Like several other large firms, Deloitte has decided to do away with annual appraisal interviews, which were deemed inefficient by more than half the executives who responded to an internal HR survey. These interviews no longer allow performance to be evaluated for employees working on projects that last less than a year. All survey respondents expressed a desire for more feedback and more information on career prospects.

Deloitte is implementing a new appraisal system that has two components:

• Continuous assessment at the end of each project and at least quarterly. Feedback will be based on the achievement of the goals set at the beginning of the year.

• The employee’s line manager will be asked to respond to four statements that have been crafted to capture the evaluator’s impressions in objective terms. These statements are: “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”, “Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always want him or her on my team”, “This person is at risk for low performance” and “This person is ready for promotion today”.

The results will be combined into a single full-year score decided during a consensus meeting attended by a counsellor who represents the employee being evaluated.

Internal feedback has shown that employees are satisfied with this process, which is regarded as transparent and fair by a majority of Deloitte staffers.