Performance reviews arent just once a year anymore

Performance reviews arent just once a year anymorePerformance reviews arent just once a year anymoreThe dreaded, looming, once-a-year performance review is becoming a thing of the past. Now performance reviews are an everyday thing.An articlein TheWall Street Journal calls it The Never-Ending Performance Review. Businesses, it seems, are shaking up the evaluation process by checking in more - at different times and byusing technology.As peoples responsibilities shift at work, the way managersprovidefeedback is also changing.Evaluating employeesnon-traditionallyAt some companies, people feel that the way workers are assessed isnt quite on-target.NPR reported in 2016 that according to corporate research and advisory firmCEB, 83% of HR managers reportedly think the employee evaluation systems need an overhaul, compared to 4% who think the method is effective at measuring performance.So its no surprise that the practice is evolving.The Wall Street Journal article profiles a host of busi nesses approaching this differently, including software company Revinate Inc. Rani Croshal, a manager at the company,used to formally review herbei employees performance once a year, but now the number of yearly smaller-scale assessmentsin the dozens.That includes quarterly discussions about goals, semiannual evaluations in which managers, peers and direct reports give feedback, and multiple check-ins to ensure her nine employees are hitting long-term goals. And then theres the annual compensation review process,the article says.Although some companies are doing this more frequently, it seems like they dont allnecessarily have to do as many check-insto shake things up.Nancy Harris, Founder and CEO at Restart Consulting, told Fast Company about other methods businesses are adopting. Some companies now use multi-rater feedback, which considers the input of managers, peers and clientsOther systems, like the one now used at United Airlines, decoupled performance ratings from compensatio n - the necessity to rate people in order to give a raise or bonus no longer exists, Harris told Fast Company.Incorporating technologyWeight management company Retrofit is an example of how the employee evaluation processcontinues to evolve.Catalina Andrade, employee happiness director at the company, told the Chicago Tribune in 2016 that traditional performance reviewsare old-fashioned and unrealistic. Instead, she wasreportedly switching Retrofit from reviews twice per year to the TINYpulse Perform app.The Chicago Tribune article outlined how itworks Employees define their goals on the app with their managers, and when it is time to rate how they did, they swipe right if they met expectations, up if they exceeded and down if they fell short. There is a section to enter brief comments and the option to drop in emails theyve received praising their work. A dashboard helps employees and their managers track trends, the article said.But technology hasnt completely taken over just yet - bosses should still have to come face-to-face with the peoplethey manage.Retrofit managers reportedly have weekly one-on-one meetings with their employees, and the company is coaxing them to bring up performance twice every month during those discussions.Why companies are nixingthe standard approachThere are reasons why some companies are doing away with more traditional, formal, and infrequent employee evaluation processes.A 2016 Harvard Business Review article states that in 2011, Kelly Services was the first big professional services firm to drop appraisals,and outlines three business reasons why some companies are leaving them in the dust.The first is the the return of people development, the idea that some firms are putting more of an emphasis on employee development, at times leaving workers in charge of their own growth, even though managers should give informal responses often.The second is the need for agility, the idea that since businesses dont necessarily want employe es to repeat the same tasks, theres no need to use an evaluation format thats built mainly to assess and hold people accountable for past or current practices.The Harvard Business reviews third reason is the centrality of teamwork, which should be easier to maintain after moving away from forced ranking and from appraisals focus on individual accountability.Employees responsibilities at work are changing - the ways they are evaluated are, too.