Ans 1.

Deloitte, a global company with 200,000+ employees worldwide, set out to reinvent the way
they approach performance reviews after tallying the number of hours the organization spent on
performance management: an astounding 2 million hours a year. They also discovered that the
current rating system produced data that relied more on the evaluator than it did on the person
being evaluated.

Despite the time spent on them, the system did not provide adequate or timely feedback to
employees, nor did it provide organizational decision makers with sufficiently accurate
performance data to be used in important decisions such as incentive pay. The company decided
to give the system a makeover but also to change the company's view of what performance
management is and how to approach it.

This transformation effort began with identifying what Deloitte needed the system to be able to
accomplish. Erica Bank, performance management leader at Deloitte, describes the objectives as
threefold: fuel performance, see performance, and recognize performance. To fuel performance,
a key tool in the revamped system is frequent meetings in which the employee and the manager
have future-oriented conversations, called "check-ins" or "one-on-ones." Managers and
employees are encouraged to briefly meet weekly or biweekly to discuss ongoing work and
employee career development. To get the employees and managers started, HR gave them ideas
of what to talk about and sent weekly e-mails asking whether they had met (i.e., rather than force
compliance, they simply nudged). The frequency and regularity of these meetings would ensure
that the feedback received would be timely.

To see performance, managers are now asked to rate each employee they work with at the end of
each project using a simple, four-question survey:

 Given what I know of this person's performance, I would always want him/her on my
team. (Responses reported on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly
agree.)
 This person is at risk for low performance (yes/no).
 Given what I know of this person's performance, and if it were my own money, I would
award this person the highest possible compensation increase. (Responses reported on a
5-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.)
 This person is ready for promotion today (yes/no).

At a minimum, each employee is rated every quarter. Deloitte made the initial decision not to
share each rating from individual managers with the employees, opting to share annual
aggregated ratings with the rationale that this would allow managers to be more honest.

To recognize performance, Deloitte decided to use the performance ratings as a starting point.
Chief Learning Officer Jeff Orlando notes that every "people decision" will be data informed but
not data driven. HR and business leaders could use this information to decide whom to promote
and whose performance needed intervention. The system is meant to help support (but not
replace) decision makers in their efforts to recognize employee contributions.
Ans 2

Orlando and Bank pointed to four indicators that, together, motivated their focus on evolving performance
management at Deloitte.

Leadership Feedback
On an ongoing basis, Deloitte surveys its partners, principals, and managing directors to gather a general sense
of how things are going within Deloitte. The insights from these surveys help firm leaders understand what’s
working well, any areas of concern, and ideas to improve the strategy and operations of the firm. Orlando
recalls the increasing sense, via these types of feedback mechanisms, that performance management needed a
closer look:

For three or four years in a row, performance management was highlighted as an opportunity. People thought
we could get more value out of the process given all the time and energy that was put in. Asking about the
process to be more nimble, real time, and individualized and just plain simpler. Tweaks were made over time.
But none of these were really paradigm shifting.

The Millward Brown Study

A few years earlier, Deloitte had hired Millward Brown, an international brand consulting and marketing firm,
to help Deloitte better understand its clients’ perception of Deloitte’s brand and services. Orlando described
how the findings were instrumental in shaping the organization’s perspective of its brand value:

One of the big takeaways was that Deloitte has great people, and does high quality work, but when you look at
us against our competitors, much of what we do is at risk for commoditization. The experience our clients were
having working with us was similar to the experience they had with many of our other major competitors. This
was a watershed moment for us: we realized that we weren’t as special as we’d talked ourselves into believing.
That led to a number of things, including diversifying our service offerings and products we bring to market.
But it, indirectly, also planted the seed of the idea that our opportunity to differentiate—to really create a
premium-valued experience for our clients—rested in our ability to develop our people.
This growing recognition of the risk of professional services commoditization was, in part, the driver for
Preston’s view that the first purpose of the organization should be developing the people who compose it. If
Deloitte could be better than any of their competitors at growing and expanding talent, they reasoned, that
difference would inevitably shine through in the client experience.

