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15 mins read

Run Employee Performance Reviews and Feedback Like Cisco with Data-Driven Processes

Global HR

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Author

Lorelei Trisca

Published

February 03, 2025

Last Update

February 03, 2025

Table of Contents

A Focus on Flexibility and Well-Being

Cisco’s Hybrid Work Index

Cisco’s Legacy of Reinventing People Management

Key Components of Cisco’s Performance Management

How can you replicate a performance review process like Cisco?

Key takeaways
  • Cisco's performance management system is grounded in clear expectations, frequent feedback, and measurable outcomes
  • The company prioritizes professional growth by encouraging ongoing discussions about individual strengths and career paths
  • A blend of financial incentives, health programs, and continuous recognition helps foster a motivational work environment

With an employee headcount of 90,000+ employees, 40% outside their home country of the US, Cisco cultivates culture at a local level within each team. As of 2024, Cisco ranked #2 in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.

How has Cisco managed to transcend cultural, gender, and socio-economic barriers to create an inclusive culture that enhances employee experience inside and outside work?

Cisco’s people management philosophy has consistently set industry benchmarks for innovation and effectiveness, particularly for large-scale organizations. Today, the company emphasizes a "Conscious Culture"—an approach centered on inclusivity, employee well-being, and empowerment through flexibility. This philosophy reflects Cisco’s commitment to creating an environment where employees feel valued, connected, and heard.

A Focus on Flexibility and Well-Being

Under its Conscious Culture framework, Cisco empowers employees to decide where, when, and how they work. This approach recognizes that flexibility fosters employee motivation, productivity, and happiness. Leaders at Cisco play a pivotal role in ensuring this balance by practicing empathy and supporting their teams with the tools and autonomy needed to thrive.

Cisco’s Hybrid Work Index

Cisco developed a Hybrid Work Index, which analyzes customer datapoints to understand how people and teams function best. These insights have driven Cisco to adopt practices that enable better connection, collaboration, and belonging across its global workforce. The result is an organization that integrates technology with culture.

Cisco’s Legacy of Reinventing People Management

This progressive approach to workplace culture builds on Cisco’s history of challenging traditional people management methods. In 2016, Cisco made headlines by eliminating its outdated performance ratings system.

The Decision to Abandon Ratings

Employee feedback played a significant role in this shift. Cisco found that annual performance reviews were mandatory, infrequent, and backward-looking—qualities that made them irrelevant to employees’ daily work. Workers 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.

The Introduction of "Team Space"
Cisco implemented an internal tool called "Team Space," which emphasized real-time communication and continuous assessment, making 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 from nine distinct roles, 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. Tools like "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

A Team-Centric HR Philosophy

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 simple: Cisco wants all its teams to perform like its best-performing team. This focus on building dynamic teams is woven into the company’s performance management system.

Cisco’s performance management system is designed to promote a high-performance culture. Its structured, data-backed, forward-looking approach sets industry-wide benchmarks for people management, especially in large-scale organizations. The system is influenced by Peter Drucker’s dictum, “if you can’t measure it, you cannot manage it,” and utilizes proprietary technology to track, measure, and enhance performance.

Key Components of Cisco’s Performance Management

A. Performance Control Approach
The performance management process is built around a “performance control approach” that includes several key stages:

 • Project Discussions: Employees discuss potential projects with their supervisors, establishing a predetermined course of action  • Target Setting: Measurable targets for each project are mutually decided between employees and supervisors  • Ongoing Evaluation: Team leaders evaluate employee performance against the set targets using the “Performance Snapshot” feature within Team Space

B. Performance Snapshot and Check-Ins
The “Performance Snapshot” provides a real-time overview of each employee’s performance and is updated monthly. Its purpose is not to sum up who an individual is with a single rating but to help inform performance trends over time for decisions related to pay, promotion, and career development. Managers are even prompted to reflect on potential rater bias, ensuring fairness.

Regular check-in meetings help employees and team leaders review week-by-week performance. These meetings encourage:  • Direct conversations about work and improvement areas
 • Collecting employee feedback and complaints
 • Recognition of excellence in team members’ work
Team Space automatically sends reminders for these check-ins, ensuring dynamic teams remain aligned, while static team leaders track progress through dedicated Check-In Data.

