Performance Reviews That Actually Motivate Employees

Performance reviews are an important tool to help managers and organizations motivate and engage their workforce. Narrative-based feedback provides employees with more personalized analysis and can shed light on individual paths for improvement, while numerical feedback offers clear benchmarks for employees to track and meet specific targets. In a new study, researchers examined whether one format — or a combination of the two — was seen as more fair and motivating by employees. They found that while narrative feedback is perceived as the most fair, it can be especially meaningful for those employees with room to improve.

In an increasingly data-driven world, many companies, including Adobe, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, have made the surprising move to do away with number-based performance reviews. Some have opted for more open-ended, narrative-based performance evaluations, while others have eliminated reviews completely, conducting regular “check-ins” instead. The argument for the shift away from numerical reviews is strong: narrative performance reviews allow for more context and can better offer employees ways to improve while affirming their particular strengths. At the same time, some companies who’ve eliminated numerical reviews have reverted to creating “shadow” rankings, where narrative feedback is offered to employees, but internal numbers are used in order to track growth or to have a more objective way to tie performance to bonuses or raises. This can leave employees feeling like they’re being secretly judged in ways they can’t fight or speak to.