#HRTechChat with Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks

"The annual performance review process is pretty broken," says Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks and our latest guest on the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast. "It was created seventy years ago for hierarchical organizations," which means it's mismatched to manager-employee dynamics at most organizations today, according to Doug. His credentials and past experience leading well-known vendors in our space are formidable and lent gravitas to our discussion. And I happen to agree with him wholeheartedly. Years ago, in a previous professional life, I wrote about "a coming mass extinction in human capital management." A result of advances in technology spurring an evolution in attitudes around how best to get the most out of employees, chief among the coming casualties would be the conventional, traditional annual performance review, in my opinion. It was nothing particularly revelatory on my part. For a long time, plenty others had been saying similar things. The idea to say it was a "coming mass extinction" gave the idea some bite and sounded cool, I rationalized. Fast forward to today. The bite of the past two years accelerated the aforementioned evolution in those attitudes to the point where, here we are, fixated on how to create the conditions for an optimal employee experience at all times. Clunky, yearly performance reviews don't fit into this equation. We may still need them for compliance, sure. Factor machine learning and social media-grade functionality into continuous performance enablement, however, and a clear, auditable trail of information further supporting any action with an employee is possible and defensible from a regulatory standpoint. Enablement is the new word, by the way. Doug doesn't like the word "management" in performance management, and neither do I -- not one bit. It's just as bad as the "management" in human capital management or talent management. The idea that we're enabling performance is a better, more accurate reflection of the purpose of evaluating employees, and we end up doing much more than merely evaluating them. This is a good thing. Think of all the advantages modern technology for the employee experience affords us when compared to the old approaches. All you have to do is read Betterworks' tagline: "Betterworks closes the loop between people, strategy and results, enabling organizations to align even the most sprawling teams." There's no practical way to form a virtuous loop of people, strategy and results with only a conventional performance management system. Add work from home to the mix, and a renaissance, an expansion in our thinking in our approach to figuring out how employees are performing, is in order. The frustrating and stilted thing about the way old-style performance management has developed, is that it occurs in a vacuum. It doesn't really drive strategy. It purports to help drive results, but barely does so. Mostly, staff loathe the tedious annual review process and anything to do with performance management. So do their managers. Underperforming or struggling employees fear the process. There's little room for positive engagement wherein they might feel good about the opportunity to get better at their jobs. It's all top-down evaluation, all the time, and, often, the process isn't even very efficient or effective in producing accurate, usable evaluations.