Few people like annual performance reviews—neither managers who spend hours writing them nor employees whose hard work can end up being trashed in them.
Little wonder that more than 80% of large companies, including Accenture, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Morgan Stanley, and New York Life, are overhauling (or planning to overhaul) the ways they appraise their workforces, according to consulting firm Deloitte. The goal is to make performance reviews timelier so that workers receive constant feedback rather than only once a year.
Many companies use tools for rating employees that are built in-house. But a number of software makers, including BetterWorks, Reflektive, Zugata, Glint, and Culture Amp, are also pushing apps for corporate customers to manage feedback between managers and employees in real time.
One big reason for the shift: Today’s companies now change strategy so often that annual performance reviews can be moot by the time they’re completed.
“We need to have more frequent conversations about what goals are and where employees should be going,” says Stacia Sherman Garr, talent management research leader for Deloitte’s Bersin human resources consulting division. “People desire feedback regardless of age.”
A version of this article appears in the March 1, 2017 issue of Fortune as part of the article titled “Tech Takes the Field.”
