The next report card you get at work might carry higher stakes.
Big-name companies, including Meta, Amazon, and Boston Consulting Group, are adjusting how they evaluate people. The reasons vary, from prioritizing AI use to incentivizing top performers with bigger pay.
As AI drives what feels like ever-faster change, and as many workers stay in their jobs for longer, employers are recognizing a need to make their performance evaluations more responsive, workplace observers told Business Insider.
One such company is staffing firm Adecco Group, which is revamping its review process for its more than 35,000 corporate workers across 60-plus countries. The changes include ensuring that workers don’t have too many goals — generally two to five — and that it’s clear how they can meet them.
“We have this combination of what we want to achieve, but also how we achieve it,” Daniela Seabrook, Adecco Group’s CHRO, told Business Insider. “The behavioral aspect is really important for us.”
She said that driving the change is the company’s intent to have “a continuous exchange between an employee and a leader” — not just a formal review once or twice a year. More frequent feedback is necessary, Seabrook, to keep up with the pace of change in business.
“It’s very important that the people know, ‘Where am I? How am I doing? How am I developing?'” she said.
Employers are focused on their ‘best people’
In a fast-changing environment, questions of how workers are performing often center on their agility and adaptability, said Allison Vaillancourt, a VP at the HR consulting firm Segal.
In other cases, employers benefiting from the tight labor market simply want to squeeze more productivity out of their workers and think they can get there by grading harder, she said.
That means getting to say, “I’m going to really ramp up my performance evaluation process, so I’m only keeping my best people,” Vaillancourt said.
That might sound scary, yet few people loved the old way of doing reviews, which often involved cranking out a self-evaluation, then sitting down with your boss. The process tended to leave even managers feeling nervous, she said, making for a meeting that was awkward at best.
Even HR isn’t sold on them. Only 2% of CHROs from Fortune 500 companies that Gallup surveyed in 2023 strongly agreed that their performance process motivated workers to improve.
Frequent feedback makes it easier to shift goals
One idea that’s not new but is getting renewed attention is giving feedback more often, as Adecco Group is doing.
There’s a recognition, Vaillancourt said, that many of the most effective organizations are those where managers regularly coach their teams.
Already, 65% of organizations use a “continuous performance design” that focuses on regular, systematic feedback alongside an annual review, according to a 2025 assessment by the research firm Gartner.
It makes sense, Vaillancourt said, that bosses would set goals at the start of the year yet continue to tweak them as needed.
Not all adjustments relate to how often bosses give feedback. Business Insider previously reported that Meta is simplifying its evaluation process to better reward top performers, and Amazon is adjusting its reviews to focus more on individual accomplishments.
BCG expects workers to use AI as part of their jobs, so the technology shapes how the firm evaluates workers’ abilities, such as problem-solving. The firm has incorporated expectations around AI into the benchmarks it uses to evaluate consultants, Business Insider previously reported.
Assessment and development aren’t the same
As part of its overhaul, Adecco Group is adding development goals to guide workers’ growth. Those are aspirational, Seabrook said, which is why workers aren’t measured on them as part of the performance-review process.
The distinction between assessment and development is important, said David Murray, CEO of Confirm, a San Francisco startup focused on reinventing performance reviews. Too often, he said, the focus shifts to helping workers grow rather than evaluating their performance.
“You might be able to get development out of the continuous feedback conversations, but you lose the assessment side,” he said.
Those appraisals matter, Murray said, because they inform key decisions about things like pay and who gets promoted. If there aren’t formal ways to document performance, bosses might turn to “shadow ratings.” That could be something as simple as using a spreadsheet to track who’s performing well and who isn’t, he said.
A better process could boost worker engagement
Another reason that performance reviews are changing is that some employees’ expectations are shifting, said Rajesh Namboothiry, senior vice president at the staffing firm ManpowerGroup. Even when the job market isn’t great, workers still tend to prioritize flexibility, job satisfaction, and clarity about career growth, he said.
Annual reviews often fail to meet those needs and can contribute to burnout rather than engagement, Namboothiry said.
As the job market for desk workers has softened — and workers stay put longer — savvy employers know that they need to keep employees engaged because those workers will be key to helping companies transform, Namboothiry said.
Companies that excel at retention, he said, focus on career development and employee satisfaction.
“They understand that lack of growth opportunity is a key driver for attrition,” Namboothiry said.
Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com
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