”

• Accountability
• Development
• A hybrid “third way”

WWI

The U. S. military created merit-rating system to flag and dismiss poor performers.

WWII

The Army devised forced ranking to identify enlisted soldiers with potential to become officers.

1940s

About 60% of U.S. companies were using appraisals to document workers’ performance and allocate rewards.

1950s

Social psychologist Douglas McGregor argued for engaging employees in assessments and goal setting.

1960s

Led by General Electric, companies began splitting appraisals into separate discussions about accountability and growth, to give development its due.

1970s

Inflation rates shot up, and organizations felt pressure to award merit pay more objectively, so accountability again became the priority in the appraisal process.

1980s

Jack Welch championed forced ranking at GE to reward top performers, accommodate those in the middle, and get rid of those at the bottom.

1990s

McKinsey’s War for Talent study pointed to a shortage of capable executives and reinforced the emphasis on assessing and rewarding performance.

2000

Organizations got flatter, which dramatically increased the number of direct reports each manager had, making it harder to invest time in developing them.

2011

Kelly Services was the first big professional services firm to drop appraisals, and other major firms followed suit, emphasizing frequent, informal feedback.

2012

Adobe ended annual performance reviews, in keeping with the famous “Agile Manifesto” and the notion that annual targets were irrelevant to the way its business operated.

2016

Deloitte, PwC, and others that tried going numberless are reinstating performance ratings but using more than one number and keeping the new emphasis on developmental feedback.

FROM  “The Performance Management Revolution,” October 2016©HBR.ORG

From accountability to development.

Appraisals can be traced back to the U.S. military’s “merit rating” system, created during World War I to identify poor performers for discharge or transfer. After World War II, about 60% of U.S. companies were using them (by the 1960s, it was closer to 90%). Though seniority rules determined pay increases and promotions for unionized workers, strong merit scores meant good advancement prospects for managers. At least initially, improving performance was an afterthought.

And then a severe shortage of managerial talent caused a shift in organizational priorities: Companies began using appraisals to develop employees into supervisors, and especially managers into executives. In a famous 1957 HBR article, social psychologist Douglas McGregor argued that subordinates should, with feedback from the boss, help set their performance goals and assess themselves—a process that would build on their strengths and potential. This “Theory Y” approach to management—he coined the term later on—assumed that employees wanted to perform well and would do so if supported properly. (“Theory X” assumed you had to motivate people with material rewards and punishments. ) McGregor noted one drawback to the approach he advocated: Doing it right would take managers several days per subordinate each year.

By the early 1960s, organizations had become so focused on developing future talent that many observers thought that tracking past performance had fallen by the wayside. Part of the problem was that supervisors were reluctant to distinguish good performers from bad. One study, for example, found that 98% of federal government employees received “satisfactory” ratings, while only 2% got either of the other two outcomes: “unsatisfactory” or “outstanding.” After running a well-publicized experiment in 1964, General Electric concluded it was best to split the appraisal process into separate discussions about accountability and development, given the conflicts between them. Other companies followed suit.

Back to accountability.

In the 1970s, however, a shift began. Inflation rates shot up, and merit-based pay took center stage in the appraisal process. During that period, annual wage increases really mattered. Supervisors often had discretion to give raises of 20% or more to strong performers, to distinguish them from the sea of employees receiving basic cost-of-living raises, and getting no increase represented a substantial pay cut. With the stakes so high—and with antidiscrimination laws so recently on the books—the pressure was on to award pay more objectively. As a result, accountability became a higher priority than development for many organizations.

Three other changes in the zeitgeist reinforced that shift:

First, Jack Welch became CEO of General Electric in 1981. To deal with the long-standing concern that supervisors failed to label real differences in performance, Welch championed the forced-ranking system—another military creation. Though the U.S. Army had devised it, just before entering World War II, to quickly identify a large number of officer candidates for the country’s imminent military expansion, GE used it to shed people at the bottom. Equating performance with individuals’ inherent capabilities (and largely ignoring their potential to grow), Welch divided his workforce into “A” players, who must be rewarded; “B” players, who should be accommodated; and “C” players, who should be dismissed. In that system, development was reserved for the “A” players—the high-potentials chosen to advance into senior positions.

