In a recent, much-talked-about decision, Accenture has decided to forego the obsolete annual performance reviews for all its 330,000 employees. The decision was brought one by the new generation shaping the workplace, Millennials or Gen Y, who is known to be a performance-driven generation. 

Other companies are making similar changes, switching to more agile systems that offer real-time, personalized capabilities to assess employee performance.  According to research firm Bersin by Deloitte, around 70% of companies are now reconsidering their performance management strategy.

In the new, digital workplace, real-time feedback and communication are a must.

"(...)When added to the increasing demands of the digital workplace, it is clear that organizations need to rethink their performance management processes and technologies to leverage a more consumerized work environment."

Yvette Cameron, research director at Gartner

Technology is one of the main drivers driving innovation in performance management. Smart systems, connecting people, objects and places ensure that employees are always connected. This gives them enhanced capabilities to better perform their work in a collaborative environment and it also provides HR managers with essential data that can be used in performance management processes.

Enterprise wayfinding software helps blend digital and physical experiences, ensuring that real-time feedback is delivered to an employee as a relevant moment unfolds. Team leaders can connect with an employee through the integrated wayfinding system, to set-up a face-to-face meeting and create a business moment or simply to hold a virtual meeting, and go through all essential aspects of a relevant workflow. An increase feedback frequency ensures an effective performance review that can help employees define a clear career path and apply themselves further. Connecting self-service analytics with other business applications, employees can also keep their own performance record and share the results with their team leader.

Within the system, employees can share individual or team results with management, or with other team members or as a public achievement. This can help eliminate organizational silos that hurt productivity and business bottom-lines.

Using an Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS), HR managers can efficiently manage documentation and compliance requirements on-the-go, while dedicating their attention on the continual process of performance improvement in a collaborative working environment. It's much more efficient to reduce the amount of time that managers must spend on the administrative aspects of employee evaluations and redirect those efforts into addressing organizational strengths and weaknesses.

Companies that invest in better collaboration and feedback processes are much more customer-focused and agile. This change in workplace culture has to be supported by a technological readiness to implement new ways of measuring employee performance.