A Complete Breakdown of Accenture's Upgraded Performance Review System

Living up to the ‘Let there be change’ motto on their website, Accenture, a leading global professional services company, has been at the forefront of redefining performance reviews and feedback within the corporate landscape. Their new approach combines innovation, technology, and a deep understanding of the modern workforce.

How does Accenture run performance reviews?

According to the most recent data, Accenture has 799.000 employees. This headcount is massive for any company to conduct an annual performance review process wherein all the employees are ranked and evaluated compared to other employees. So Accenture switched to a new approach based on real-time, frequent, forward-looking coaching discussions that help employees:

• Understand expectations
• Build on their strengths
• Understand areas for growth
• Achieve their career aspirations

Goodbye traditional annual performance reviews, hello continuous feedback

Accenture moved from the traditional annual review system to a more fluid and ongoing feedback mechanism.

This shift came from a critical realization. Closed-door reviews, in which employees are ranked and compared with other employees, are far less productive than meetings in which employees receive timely feedback on their skills and performance.

So rather than feeding their employees with a buffet of feedback on their performance once a year, most of which would be outdated and irrelevant, Accenture encourages people to snack on bite-sized relevant feedback on their immediate projects.

The employees decide the frequency of these meetings, as some may want more frequent interactions. In contrast, others may wish to have less frequent interactions. People leads and mentors guide individuals at a mutually decided-upon frequency. Additionally, people can request and give feedback to their colleagues anytime.

However, Accenture still holds formal annual talent discussions. Unlike the traditional performance review, which focuses on past work, these discussions focus on self-reflection and career development opportunities.

Looking to the future: Enabling skill and career growth

Accenture’s new performance review and feedback approach underscores a commitment to employee growth, adaptability to change, and a forward-thinking mindset. Rather than retrospecting on their performance, the people should engage in future-focused conversations about how to upgrade their skills and grow as individuals in the company. Discussions often revolve around skill development, learning opportunities, and career progression.

The idea is to provide plenty of support and guidance to employees so that they are not caught off guard at compensation meetings. This approach helps build a high-performance culture.

Aligning priorities and personalizing goals

Recognizing that each employee’s career path and goals are unique, Accenture tailors performance objectives to individual roles and aspirations. This personalized approach ensures that evaluations are relevant and meaningful to each employee.

They also align these goals with the business priorities to contribute substantially to the company’s growth. Hence, throughout the year, the people discuss their priorities and the company’s expectations with their supervisors as frequently as possible.

The frequent interactions keep the managers and their direct reports on the same page and avoid any surprises at the time of reviews.

The stakeholders involved in this exercise are both the employees and their managers, at a mutually decided upon frequency.

No more rankings, no more forced distributions

Previously, the process consisted of peer group comparisons and forced rankings according to a bell curve.

Accenture reports that in 2024, approximately 97,000 promotions were celebrated.

According to Accenture employee Siddharth Keswani, an Application Development Associate Manager, “Anybody can mention their colleague in the internal software for their contribution to helping an employee complete a project successfully. Accenture truly values peer collaboration and continuous circular feedback.”

Compensation and rewards based on skills, role, and contributions

Accenture has eliminated the process of ranking its employees. So the natural question is, how do they decide the compensation of the employees without any performance scores?

The company bases rewards and promotions on each individual’s skills, role, and contributions. There are three outcomes of compensation conversations:

• Promote
• Continue to grow (CG)
• Performance improvement plan (PIP)

The compensation is proportional to each employee’s progress instead of a forced ranking system and comparison with peers worldwide.

Accenture’s “Total Rewards program” consists of cash compensation, equity, and benefits tailored to the market where individuals work and live.

As people advance in their careers within the organization, they have expanded opportunities to be rewarded. These rewards go beyond financial benefits and include health and wellbeing programs.

Since leaders are closest to their employees and know their work best, they are involved in the compensation conversations. If an individual lacks the right skills, there is time to guide the employee in the right direction by giving suggestions to learn and grow through training or help them take up a new role.

Sometimes, it can involve a bold conversation or decision if the performance is consistently poor and the required skills are missing. It’s all about transparency and eliminating surprises.

Wellbeing as a driver of performance

Accenture connects wellbeing, potential, and performance through a structured approach that prioritizes fundamental human needs. Their "Net Better Off" framework identifies six key dimensions of human needs:

1. Emotional and mental
2. Relational
3. Physical
4. Financial
5. Purposeful
6. Employable

Organizations unlock human potential by meeting these fundamental needs, leading to higher engagement, innovation, and retention. Accenture’s research concluded that 64% of a person’s potential—defined by their ability to use their skills and strengths at work—is influenced by whether or not they feel better off across these six dimensions.

Moreover, Accenture enables individuals to thrive by actively listening to their needs and providing tailored wellbeing benefits. These range from health programs to family-building support. In Canada, for instance, they have inclusive family-building services such as infertility, adoption, and surrogacy. The result is a more engaged, innovative, and high-performing workforce, reinforcing the business case for wellbeing as a driver of success.

Key reasons behind Accenture’s current performance review system

Earlier, Accenture followed the traditional rating and annual reviews in a less digital and global environment.

However, their internal research and research by outside companies indicated that the yearly performance review process could not accomplish the primary goal of improving the performance of the employees.

