How Adobe keeps key employees from quitting

“I looked at this whole process, back in 2011, and thought, ‘Is this really doing anything useful for us? Why are we doing it?’” recalls Donna Morris, Adobe’s global senior vice president of people and places.

Especially troublesome was that the company’s “rank and yank” system, which forced managers to identify and fire their least productive team members, caused so much infighting and resentment that, each year, it was making some of the software maker’s best people flee to competitors.

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

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