Dive Brief:

• Businesses in the U.S. and Australia are rethinking the value of traditional performance appraisals partly because young people may not find value in them, Quartz reports.
• The criticism among managers is that the traditional assessment focuses on employee evaluation over development and looks back at past performance. Another concern with traditional performance appraisals is that feedback on past behavior might not be accurate.
• The frequency of meetings between managers and employees differs by age, says Quartz. Baby boomers favor less frequent feedback, according to one survey, while millennials preferred more frequent feedback. Experienced employees didn't see the use of performance reviews, and younger employees felt blindsided by once-a-year meetings.

Dive Insight:

While forward-thinking employers seem to be dropping the once-a-year performance review for more frequent feedback, both methods have advantages and drawbacks.

The more frequent reviews that millennials favor provide more timely feedback. Many employees don't want to wait a whole year to find out how their manager thinks they're performing. Critics of the traditional once-a-year assessment say it focuses too much on past behavior, instead of looking at ways to improve future performance.

But those who stand by more traditional review structures, such as Facebook, claim that their employees preferred the more formalized ranking process that involves more than a simple talk between worker and manager.

Employers might focus less on the frequency of reviews and more on the content. According to one study, 98% of those polled said that negative feedback evoked some form of aggressive behavior in employees against managers. For employees who need to face improvement, communicating this in an empathetic and supportive way is best. Feedback that promotes development also fosters employee engagement.