Further Reading

• Reinventing Performance Management

Second, 1993 legislation limited the tax deductibility of executive salaries to $1 million but exempted performance-based pay. That led to a rise in outcome-based bonuses for corporate leaders—a change that trickled down to frontline managers and even hourly employees—and organizations relied even more on the appraisal process to assess merit.

Third, McKinsey’s War for Talent research project in the late 1990s suggested that some employees were fundamentally more talented than others (you knew them when you saw them, the thinking went). Because such individuals were, by definition, in short supply, organizations felt they needed to take great care in tracking and rewarding them. Nothing in the McKinsey studies showed that fixed personality traits actually made certain people perform better, but that was the assumption.

So, by the early 2000s, organizations were using performance appraisals mainly to hold employees accountable and to allocate rewards. By some estimates, as many as one-third of U.S. corporations—and 60% of the Fortune 500—had adopted a forced-ranking system. At the same time, other changes in corporate life made it harder for the appraisal process to advance the time-consuming goals of improving individual performance and developing skills for future roles. Organizations got much flatter, which dramatically increased the number of subordinates that supervisors had to manage. The new norm was 15 to 25 direct reports (up from six before the 1960s). While overseeing more employees, supervisors were also expected to be individual contributors. So taking days to manage the performance issues of each employee, as Douglas McGregor had advocated, was impossible. Meanwhile, greater interest in lateral hiring reduced the need for internal development. Up to two-thirds of corporate jobs were filled from outside, compared with about 10% a generation earlier.

Back to development…again.

Another major turning point came in 2005: A few years after Jack Welch left GE, the company quietly backed away from forced ranking because it fostered internal competition and undermined collaboration. Welch still defends the practice, but what he really supports is the general principle of letting people know how they are doing: “As a manager, you owe candor to your people,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2013. “They must not be guessing about what the organization thinks of them.” It’s hard to argue against candor, of course. But more and more firms began questioning how useful it was to compare people with one another or even to rate them on a scale.

So the emphasis on accountability for past performance started to fade. That continued as jobs became more complex and rapidly changed shape—in that climate, it was difficult to set annual goals that would still be meaningful 12 months later. Plus, the move toward team-based work often conflicted with individual appraisals and rewards. And low inflation and small budgets for wage increases made appraisal-driven merit pay seem futile. What was the point of trying to draw performance distinctions when rewards were so trivial?

The whole appraisal process was loathed by employees anyway. Social science research showed that they hated numerical scores—they would rather be told they were “average” than given a 3 on a 5-point scale. They especially detested forced ranking. As Wharton’s Iwan Barankay demonstrated in a field setting, performance actually declined when people were rated relative to others. Nor did the ratings seem accurate. As the accumulating research on appraisal scores showed, they had as much to do with who the rater was (people gave higher ratings to those who were like them) as they did with performance.

And managers hated doing reviews, as survey after survey made clear. Willis Towers Watson found that 45% did not see value in the systems they used. Deloitte reported that 58% of HR executives considered reviews an ineffective use of supervisors’ time. In a study by the advisory service CEB, the average manager reported spending about 210 hours—close to five weeks—doing appraisals each year.

As dissatisfaction with the traditional process mounted, high-tech firms ushered in a new way of thinking about performance. The “Agile Manifesto,” created by software developers in 2001, outlined several key values—favoring, for instance, “responding to change over following a plan.” It emphasized principles such as collaboration, self-organization, self-direction, and regular reflection on how to work more effectively, with the aim of prototyping more quickly and responding in real time to customer feedback and changes in requirements. Although not directed at performance per se, these principles changed the definition of effectiveness on the job—and they were at odds with the usual practice of cascading goals from the top down and assessing people against them once a year.