So Accenture decided to spend their time, money, and efforts wisely to improve the employees’ performance. They eliminated annual reviews, built internal software, and started tracking more frequent meetings between managers and employees. Here are the top 3 reasons why Accenture changed their old rating-based annual performance review system to a more tech-based performance review system, which encourages more frequent feedback:

Saving time while increasing outcomes

The heavy time investment was a byproduct of the earlier review system. Encouraging managers to conduct frequent feedback sessions saved much time reviewing each employee’s performance throughout the year.

Engaging with the younger generations

The Millennials and Gen Z in the workforce don’t prefer cumbersome review processes. Instead, they prefer fast-paced and relevant feedback on the recent projects they have worked on.

Creating and implementing a digital solution that works for a global workforce

When redesigning the performance management system, it became clear that the company would need one system that everyone could use, no matter where they are in the world.

Accenture's Human Resources department turned to technology and collaborated with its global IT organization, Fjord.

So, their internal IT team created Performance Achievement, a cloud-first solution:

The key to Accenture’s performance management success

Real-time feedback rather than a sole annual feedback event

At Accenture, employees frequently receive feedback on the most recent work done instead of waiting until the end of the year for a review. As a result, the input is neither overwhelming nor outdated.

Empowerment, not comparison

Accenture doesn’t believe in grading employees along a curve and comparing them with their peers like a school ranking system.

Growth mindset as a way of living

Feedback and performance reviews at Accenture do not solely assess past work. Instead, they focus on future skill and career development. By encouraging a culture that views challenges as opportunities for growth, Accenture creates an environment where employees are not afraid to take risks and innovate.

Additionally, mentors and managers help employees identify meaningful development opportunities and actions to support their career growth. Employees are empowered to share their career interests, and the managers help align them with company priorities.

Return on investment > Absolute cost

Accenture evaluated the ROI of its old systems. While digitizing the entire review system by building internal software would have a high one-time cost, the return on investment would be more significant.

The old performance review system caused decreased productivity, lower employee morale, and heavy time investments, and a drastic change was needed. Hence, they designed internal software that would give them higher returns in the long run by improving the performance of the employees.

Creating an environment where people can reach their potential

91% of global respondents in the Accenture Conduct Counts survey believe they can work to their potential because they are in an environment where they are treated with respect and in an appropriate manner.

Wellbeing as a pillar of productivity

Recognizing the impact of mental health on performance, Accenture offers ample resources for its people:

• “Thriving Mind” (skills to support emotional resilience)
• “Thriving Together” (learning to build resilience and belonging)
• “Nourish to Thrive” (nutritional strategies for cognitive health)
• Mental Health Ally network (training to help employees understand the signs that a colleague needs help, how to have conversations about emotional health, and the steps they can take to support someone in need).

How can you run a performance management process like Accenture?

Deel Engage lets you run a performance review process like Accenture. The process is simple. Here is a step-by-step breakdown.

Define competency-based role expectations

Skills and competencies are essential for effective feedback and performance evaluations at Accenture. Deel Engage offers tools to support this process.

With the career module on Deel Engage, HR teams can define competency models and expectations for every role and level in the organization. These will support managers and their teams when discussing career interests and help managers align expectations about career growth and desirable skills.

Automate frequent performance conversations and link competency profiles and job levels to them

Accenture no longer believes in the traditional annual performance reviews. Instead, they prefer to take a coaching approach to performance management. This shift translates into more frequent interactions between managers and their team members. Additionally, these conversations do not focus on past work but on the person’s strengths and potential for growth.

With Deel Engage, admins can automate performance conversations and talent reviews and define whatever timeframe suits the organization. Our flexible system supports both the traditional annual review and more frequent performance conversations, or even a combination of both.

You can set up growth-focused questions for these reviews and ask both the manager and their team members to tip in, thus enabling self-reviews and downward feedback. You can also add peer reviews as an additional source of feedback. Collecting feedback from multiple sources will provide individuals with a well-rounded view of their strengths and areas for growth.

Moreover, you can take advantage of the competency-based role expectations and collect feedback on the specific competencies required for a role and at a specific level. In this way, the worker understands what it would take to advance their career within the organization.

Check-in with your employees frequently

Deel Engage enables managers and employees to maintain regular, flexible check-ins through its Slack plug-in 1:1 feature. This feature allows teams to decide on their meetings’ recurrence, agenda, and discussion points. It is key for enabling frequent coaching conversations between managers and their team members.

Enable a growth mindset

Performance conversations are only the first step toward worker growth. Follow up with the resources that would enable your people to advance their skill sets and careers.

Use Deel Engage to:

• Define development plans tailored to the worker’s strengths, growth potential, and interests
• Define concrete goals and the timelines for achieving them
• Use the LMS module to create and assign learning content to support people in achieving their goals—assign single-topic learning journeys or more elaborate learning programs.
• Take advantage of existing learning content—take advantage of your existing learning content with SCORM or upload PDF files and ask the Engage AI assistant to transform them into learning journeys.
• Track progress in a user-friendly table view, showing percentage completion and progress for active journeys and programs.

These features will align with Accenture’s goal of improving employee performance through clear expectations and actionable insights.

Book a demo to see how Deel Engage will empower you to craft the best talent development system that enhances your people’s engagement, performance, and growth.