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14 min read

Performance Management at Deloitte: Frequent, Holistic, and Growth-Oriented

Global HR

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Author

Lorelei Trisca

Published

January 29, 2025

Last Update

February 10, 2025

Table of Contents

What is Deloitte’s performance management system like?

Why was there a need for a new performance appraisal system at Deloitte? Five reasons

The key to Deloitte’s performance management success

How can you implement a performance management system like Deloitte?

Deloitte is a corporate giant, a beacon of success. But beneath its grandeur lies a secret weapon, not hidden in its financial reports or market strategies but in the approach to people management. Deloitte’s story isn’t just about numbers or targets. It’s a story of nurturing growth, fostering potential, and embracing change.

Companies that don’t evolve and adapt to changing business and societal circumstances will fail to harness the full potential of their workforces.

Ranked in PEOPLE Magazine’s “100 Companies that care” in 2024, Deloitte went through an overhaul of its performance management approach in 2015.

So, what makes Deloitte’s performance management system so successful today?

Learn all about
  1. How Deloitte redesigned its performance management system to be more frequent, holistic, and growth-oriented
  2. Why they’ve shifted from annual reviews to regular “performance snapshots” and informal check-ins
  3. How they replaced forced rankings with a strengths-based approach
  4. How you can implement similar strategies to improve employee engagement and performance

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.

What is Deloitte’s performance management system like?

An effective people performance management process captures several dimensions, including the key aspects of performance management and performance appraisals. This means nurturing and promoting a high-performance culture while also assessing employee performance in a meaningful and informative way.

Deloitte’s performance management approach has undergone a major redevelopment to repurpose its objectives and serve as a holistic developmental tool rather than a benchmarking device.

Deloitte’s leaders also reframed the focus of performance management towards what leaders would do with their team members in the future rather than rating them on past performance.

“What is the purpose of performance management at Deloitte?” is a question that Deloitte’s leaders considered carefully. [...] We conducted focus groups across the firm... and crystalized three primary purposes for performance management.”—Erica Bank, Deloitte’s Global Talent Leader, in an article published by the Association for Talent Development.

Based on their people’s feedback and following a period of introspection, Deloitte’s leaders established three new goals for a renewed performance management approach:

  1. Recognize performance
  2. See performance clearly
  3. Fuel performance Deloitte addresses these goals using seven essential themes.

Recognize performance

Deloitte’s system seeks to promote sensible compensation and merit-based promotions, recognize people’s strengths, and identify low performers.

1. Shifting from annual to regular feedback

Deloitte shifted from annual performance reviews to more frequent “performance snapshots” and check-ins that feed into succession planning, development strategies, performance analysis, and more.

The performance snapshots and check-ins are augmented by pulse surveys, talent reviews, and other processes designed to measure, reward, and improve performance. With the shift to more frequent and information-rich feedback, Deloitte has taken a significant step forward in developing a “richer understanding of each employee’s strengths and capabilities.”

“If you want people to talk about how to do their best work in the near future, they need to talk often. [...] And so far, we have found in our testing a direct and measurable correlation between the frequency of these conversations and the engagement of team members.”—Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in a Harvard Business Review article.

Buckingham and Goodall are performance management experts and former directors of learning at Deloitte.

2. Simplifying the review process

The new system reduces the complexity of performance reviews, introducing a short, four-question survey for managers to complete after each project or at least quarterly. The survey asks leaders to answer the following questions (with a Likert-type scale) about their people based on what they know about each person’s performance:

  • If it were my money, would I award this person the highest possible compensation increase and bonus?
  • Would I always want them on my team?
  • Is the person at risk for low performance?
  • Are they currently operating at the next level?

The questions are future-focused and move away from traditional assessment criteria, such as skills, toward the reviewer’s feelings and intentions.

“We ask leaders what they’d do with their team members, not what they think of them.”—Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in a Harvard Business Review article.

These questions give Deloitte’s leaders more accurate feedback about their people, and the responses help guide subsequent conversations about promotions and improvements.

3. Eliminating forced rankings

Deloitte abandoned the traditional “bell curve” system of ranking employees. Deloitte’s leaders seek a multidimensional understanding of employees’ aptitudes, interests, contributions, and potential. Deloitte favors recognizing and nurturing individual strengths, which may not always be neatly quantifiable using a simple ranking system.