So it makes sense that the first significant departure from traditional reviews happened at Adobe, in 2011. The company was already using the agile method, breaking down projects into “sprints” that were immediately followed by debriefing sessions. Adobe explicitly brought this notion of constant assessment and feedback into performance management, with frequent check-ins replacing annual appraisals. Juniper Systems, Dell, and Microsoft were prominent followers.

CEB estimated in 2014 that 12% of U.S. companies had dropped annual reviews altogether. Willis Towers Watson put the figure at 8% but added that 29% were considering eliminating them or planning to do so. Deloitte reported in 2015 that only 12% of the U.S. companies it surveyed were not planning to rethink their performance management systems. This trend seems to be extending beyond the United States as well. PwC reports that two-thirds of large companies in the UK, for example, are in the process of changing their systems.

Three Business Reasons to Drop Appraisals

In light of that history, we see three clear business imperatives that are leading companies to abandon performance appraisals:

The return of people development.

Companies are under competitive pressure to upgrade their talent management efforts. This is especially true at consulting and other professional services firms, where knowledge work is the offering—and where inexperienced college grads are turned into skilled advisers through structured training. Such firms are doubling down on development, often by putting their employees (who are deeply motivated by the potential for learning and advancement) in charge of their own growth. This approach requires rich feedback from supervisors—a need that’s better met by frequent, informal check-ins than by annual reviews.

Now that the labor market has tightened and keeping good people is once again critical, such companies have been trying to eliminate “dissatisfiers” that drive employees away. Naturally, annual reviews are on that list, since the process is so widely reviled and the focus on numerical ratings interferes with the learning that people want and need to do. Replacing this system with feedback that’s delivered right after client engagements helps managers do a better job of coaching and allows subordinates to process and apply the advice more effectively.

Kelly Services was the first big professional services firm to drop appraisals, in 2011. PwC tried it with a pilot group in 2013 and then discontinued annual reviews for all 200,000-plus employees. Deloitte followed in 2015, and Accenture and KPMG made similar announcements shortly thereafter. Given the sheer size of these firms, and the fact that they offer management advice to thousands of organizations, their choices are having an enormous impact on other companies. Firms that scrap appraisals are also rethinking employee management much more broadly. Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme estimates that his firm is changing about 90% of its talent practices.

The need for agility.

When rapid innovation is a source of competitive advantage, as it is now in many companies and industries, that means future needs are continually changing. Because organizations won’t necessarily want employees to keep doing the same things, it doesn’t make sense to hang on to a system that’s built mainly to assess and hold people accountable for past or current practices. As Susan Peters, GE’s head of human resources, has pointed out, businesses no longer have clear annual cycles. Projects are short-term and tend to change along the way, so employees’ goals and tasks can’t be plotted out a year in advance with much accuracy.

At GE a new business strategy based on innovation was the biggest reason the company recently began eliminating individual ratings and annual reviews. Its new approach to performance management is aligned with its FastWorks platform for creating products and bringing them to market, which borrows a lot from agile techniques. Supervisors still have an end-of-year summary discussion with subordinates, but the goal is to push frequent conversations with employees (GE calls them “touchpoints”) and keep revisiting two basic questions: What am I doing that I should keep doing? And what am I doing that I should change? Annual goals have been replaced with shorter-term “priorities.” As with many of the companies we see, GE first launched a pilot, with about 87,000 employees in 2015, before adopting the changes across the company.

The centrality of teamwork.

Moving away from forced ranking and from appraisals’ focus on individual accountability makes it easier to foster teamwork. This has become especially clear at retail companies like Sears and Gap—perhaps the most surprising early innovators in appraisals. Sophisticated customer service now requires frontline and back-office employees to work together to keep shelves stocked and manage customer flow, and traditional systems don’t enhance performance at the team level or help track collaboration.

