Topic: Should companies abandon traditional performance appraisal methods in favor of frequent conversations about employee performance?

At the beginning of my HR career, I worked for an organization that only performed an annual review process. It was always a lengthy process from an HR perspective because we reviewed every single review for both plant facilities before they ever made it to the employees. However, with plant leadership changes, we had a leader who consistently pushed for the organization to engage our employees more. We then opted to start conducting a quarterly review. It was incredibly time consuming, manual, but overall incredibly impactful to the employees as they heard from their leaders more often. In addition to being evaluated on a more frequent basis, we also rewarded our employees with increases if they performed well on their reviews. The reviews were far from perfect, there was too much room for subjectivity and the metrics we began measuring where not always sustainable to obtain in a timely fashion – but they worked to engage our population.  

I believe the keyword here for this question is conversations. I now work for a different company that has informal frequent pulse checks with the employees on a quarterly basis, and a formal annual and mid-year performance appraisal. While I do believe my current employees would leap at the chance to earn more money on a quarterly basis, the pulse checks are have made the culture open and inviting. Employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feedback. I don’t believe companies should abandon formal performance appraisals, but I do think they should implement frequent informal check-ins to encourage communication, gauge employee motivation, and understand what may be causing poor performance. In my experience frequent check-ins with employees just increases the overall engagement of the team. Ultimately engagement is the goal, engaged employees are more likely to stay with an organization, especially if they feel empowered.