See performance

Deloitte’s leaders want information that gives them a view into the performance of the organization to help them decipher:

  1. How performance trends differ in different parts of the organization
  2. Who needs improvement
  3. What business leaders can do to influence performance outcomes

4. Using technology

Deloitte’s system allows its people to understand and explore their strengths through a self-assessment tool. This approach allows employees to learn more about their performances and share their strengths with colleagues, leaders, and others. The new technology was a first for Deloitte’s workforce, so it boosted engagement in a way that had not been seen before.

The technology is designed to highlight employees’ strengths, as Deloitte sees this as a significant contributor to future performance potential. It’s also designed to be simple, quick, and easy to use, encouraging interaction and sharing. Deloitte introduced a mobile app to complement the technology platform. The app facilitates regular check-ins and real-time feedback between team leaders and their people, making the feedback process more agile and user-friendly.

5. Rating the reviewer

One innovative feature of Deloitte’s performance snapshots is that they require reviewers to rate their own actions rather than the qualities and behaviors of their team members.

This unique approach to talent management promotes a more proactive stance in forming people assessments.

The process prioritizes the subjective judgment of the raters, i.e., team leaders, as they’re closest to their people’s performance and best placed to form assessments. In the interests of simplicity, it excludes other (functional) managers or peers.

Fuel performance

Deloitte’s system identifies and monitors currently observed performance and drives future performance.

6. Focusing on future development

The system prioritizes forward-looking conversations, such as those prompted by the four survey questions that leaders ask of their people. It also emphasizes discussing how employees can develop and grow in the future, including leadership development, rather than focusing on past performance.

“We’ve shifted from a batched focus on the past to a continual focus on the future. As we’ve tested each element of this design with ever-larger groups across Deloitte, we’ve seen that the change can be an evolution over time.”—Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in a Harvard Business Review article.

7. Emphasizing team performance

The system leverages the benefits of collaboration at Deloitte. It places a greater emphasis on team performance rather than individual achievements.

“The beauty of the data is it sits at the team level. The way the questions are phrased, I can actually gauge the pulse of my team, how effectively they’re working, and how fully engaged they are. [...] This is now enabling us to focus on the effectiveness of the team, and that’s been a huge outcome for us.” —Alec Bashinsky, former Deloitte partner, in an interview with SEEK Insights & Resources.

The system’s design provides better support for high-performing teams than in the past.

Here’s a summary of Deloitte’s approach to performance management:

Performance management goals Key themes How Deloitte addresses this
Recognize performance Shift from annual to regular feedback Shifted from annual reviews to more frequent “performance snapshots” and weekly check-ins to better recognize and assess performance
Simplification of the review process Introduced four key questions for team leaders to answer about team members, simplifying the review process
No more forced rankings Stopped using the traditional bell-curve system of ranking employees, rather shifting the focus to recognizing and nurturing individual strengths
See performance clearly Using technology Deloitte implemented technology to provide a comprehensive view of each employee based on multiple data points
Rating the reviewer The performance snapshot allows team leaders to rate their own intended future actions, offering a clearer view of performance
Fuel performance Focus on future development Strengths-based development is a key pillar of performance management, encouraging employees to play to their strengths and focus on future growth
Emphasis on team performance Deloitte places a strong emphasis on team performance, recognizing the importance of collaborative work
Performance Management
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Why was there a need for a new performance appraisal system at Deloitte? Five reasons

Deloitte’s decision to revamp its performance approach was driven by critical shortcomings with the old system.

Inefficient and time-consuming reviews

Deloitte’s old system consumed vast amounts of time and was bogged down by complexity. It involved lengthy forms, extensive documentation, and a cumbersome process of gathering and consolidating feedback from multiple sources.

Buckingham and Goodall recall: “We tallied the number of hours the organization was spending on performance management and found that completing forms, holding the meetings, and creating the ratings consumed close to 2 million hours a year.”

Despite the time spent, the system diverted attention from the core purpose of performance assessments, and the derived forced ratings didn’t provide meaningful insights into employees’ performances.