Deloitte University
In 2011, Deloitte U.S. opened its first Deloitte University (DU) campus outside of Dallas, TX. The $300 million–
dollar learning facility was a first step in responding to the realization that talent was Deloitte’s path to
differentiation. The DU campus was a physical manifestation of the organization’s commitment to investing in
people, and in ensuring that the professionals who made up Deloitte had a wide range of formal and
structured developmental opportunities. The developmental programs offered at DU were wide-ranging, and
the campus was broadly considered a success. But DU’s success also served to reinforce the need for Deloitte to
do more. The DU experience served as a springboard for leaders in the Talent organization to think more
expansively about how the organization developed talent. This broader look at talent development ultimately
inspired a study, within Deloitte, of high-performing teams.

High-Performing Teams Study

Bank described the way that the organization’s investment in an educational campus gave way to a more
focused, and data-driven, look at what leads to high levels of performance across the organization:
Deloitte University was a huge investment on the part of our U.S. partners and principals. They basically
reached into their pockets and said, “Hey, we believe in development so much that we’re going to build this
home for you.” In the Talent organization, we felt this pressure—that they were also saying: “We’ve just built
you this home. Now go do something differentiating with it, and with everything you do.” It caused us to take
a step back to make sure our entire Talent Development strategy was fit for the future. This prompted an initial
study looking at high-performing teams within the organization, and trying to figure out what sort of day-to-
day environment— not just training, but actual experiences at work—lead to high performance. We learned
there are three predictors of high performance at Deloitte. One is clarity of expectations.
The second is a sense of connection to purpose. The third, though—the single biggest predictor of high
performance—was the opportunity to play to your strengths.

Ans 3
The main problems of PMS at the company are as follows

The lack of motivation for small team impacted the performance which is real time need of the business.

The client was not getting different experience as it used to have before, because the experience was
similar to their competitors, so the company was not that special as it was believed to be.

The management need to change PMS from being grading system to how to evolve people to be more
productive to get back the general mandate of talent development to Deloitte’s competitive advantages.

Ans 4

Performance management is a key function of talent, and Deloitte saw it as a fundamental

and mission-critical activity inside the organisation.
LLP Mike Preston of Deloitte said about performance management that it involves more
than just aligning employee behaviour to the organization's objective through evaluation,
feedback, and rewards. In his opinion, performance management was primarily a process of
growing people, and people development was a central feature that provided Deloitte with a
competitive edge in the market.
The company's objective is to build a leadership culture that is focused on the growth and
well-being of its employees. Deloitte's performance management method had two important
roles: team leaders and counsellors, and ended in a lengthy end-of-year procedure. For Deloitte
workers, performance management is mostly about driving cultural transformation than it is
about assessing people.
Deloitte’s process was for the team leaders to assign an overall rating to the employees
based on their strengths and areas of development as a professional through an assigned
counsellor. But the counsellor rating was not giving fruitful results desired for measuring the
client experience and employee development as well. The performance management process of
Deloitte was in need of restructuring and this was highlighted when the company realized that
they’ve lost its edge in the market and its customers are more or less receiving the same
experience as other companies. This turned out to be a watershed moment for the company.
 After this discovery, Deloitte decided to introduce new diversifying products and services
in the market which eventually led to them discovering that to improve the experience for their
clients and their employees was to focus more on the cultural development of people.
To maintain a consistent global direction, consistency in customer experience, and a
single sense of purpose, the organization needed a change in their process.

Ans 5

I will choose Erica Bank as the protagonist of the case. This is because she has provided
strategic direction to the work to optimize the performance of Deloitte’s people and teams, and
has been a key leader in the firm’s recent performance management reinvention efforts.
If I were in Erica Bank’s role I would understand the situation in a positive manner and helps to
monitor the performance of my employees and find a solution to help or motivate them.