Chiswick Consulting After realising it wasted 2 million hours annually on undertaking pointless information gathering in support of performance management ratings, Deloittes have radically overhauled its performance managment system and with one stroke have breathed life into one of the most painful HR processes created.
It asks line managers to rate each member of staff against 4 questions, and 4 questions only. Note that it is only the line manager who does the rating.
The first two are answered on a five-point scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree;” the second two have yes or no options:
1. Given what I know of this person’s performance, and if it were my money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation increase and bonus.
2. Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always want him or her on my team.
3. This person is at risk for low performance.
4. This person is ready for promotion today.
The 2 main learnings from their review seem to be that (a) reducing the number of questions means people focus on the performance discussion rather than the ratings and (b) having an overall rating for an individual, ie reducing an individual down to a single rating, is somehow demeaning and therefore demotivating.
A step in the right direction and I am now on the hunt for ever more radical examples.