“The traditional process itself is highly administrative, and you’ve got to fill out a whole lot of forms. The ratings don’t correlate to any metrics. Think about the time it takes to propose an employee rating, then debate a rating, and then go back and communicate a rating in any organization. It’s horrendous. The process is not transparent, and it focuses on the weaknesses.”—Alec Bashinsky, former Deloitte partner, in an interview with SEEK Insights & Resources.

A lack of engagement and falling levels of performance

The old system was seen as a bureaucratic exercise that lacked relevance to employees’ daily work. Deloitte conducted a survey that showed their leadership team felt the system neither drove employee engagement nor high performance.

Rather than focusing on career development, the system encouraged lengthy internal discussions about rating outcomes.

“As we studied how those hours were spent, we realized that many of them were eaten up by leaders’ discussions behind closed doors about the outcomes of the process,” said Buckingham and Goodall.

There was a need for something more agile, real-time, and individualized to re-align the system’s focus on engaging Deloitte’s people and harnessing their potential.

Focus on the past

The system was focused on past behaviors and performances and was not designed to prioritize future outcomes. Its backward-looking approach didn’t offer employees constructive guidance on improving or developing their skills in the future.

“We wondered if we could somehow shift our investment of time from talking to ourselves about ratings to talking to our people about their performance and careers—from a focus on the past to a focus on the future,” reflected Buckingham and Goodall.

The system also failed to address the changing nature of work, which calls for adaptability and continuous learning.

Infrequent information

The legacy system used a cumbersome and infrequent annual 360-degree feedback approach. In comparing the 360-feedback system with a performance appraisal approach, the system had the advantages of multi-directional and holistic feedback but lacked timeliness.

The infrequent annual feedback cycle meant that feedback was often outdated by the time it was delivered. Opportunities for timely changes of direction or developmental guidance for employees were missed, and Deloitte’s people were left without a clear understanding of how their day-to-day activities aligned with Deloitte’s expectations and goals.

Inadequate focus on strengths

The old system emphasized weaknesses or areas for improvement rather than employees’ strengths. This was demotivating. It also diverted attention away from opportunities to leverage the areas where Deloitte’s people performed well.

“I would say, as a general statement, that 2–3% of any organization’s workforce is not great, for a whole range of reasons. But we put 97% of our people through a negative process. That doesn’t mean you don’t manage out poor performers—because you do—but it’s about focusing on the 97–98% of our good people and, building on their strengths, and helping them grow within the organization.”—Alec Bashinsky, former Deloitte partner.

The key to Deloitte’s performance management success

Here are seven features of Deloitte’s performance management approach that make it stand out from most other organizations.

Performance snapshots

Performance snapshots are a unique feature of Deloitte’s system. In contrast to the lengthy review process typical at many other organizations, performance snapshots are concise, quarterly surveys seeking feedback from Deloitte’s leaders about their team members. They are a significant departure from the volume of forms and checklists that were a part of Deloitte’s old system, and that’s typical of many systems today.

The performance snapshot responses are confidential, and the data is aggregated to provide a timely, realistic picture of how teams perform.

“We set out to develop a framework that was simple, local, and focused on real-time data and on individuals’ strengths,” explained Bashinsky.

Future-focused feedback

Most systems at other organizations are set up to evaluate past performance. In contrast, Deloitte’s system—particularly through its survey questions—is designed to gauge future potential. It seeks to assess the likelihood that a team leader would want to work with an employee again or whether that employee is working to their potential, amongst other factors.

The system aims to drive future performance rather than dwell on past performance.

Simplified rating system

Deloitte’s system features four questions and a five-point scale. This is far simpler than the complex systems found at other organizations and helps to reduce the biases that tend to appear in those complex systems. The simplicity of Deloitte’s system aims to capture the nuances of performance more accurately by providing a clear and easy-to-digest process while directly aligning employee goals with organizational priorities.

Emphasis on strengths

In developing the new system, Deloitte’s leaders conducted empirical studies on their strongest-performing teams.

“We were overwhelmed by one of our findings,” says Bank. “Performance, retention, and client satisfaction are strongly predicted by our people’s beliefs; they are playing to their strengths.”

As a result, Deloitte designed its system to be heavily strengths-based, focusing on what employees do well and how they can leverage their strengths to perform at their best. This contrasts with the systems at many other companies that focus on weaknesses.

