My take on Accenture's Decision & what else can we do.

Accenture has taken a big step in getting rid of the Performance Review system. For the firm itself it is going to be a big investment in terms of removing the existing system and implementing the new ways of evaluating, measuring and encouraging their employees. More than cost, it will require lot of training and time to be invested in their employees.

Any Organization’s Goal is written and decided on numbers. The five year plans, annual budgets, Company Performance, Annual Reports all are about numbers. These numbers are impossible to achieve if they are not broken down to departments/ projects / teams and individuals. Hence it is very important for the teams to have their own set of goals and objectives.

But I disagree on evaluating and discussing these numbers on an annual basis. It dilutes the whole purpose of setting goals and achieving them. It doesn’t allow a person to get feedback at the time he is going wrong so that he could improve. Why wait till the end and declare someone a failure or a winner. It should be an ongoing process and should be something that is done on need basis.

Managers do informally discuss and evaluate their team on weekly or monthly basis, but not all managers do that as it is not formally communicated or documented. Based on my experience, performance evaluation should be nothing but coaching and mentoring. It should be done on need basis, and managers should be trained and well educated to be able to coach their team towards the achievement of team/organizational goals. The trainings and development plan should be based on skills the individual have today and what is needed from him to deliver in future.

Regular interactions and revisiting their goals gives an opportunity to Managers as well as employees to change/redefine them based on changing market scenarios and other internal/external factors. It gives them opportunity to innovate and look for new ideas to build a roadmap towards the Company’s Goals.

Also the cost involved in implementing any HRMS for this process (for lager Organizations) is way too high as compared to the outcome received.

Hence instead of Annual Performance reviews, I believe we should have Coaching and Mentoring sessions between Managers and Employees which can also be documented for Company records and HR file. But I am not in favor of giving ratings and judging an individual based on it.

As rightly said by Pierre Nanterme in his interview to the Washington Post, “If you believe you selected the right person, then you give that person the freedom, the authority, the delegation to innovate and to lead with some very simple measure”