Rating the Employee Review: Needs Improvement

Few rituals of the modern workplace evoke more dread than the annual performance review. Like a colonoscopy or root canal, it has been viewed as a necessary evil: deeply unpleasant but indispensable for the health of an organization.

These methods of reviewing workers themselves are evaluated and, like so many employees, sometimes found wanting. In the past year, Accenture, General Electric, Microsoft and Adobe have all instituted review systems that move away traditional methods of assessment. Last week, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley announced that they would abandon old-fashioned numerical rankings administered annually in favor of more qualitative assessments that uses adjectives -- Outstanding, Good, Needs Improvement -- delivered in real time.