Cultural integration

Deloitte’s system closely reflects its broader cultural evolution, emphasizing agility, continuous learning, and a developmental mindset. This goes beyond process changes and promotes a progressive philosophy about employee growth and organizational success. Deloitte’s system differs from the performance management frameworks of many other organizations, where the systems are less integrated with the cultural direction of the organization.

Research-based approach using technology-driven insights

After extensive, in-depth research into what drives performance, Deloitte’s new system was developed, resulting in an evidence-based design that sets it apart from the systems at many other organizations. This data-driven approach is maintained through tech tools that continuously collect and analyze performance data. Using technology in this way assists real-time analytics. It provides more timely and insightful feedback than the annual or bi-annual performance data collection at most organizations.

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How can you implement a performance management system like Deloitte?

Deel Engage can help you implement a performance management system that emulates the best elements of what Deloitte does.

Make the performance management process more efficient with automation

Deloitte overhauled its system to cut down on bureaucracy and remove inefficiencies.

With Deel Engage, you can use powerful tools to make your performance management processes more efficient and automated. For instance, you can set up a fully customizable feedback system using Deel’s feedback and performance management module:

  • Define goals at individual, team, department, and organizational levels
  • Define where feedback should come—solicit upward, downward, peer, and self-feedback
  • Decide which feedback should be anonymous and which should not with the advanced anonymity settings
  • Mix and match elements of frameworks such as competency-based, culture-based, and teamwork-based approaches
  • Use career paths and role-level descriptions to clearly articulate the expectations at different levels of a role—these provide role clarity for the tasks, deliverables, processes, goals, and KPIs of each role
  • Automatically assign tasks to reviewers—e.g., a specific location or division, or link review cycles to hire dates more more dynamic reviews
  • Soon, you’ll also have access to survey templates developed by Deel’s learning scientists, using research and industry best practices to prevent biases and collect robust data

Remember that Deloitte crafted a series of questions that asks managers to assess their own intended (future) actions about their team members based on what they know about their performance (rather than what they think about them personally).

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Set-up performance review cycles on Deel Engage

Add in frequent check-ins

Deloitte shifted from annual to regular feedback, including quarterly performance snapshots and weekly check-ins.

Deel Engage’s Slack plug-in 1:1 feature empowers managers and their teams to conduct regular, flexible check-ins. Teams can set the frequency, agenda, and discussion topics for their meetings, fostering open communication. This feature is essential for facilitating ongoing coaching conversations between managers and their team members.

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Deel Engage's 1:1 meeting Slack plug-in

Deloitte’s performance snapshots are vehicles for team leaders to capture their assessments of each of their people’s performance at a moment in time.

You can write notes post-meeting to document blockers, task loads, and overall feedback for the meeting.

Focus on every individual’s strengths

Deloitte’s system emphasizes strengths rather than weaknesses. You can use Deel Engage to help you develop people’s capabilities based on their strengths. Start with a thorough understanding of skills across your organization. You can collect feedback and reviews on role-specific skills and compile the results using a skills matrix. This tool will map out where your people’s strengths are, visualize talent densities, and identify development opportunities.

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Skills matrix on Deel Engage highlighting team strengths and weaknesses

Address skill gaps by setting clear development goals aligned with business needs, individual interests, and career aspirations.

Deel AI tools help you build robust talent development programs quickly and intelligently:

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Build out career pathways with Deel Engage’s AI assistant

Look to the future

Deloitte prioritizes forward-looking conversations and future growth. Using Deel Engage, you can focus on your people’s future growth and development by:

  • Encouraging your people to define development plans that reflect their aspirations and future potential
  • Collecting feedback on career growth interests through surveys and 1:1s
  • Developing competencies that benefit your people’s specific needs, e.g., enhancing sought-after skills in fast-emerging technologies such as AI and data analytics
  • Providing diverse learning opportunities and adopting modern approaches like social learning and microlearning
  • Structuring individual development plans with templates pre-defined by the People team

Book a free 30-minute demo to see how you will establish a performance management system that emulates the tried-and-tested ideas of organizations like Deloitte. Bring out your people’s full potential with Deel Engage.

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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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