Global software giant Accenture is set to abandon annual performance evaluation of its employees, as part of the company's efforts to streamline its internal functions.
"Imagine, for a company of 3,30,000 people, changing the performance management process—it's huge," Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme told The Washington Post.
The company plans to implement the new measures starting from September this year. It will also dump the ranking system for its employees.
Instead, Accenture will put in place a "more fluid system," which will enable its employees to get "timely feedback" from their superiors on a continuous basis after an assignment is completed.
"We're going to get rid of probably 90 percent of what we did in the past," Nanterme said.
By doing so, Accenture will be one of the few companies that discarded ranking and time-consuming paperwork to review its employees.
According to management research firm CEB, nearly 6% of the Fortune 500 companies have avoided using the ranking system.
Consulting and auditing firm Deloitte had announced in March that it is running a new evaluation programme, in which performance review would be done "incrementally" in a year setting aside the ranking process.
Deloitte's pilot programme includes four simple questions to review performance.
Global tech major Microsoft had already abandoned its ranking process about two years back. Adobe, Gap and Medtronic are the other companies that implemented similar measures.
"All this terminology of rankings—forcing rankings along some distribution curve or whatever—we're done with that," Nanterme said.
"We're going to evaluate you in your role, not vis à vis someone else who might work in Washington, who might work in Bangalore. It's irrelevant. It should be about you," he added.
In a study conducted by CEB, it has been found that 95% of managers are disappointed with the performance evaluation processes of the companies and about 90% of HR heads are of the view that the reviews do not produce correct information.
"The art of leadership is not to spend your time measuring, evaluating," Nanterme said.
"It's all about selecting the person. And 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," he said.
