Taking out the performance review
17/10/2013

At the CIPD performance management conference today, Simon McDougle explained how and why Adobe took out the annual performance review.
Why would you do that?
Simply, the negative impact and poor morale it was causing was unsustainable and the spike of talent leaving immediately after the review period was indicative of the impact it was having.
Adobe changed this by taking out the forced ranking of employees and even removing the reporting process. Now they have “check-in” that runs the whole year. It focuses on Expectations, Feedback and Growth. It is between the manager and employee. It is lightly policed through skip level discussions and pulse survey. They took a risk but the employees are enthusiastic about this and the talent loss spike has gone, which is all good for the business.
Is your performance management system really supporting the performance of the enterprise or is it time to take it out or radically revise what you are doing?
Mike Bourne
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