The new system relies on more direct meetings — called “Connect” — between managers and their employees in which employees will set down their core priorities, what they plan to do until their next meeting, and what they’ve done to meet those commitments.
Each division decides how many such Connect meetings its employees will have, with a minimum of two each year.
“What you end up with is a collection of feedback that’s closer to the time it happened,” Brummel said. “It’s an opportunity to collect more feedback, more frequently, rather than trying to recollect once a year.”
That’s necessary, she said, because Microsoft is moving to a more “rapid delivery cadence,” where it’s delivering updates to its products and services far more frequently than in the past.
The company’s compensation budget remains the same, and employees and managers will still meet around August and September to discuss compensation.
The difference is now “there’s no review write-up attached to it,” Brummel said. “The compensation is then based on the sequence of Connects over the year.”
Brummel said she was confident that implementing the new review system immediately is the right move, despite the continuing search for a new CEO who might want to put another system into place.
The company “has a new strategy,” she said. “We’re moving forward with it. All the divisions are lining up behind what we need to get accomplished. There’s no reason people programs shouldn’t be doing the same thing.
“I’m betting [the new CEO] will say it’s a good thing,” Brummel continued. “If they don’t say it’s a good thing, we’ll be back at some point in time trying to do something different. But I think it’s our responsibility from our human-resources perspective to help the company move forward.”
Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @janettu.
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