Run Employee Performance Reviews Like Cisco: Embracing Continuous Feedback

As of 2025, Cisco ranked #3 in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. With an employee headcount of 90,000+, 48% outside the United States, Cisco still manages to cultivate a culture at the local level within each team.

Cisco’s HR philosophy focuses on building great teams and nurturing team excellence.

In this case study, we’ll learn how Cisco’s performance management system builds great teams, sets clear expectations, and brings measurable outcomes.

The origin of Cisco’s unique approach to performance management

In 2016, Cisco made headlines by eliminating its outdated performance ratings system after receiving negative feedback from employees:

In their previous traditional performance reviews, managers were just rating employees instead of investing in their long-term growth. Workers also became overly focused on their ratings, which often led to short-term thinking and self-serving behaviors, rather than collaboration and alignment with team goals.

Cisco found that annual performance reviews were backward-looking, focusing on past performance measurement, which puts employees in a defensive or ‘unreceptive frame of mind’.

They changed the performance review approach to continuous and more accessible management check-ins. The idea was to adopt a forward-looking mindset in reviews, focusing on both immediate and future improvements rather than historical assessments.

The introduction of a new assessment tool: Team Space

To facilitate the transition from annual reviews to real-time communication and continuous assessment, Cisco introduced an internal tool called Team Space. The tool made it easier for teams to stay aligned and focused on collective goals. Cisco spent over two years piloting and refining this system before fully rolling it out.

Cisco’s Team Space integrates technology with people management to create a data-driven, human-centric environment. The platform includes features designed to enhance engagement, facilitate real-time feedback, and support continuous learning:

1. StandOut: This tool identifies employees’ primary and secondary strengths, helping leaders maximize individual contributions. By focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses, Cisco ensures employees remain motivated and engaged
2. My Snapshot: A customizable profile where employees share their aspirations, expertise, and working preferences. ‘How to Best Work with Me’ and ‘Come to Me When’ documents foster clearer communication and collaboration.
3. Engagement Pulse: Provides real-time insights into team engagement levels, allowing managers to intervene proactively and maintain a positive, productive team environment
4. Performance Snapshot: Offers a structured feedback mechanism where managers provide specific, actionable feedback on employee performance, focusing on areas for growth and development
5. One-on-one check-ins: Regular, structured discussions between managers and employees to set expectations, clarify roles, and ensure alignment with team and organizational goals

How does Cisco run performance reviews?

To make the continuous performance feedback process structured and actionable, Cisco organized its performance review system into three main parts:

Weekly check-ins

Employees regularly connect with their team leaders and mutually come up with measurable goals and targets. These weekly check-ins help leaders stay more invested in their reportees’ progress. They also help them set goals that are best for both the individual and the team. Team Space sends a reminder to employees every Friday to review the previous week’s data.

In 2024, a total of 2.3 million team check-ins were submitted at Cisco. During these check-ins, team leaders review the performance of employees from the previous week.

Employees also answer critical reflection questions, such as:

• What activities did they love last week?

• What activities did they loathe the previous week?

• What are their priorities this week?

• What help do they need from their team leader this week?

Apart from reviews, Cisco also encourages managers to:

• Express recognition to employees for good work
• Collect employee complaints and feedback on how things could be done differently.

Performance snapshots

From time to time, team leaders give feedback to employees as a performance snapshot. By capturing a series of snapshots over time, they can see trends and patterns in a team member’s performance, which is more reliable than assigning a one-off rating at a single moment.

Some questions asked are:

• Which team member do I approach when I need extraordinary results?
• Which team member would I choose to work with as much as possible?
• Which team member would I promote if I could?
• Which team member has a performance problem that I need to address immediately?
• Which team member has a skill set that is very difficult to replace?
• When I need something done without many excuses, which team member is my first call?
• Which team member can I count on to remove barriers to effective teamwork?
• Which team member can I rely on to consider the big picture when making decisions?

There is also a Private Note feature, which allows the leader to add context to the responses.

Bi-annual talent assessment

Cisco also conducts talent assessment twice a year. As part of this assessment, leaders review the performance over the last six months. The main goal of the talent assessment is to help employees understand expectations of the role and whether they met them, and also plan their development.

As part of talent assessment, leaders mainly reflect upon the following questions:

• How is this team member contributing to the success of the team?

• If your team member is a people leader, please also share examples of how they are showing up against Cisco’s Leadership Expectations.

• Is this team member meeting your expectations for the role?

Leaders also have a record of weekly check-ins and performance snapshots to refer to during the talent assessments. Employees also record their personal achievements as performance reflections. Compiling both recorded performance snapshots (recorded by leaders) and performance reflections (documented by employees themselves) gives a complete picture to leaders.

After talent assessment, employees get formal feedback and development opportunities. This feedback also serves as a base for compensation and promotion decisions.

Key reasons behind Cisco’s performance management process

An interesting aspect of Cisco’s performance management approach is that they did not create run-of-the-mill policies copied and pasted from the internet. They took enough time to come up with terms that are best suited for their company. Here are their main philosophies that help them shape their performance management process:

Encouraging regular one-on-one conversations

Cisco team believes in empathetic leadership, where a manager regularly connects with their employees. They don’t just rate employees but understand their issues and guide them in the right direction.

Investing in employee growth

Cisco leadership wants managers to personalize the one-on-one conversations to support every team member’s growth. Managers help them build development plans based on their interests, strengths, and areas of improvement.