Gap supervisors still give workers end-of-year assessments, but only to summarize performance discussions that happen throughout the year and to set pay increases accordingly. Employees still have goals, but as at other companies, the goals are short-term (in this case, quarterly). Now two years into its new system, Gap reports far more satisfaction with its performance process and the best-ever completion of store-level goals. Nonetheless, Rob Ollander-Krane, Gap’s senior director of organization performance effectiveness, says the company needs further improvement in setting stretch goals and focusing on team performance.

Implications.

All three reasons for dropping annual appraisals argue for a system that more closely follows the natural cycle of work. Ideally, conversations between managers and employees occur when projects finish, milestones are reached, challenges pop up, and so forth—allowing people to solve problems in current performance while also developing skills for the future. At most companies, managers take the lead in setting near-term goals, and employees drive career conversations throughout the year. In the words of one Deloitte manager: “The conversations are more holistic. They’re about goals and strengths, not just about past performance.”

Further Reading

Perhaps most important, companies are overhauling performance management because their businesses require the change. That’s true whether they’re professional services firms that must develop people in order to compete, companies that need to deliver ongoing performance feedback to support rapid innovation, or retailers that need better coordination between the sales floor and the back office to serve their customers.

Of course, many HR managers worry: If we can’t get supervisors to have good conversations with subordinates once a year, how can we expect them to do so more frequently, without the support of the usual appraisal process? It’s a valid question—but we see reasons to be optimistic.

As GE found in 1964 and as research has documented since, it is extraordinarily difficult to have a serious, open discussion about problems while also dishing out consequences such as low merit pay. The end-of-year review was also an excuse for delaying feedback until then, at which point both the supervisor and the employee were likely to have forgotten what had happened months earlier. Both of those constraints disappear when you take away the annual review. Additionally, almost all companies that have dropped traditional appraisals have invested in training supervisors to talk more about development with their employees—and they are checking with subordinates to make sure that’s happening.

Moving to an informal system requires a culture that will keep the continuous feedback going. As Megan Taylor, Adobe’s director of business partnering, pointed out at a recent conference, it’s difficult to sustain that if it’s not happening organically. Adobe, which has gone totally numberless but still gives merit increases based on informal assessments, reports that regular conversations between managers and their employees are now occurring without HR’s prompting. Deloitte, too, has found that its new model of frequent, informal check-ins has led to more meaningful discussions, deeper insights, and greater employee satisfaction. (For more details, see “Reinventing Performance Management,” HBR, April 2015.) The firm started to go numberless like Adobe but then switched to assigning employees several numbers four times a year, to give them rolling feedback on different dimensions. Jeffrey Orlando, who heads up development and performance at Deloitte, says the company has been tracking the effects on business results, and they’ve been positive so far.

Challenges That Persist

The greatest resistance to abandoning appraisals, which is something of a revolution in human resources, comes from HR itself. The reason is simple: Many of the processes and systems that HR has built over the years revolve around those performance ratings. Experts in employment law had advised organizations to standardize practices, develop objective criteria to justify every employment decision, and document all relevant facts. Taking away appraisals flies in the face of that advice—and it doesn’t necessarily solve every problem that they failed to address.

Here are some of the challenges that organizations still grapple with when they replace the old performance model with new approaches:

Aligning individual and company goals.

In the traditional model, business objectives and strategies cascaded down the organization. All the units, and then all the individual employees, were supposed to establish their goals to reflect and reinforce the direction set at the top. But this approach works only when business goals are easy to articulate and held constant over the course of a year. As we’ve discussed, that’s often not the case these days, and employee goals may be pegged to specific projects. So as projects unfold and tasks change, how do you coordinate individual priorities with the goals for the whole enterprise, especially when the business objectives are short-term and must rapidly adapt to market shifts? It’s a new kind of problem to solve, and the jury is still out on how to respond.

Rewarding performance.

Appraisals gave managers a clear-cut way of tying rewards to individual contributions. Companies changing their systems are trying to figure out how their new practices will affect the pay-for-performance model, which none of them have explicitly abandoned.