Career Development and Growth Initiatives

Mid-Year Career Discussions

Cisco emphasizes providing employees with a robust roadmap for professional success. Mid-year career discussions focus on setting actionable paths for development and identifying top strengths and areas for growth, ensuring that performance feedback translates into effective career planning.

Total Rewards

Beyond compensation, Cisco motivates employees through the “Total Rewards” framework, which includes:

 • Financial Stability: Ensuring competitive pay and benefits
 • Rest and Recovery: Offering benefits such as a birthday day off
 • Health and Well-Being: Through initiatives like a health connections program, comprehensive health coverage, and financial aids during medical emergencies  • Family Support: Providing programs like “Support for Parents”
 • Trusted Medical Guidance: Access to independent second opinions for medical diagnoses or treatment options

Career Mobility

Cisco encourages growth through a variety of internal mobility programs known collectively as the talent marketplace. These include:

 • Team Assignments: Collaborating on business challenges across teams
 • Time Swaps: Temporarily exchanging up to 20% of one’s role to explore new skills while meeting responsibilities  • Job Swaps: Full temporary or permanent role exchanges
 • Stretch Assignments: Working on projects across diverse business groups to enhance skills

This policy not only drives employee freedom and self-improvement but also fosters loyalty and a positive work environment.

Employee Recognition

Understanding the human need for belonging and appreciation, Cisco integrates a culture of mutual recognition in its HR practices. Managers are encouraged to have frequent, informal conversations with their teams, fostering an environment where achievements are celebrated and constructive feedback is a continuous part of everyday operations.

How can you replicate a performance review process like Cisco?

Deel Engage offers a ready-to-use, comprehensive solution that mirrors the power and precision of Cisco’s approach, streamlining career development and performance feedback for your organization.

  1. Define and Align Work with Career and Leveling Frameworks

Using Deel Engage’s career frameworks, you can replicate how Cisco sets predefined work objectives and mutually agreed-upon key performance indicators. 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.

  1. Foster Recurring Performance Feedback

In the spirit of Cisco’s “Performance Snapshot” process, Deel Engage delivers a flexible, recurring feedback system that supports holistic, continuous performance improvement. Our solution offers:

• Configurable Feedback Cycles: Create new cycles and name them to reflect your process, such as “Performance Snapshot” • Multiple Feedback Types: Choose from self-review, downward, upward, and peer feedback—ideal for comprehensive 360° reviews • Customizable Questionnaires: Incorporate open-ended questions from our library or develop your own, including hidden questions exclusive to managers • Anonymity and Privacy Controls: Define anonymity settings so that feedback is shared only as desired, ensuring privacy and candid insights • Customizable Timelines: Set clear deadlines for each stage of your feedback cycles, ensuring timely responses and consistent tracking

  1. Build a Structured Career Development Roadmap

Deel Engage’s Growth Cycles function mirrors Cisco’s forward-focused process, where team leaders can assess strengths and invest in long-term employee growth. Our system integrates:

• Actionable Insights: Managers’ assessments seamlessly generate data-driven insights that are directly incorporated into personalized development plans • Career Frameworks: Use role cards to architect clear career ladders—from junior roles to senior leadership—empowering employees with defined paths for continuous learning • Integration with Daily Feedback: Aggregate performance data from feedback cycles to help employees refine their growth strategies over time

Bonus Features

Enhance your performance review process further with Deel Engage’s advanced capabilities, including:

• Ready-to-Use Templates: Industry-standard feedback cycle templates, designed by experienced learning scientists, ensure best-practice implementation from day one • Customizable 360° Feedback Builder: Tailor feedback processes to specific functions and use cases, with advanced anonymity settings • Iterative Feedback Integration: Automatically generate new focus areas for continuous improvement based on recurring feedback outcomes • Skills Matrix Visualization: Analyze and calibrate team competencies to highlight strengths and identify growth opportunities

Get Deel Engage

Experience how Deel Engage can transform your performance review and career development processes with a free 30-minute demo.

Disclaimer: The data outlined in this content is accurate at the time of publishing and is subject to change or updating. Deel does not make any representations as to the completeness or accuracy of the information on this page.

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About the author

Lorelei Trisca is a content marketing manager passionate about everything AI and the future of work. She is always on the hunt for the latest HR trends, fresh statistics, and academic and real-life best practices. She aims to spread the word about creating better employee experiences and helping others grow in their careers.

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