Building high-performance teams

Cisco’s HR philosophy is dedicated to building and nurturing great teams because “teams will characterize the future of work,” according to former SVP of Leadership and Team Intelligence, Ashley Goodall.

The objective is straightforward: Cisco aims for all its teams to perform at the level of its best-performing team. This focus on building dynamic teams is woven into the company’s performance management system.

Cisco’s performance management process is designed to promote a high-performance culture. Managers and team leaders regularly give feedback to individuals that’s best for them as well as the team.

Why Cisco’s performance management process turned successful

Shifting from annual reviews to continuous feedback sounds good in policies, but can be chaotic in practice. Some common challenges to address are:

• How will leadership ensure regular conversations happen?
• How to give structure to these regular conversations?
• How can the bi-annual assessment be a combined review of all conversations conducted throughout the year?

Cisco understood these challenges and took the following steps to turn its vision into reality:

Investing in tools

Cisco understood early on that the continuous feedback process can only be possible if they have the right tools for it. That’s why they spent two years rolling out the assessment tool, Team Space.

Team Space made the performance review process implementation possible. Leaders get reminders for regular check-ins and have sections to note regular performance snapshots. Employees can record their performance reflections. The tools serve as both a scheduler and a data management platform, making continuous feedback with note-taking feasible.

Conducting leadership training

Cisco conducts various leadership training sessions for managers. These sessions focus on teaching leaders to navigate tough conversations with empathy. They also get simulated real-life scenarios with professional actors for practice. All these sessions help leaders conduct performance management reviews.

Setting clear performance management KPIs

Cisco has created core dimensions (Results, Principles & Behaviors, and Team Impact) for performance evaluations. They advise leaders to create tangible performance management KPIs based on these dimensions, such as sales commission targets, new-feature deployments, and more. Tangible KPIs drive conversations rather than relying on vague expectations.

How can you replicate a performance review process like Cisco?

With Deel Engage, you can repeat Cisco’s performance review process without investing resources, time, and money in building an internal tool like Cisco’s Team Space. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of the process.

1. Define and align work responsibilities with career progression and goals

Using Deel Engage goal management tools you can replicate how Cisco sets predefined work objectives and mutually agreed-upon key performance indicators.

Additionally, in Deel Engage, you can define each employee’s competencies, skills, and expectations, resulting in tailored career frameworks for each department—be it Sales, Customer Success, or beyond.

What the assignees will see: Cisco promotes transparency by clearly defining expectations at all levels. With the role description feature on Deel Engage, you can promote transparency and ensure employee alignment in line with business expectations.

Schedule recurring performance feedback calls

At Cisco, frequent, forward-looking interactions encourage a holistic investment in individual performance over time. Managers document real-time feedback on their employees, giving them ample context and opportunities to improve throughout the year.

Here are the steps to replicate this with Deel Engage.

Step 1: Create a new feedback cycle and describe it

You could call this “Performance Snapshot” if you want to replicate Cisco’s approach fully.

Step 2: Select the feedback types

You can choose between:

• Self-review
• Manager/downward feedback
• Upward feedback
• Peer feedback

To replicate Cisco’s Performance Snapshot process, you can select downward feedback and self-review.

Step 3: Add questions for each feedback type

You can create all questions yourself or choose some from the available templates. Add questions similar to Cisco’s Performance Snapshot assessment:

• Would you approach this team member when you need extraordinary results?
• Which skill set does this team member have that is very difficult to replace?
• Can you count on this team member to remove barriers to effective teamwork?
• Can you rely on this team member to consider the big picture when making decisions?

However, for specific questions, you can use the hidden question feature that only managers see, never the reviewees. One such question is: “Would you promote this person today if you could?”

Step 4: Define anonymity settings

Who should see what feedback? With Cisco’s “Performance Snapshot,” employees can see the feedback only if managers share it. Consider whether or not you want to enable the “Share anonymously” feature on Deel Engage.

Step 5: Define the timeline and audience

Set the deadlines for all the steps of the feedback cycle you configured. Define the participants for your cycle. You can add specific groups, such as teams, departments, locations, or the entire workforce. Alternatively, you can select to automatically assign performance reviews according to specific dates, i.e., 90 days after the hire date.

Step 6: Your feedback is ready to go live

Double-check all the details and activate the cycle. Once you kick off the new performance review cycle, you simply wait for the feedback to roll in.

3. Build structured career development roadmaps

Cisco’s future-focused process encourages team leaders to reflect upon each employee’s strengths and unique skill sets and invest in their growth accordingly.

With Deel Engage’s development plans, you can model a similar career and competency development plan for your organization.

For example, based on frequent manager assessments, employees can extract actionable insights from their feedback and add them to their development plans. They can also reference career progression paths and set development goals to help the worker reach the next level in their career.

To encourage learning, you can assign internally developed courses, or leverage our integration with OpenSesame, with a library of tens of thousands of expert curated content. This approach will give your employees a clear path for continuous learning and career growth.

Other useful features of our product

Some more features that make Deel Engage stand out in conducting industry-standard performance reviews:

• Question library designed by Deel learning scientists and People experts
• The 360-degree feedback builder is highly customizable, allowing you to build custom feedback and performance review processes
• The advanced anonymity settings allow you to decide what needs to be anonymous and what needs to be transparent
• With the skills matrix feature, you can visualize, calibrate, and analyze competencies and skills that contribute to the organization’s unique competitive advantage

Deel Engage also helps you design and assign training to leaders to help them conduct better check-ins and assessments.

By combining technology with research rooted in best practices for people management, Deel Engage can enhance performance outcomes across leading organizations worldwide.