They still differentiate rewards, usually relying on managers’ qualitative judgments rather than numerical ratings. In pilot programs at Juniper Systems and Cargill, supervisors had no difficulty allocating merit-based pay without appraisal scores. In fact, both line managers and HR staff felt that paying closer attention to employee performance throughout the year was likely to make their merit-pay decisions more valid.

But it will be interesting to see whether most supervisors end up reviewing the feedback they’ve given each employee over the year before determining merit increases. (Deloitte’s managers already do this.) If so, might they produce something like an annual appraisal score—even though it’s more carefully considered? And could that subtly undermine development by shifting managers’ focus back to accountability?

Identifying poor performers.

Though managers may assume they need appraisals to determine which employees aren’t doing their jobs well, the traditional process doesn’t really help much with that. For starters, individuals’ ratings jump around over time. Research shows that last year’s performance score predicts only one-third of the variance in this year’s score—so it’s hard to say that someone simply isn’t up to scratch. Plus, HR departments consistently complain that line managers don’t use the appraisal process to document poor performers. Even when they do, waiting until the end of the year to flag struggling employees allows failure to go on for too long without intervention.

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We’ve observed that companies that have dropped appraisals are requiring supervisors to immediately identify problem employees. Juniper Systems also formally asks supervisors each quarter to confirm that their subordinates are performing up to company standards. Only 3%, on average, are not, and HR is brought in to address them. Adobe reports that its new system has reduced dismissals, because struggling employees are monitored and coached much more closely.

Still, given how reluctant most managers are to single out failing employees, we can’t assume that getting rid of appraisals will make those tough calls any easier. And all the companies we’ve observed still have “performance improvement plans” for employees identified as needing support. Such plans remain universally problematic, too, partly because many issues that cause poor performance can’t be solved by management intervention.

Avoiding legal troubles.

Employee relations managers within HR often worry that discrimination charges will spike if their companies stop basing pay increases and promotions on numerical ratings, which seem objective. But appraisals haven’t prevented discriminatory practices. Though they force managers to systematically review people’s contributions each year, a great deal of discretion (always subject to bias) is built into the process, and considerable evidence shows that supervisors discriminate against some employees by giving them undeservedly low ratings.

Leaders at Gap report that their new practices were driven partly by complaints and research showing that the appraisal process was often biased and ineffective. Frontline workers in retail (disproportionately women and minorities) are especially vulnerable to unfair treatment. Indeed, formal ratings may do more to reveal bias than to curb it. If a company has clear appraisal scores and merit-pay indexes, it is easy to see if women and minorities with the same scores as white men are getting fewer or lower pay increases.

A classic study by Edward Jones and Victor Harris in the 1960s demonstrated that people tend to attribute others’ behavior to character rather than circumstances.

When a car goes streaking past us, for instance, we think that the driver is a jerk and ignore the possibility that there might be an emergency. A good workplace example of this cognitive bias—known as the “fundamental attribution error”—is to assume that the lowest performers in any year will always be the worst performers and to fire them as a result. Such an assumption overlooks the impact of good or poor management, not to mention business conditions that are beyond employees’ control.

Of course, this model is highly flattering to people who have advanced into executive roles—“A” players whose success is, by definition, credited to their superior abilities, not to good fortune. That may be partly why the model has persisted so long in the face of considerable evidence against it.

Even when “A” players seem to perform well in many contexts (and that’s rarely measured), they may be coasting on the “halo effect”—another type of bias, akin to self-fulfilling prophecy. If these folks have already been successful, they receive more opportunities than others, and they’re pushed harder, so naturally they do better.

Biases color individual performance ratings as well. Decision makers may give past behavior too much weight, for instance, or fall prey to stereotypes when they assign their ratings.

But when you get rid of forced ranking and appraisal scores, you don’t eradicate bias. Discrimination and faulty assumptions still creep into qualitative assessments. In some ways the older, more cumbersome performance systems actually made it harder for managers to keep their blinders on. Formal feedback from various stakeholders provided some balance when supervisors were otherwise inclined to see only the good things their stars did and failed to recognize others’ contributions.

