With more than 400,000 employees worldwide, the global consulting and professional services company Accenture has a large number of employees receiving performance reviews every year. When Accenture realized that employees were not receiving the feedback they needed, the company started a global effort to transform its performance management process.
Much of this work was shouldered by Ellyn Shook, the firm’s chief leadership and human resources officer. The effort began by gathering input about what employees and managers needed. Employees expressed a need for real-time feedback, personalized career training, and more transparency from the company.

As a result of the input gathered, Accenture decided to abandon the use of annual reviews, instead adopting a system to identify each employee’s strengths and build on them. Key pieces of the transformation include an inhouse app that enables employees to share their priorities with their team and seek feedback. After testing the system on 20,000 employees, Accenture released it worldwide. As of 2017, the company also was in the process of training its managers in effective coaching of employees. The resulting improvements will mean that managers and employees will spend more time managing performance, but they will find more value in the process.
It is important to note what Accenture added after it dropped the annual review. It is still early to tell if the transformation met its goals, but it is clear that this was an effort at transforming the organization’s performance culture rather than simply changing an appraisal system.

Case Discussion Questions 

1. Which aspects of the change did you find most useful? Which aspects seemed least useful?
2. What are your thoughts on reviewing performance once a year?
3. What do you think about using apps to deliver real-time feedback to employees? Are there downsides to this approach?