Anytime you exercise judgment, whether or not you translate that to numerical ratings, intuition plays a part, and bias can rear its head.

All that said, it’s not clear that new approaches to performance management will do much to mitigate discrimination either. Gap has found that getting rid of performance scores increased fairness in pay and other decisions, but judgments still have to be made—and there’s the possibility of bias in every piece of qualitative information that decision makers consider.

Managing the feedback firehose.

In recent years most HR information systems were built to move annual appraisals online and connect them to pay increases, succession planning, and so forth. They weren’t designed to accommodate continuous feedback, which is one reason many employee check-ins consist of oral comments, with no documentation.

The tech world has responded with apps that enable supervisors to give feedback anytime and to record it if desired. At General Electric, the PD@GE app (“PD” stands for “performance development”) allows managers to call up notes and materials from prior conversations and summarize that information. Employees can use the app to ask for direction when they need it. IBM has a similar app that adds another feature: It enables employees to give feedback to peers and choose whether the recipient’s boss gets a copy. Amazon’s Anytime Feedback tool does much the same thing. The great advantage of these apps is that supervisors can easily review all the discussion text when it is time to take actions such as award merit pay or consider promotions and job reassignments.

Of course, being on the receiving end of all that continual coaching could get overwhelming—it never lets up. And as for peer feedback, it isn’t always useful, even if apps make it easier to deliver in real time. Typically, it’s less objective than supervisor feedback, as anyone familiar with 360s knows. It can be also “gamed” by employees to help or hurt colleagues. (At Amazon, the cutthroat culture encourages employees to be critical of one another’s performance, and forced ranking creates an incentive to push others to the bottom of the heap.) The more consequential the peer feedback, the more likely the problems.

Not all employers face the same business pressures to change their performance processes. In some fields and industries (think sales and financial services), it still makes sense to emphasize accountability and financial rewards for individual performers. Organizations with a strong public mission may also be well served by traditional appraisals. But even government organizations like NASA and the FBI are rethinking their approach, having concluded that accountability should be collective and that supervisors need to do a better job of coaching and developing their subordinates.

Ideology at the top matters. Consider what happened at Intel. In a two-year pilot, employees got feedback but no formal appraisal scores. Though supervisors did not have difficulty differentiating performance or distributing performance-based pay without the ratings, company executives returned to using them, believing they created healthy competition and clear outcomes. At Sun Communities, a manufactured-home company, senior leaders also oppose eliminating appraisals because they think formal feedback is essential to accountability. And Medtronic, which gave up ratings several years ago, is resurrecting them now that it has acquired Ireland-based Covidien, which has a more traditional view of performance management.

Other firms aren’t completely reverting to old approaches but instead seem to be seeking middle ground. As we’ve mentioned, Deloitte has backpedaled from giving no ratings at all to having project leads and managers assign them in four categories on a quarterly basis, to provide detailed “performance snapshots. ” PwC recently made a similar move in its client-services practices: Employees still don’t receive a single rating each year, but they now get scores on five competencies, along with other development feedback. In PwC’s case, the pushback against going numberless actually came from employees, especially those on a partner track, who wanted to know how they were doing.

At one insurance company, after formal ratings had been eliminated, merit-pay increases were being shared internally and then interpreted as performance scores. These became known as “shadow ratings,” and because they started to affect other talent management decisions, the company eventually went back to formal appraisals. But it kept other changes it had made to its performance management system, such as quarterly conversations between managers and employees, to maintain its new commitment to development.

It will be interesting to see how well these “third way” approaches work. They, too, could fail if they aren’t supported by senior leadership and reinforced by organizational culture. Still, in most cases, sticking with old systems seems like a bad option. Companies that don’t think an overhaul makes sense for them should at least carefully consider whether their process is giving them what they need to solve current performance problems and develop future talent. Performance appraisals wouldn’t be the least popular practice in business, as they’re widely believed to be, if something weren’t fundamentally wrong with them.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2016 issue (pp.58–67) of Harvard Business Review.

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