AMZN Amazon.com Inc

By Lauren Weber And Rachel Emma Silverman 

If you work in a big company, chances are you're getting more feedback lately--whether you know it or not.

Recent revelations about Amazon.com Inc.'s competitive work culture described a company feedback system in which employees sent gripes to co-workers' bosses about their performance, sometimes without the co-workers' knowledge. Invoking a workplace version of "Lord of the Flies," workers said that some used the tool, called Anytime Feedback, to gang up on rivals or oust low performers.

The retailer's system may strike some as harsh, but peer reviewing has been in offices for a while. So-called 360 reviews allow co-workers and managers to weigh in on one another's performance.

A host of firms have lately been experimenting with online tools that allow co-workers to send one another criticism or praise, sometimes anonymously. While systems like Amazon's are comparatively rare, workforce-technology experts say, anonymous and peer feedback features come standard in widely used performance-management software by Workday Inc., Cornerstone onDemand Inc., Salesforce's Work.com and others.

Many firms are hesitant to give employees unfettered access to feedback tools, fearing that a free-for-all of commentary will encourage petty complaints or lead to a deluge of observations with no discernible value. In some systems, companies can disable elements like unsolicited feedback, allowing employees to comment only when a worker or manager requests input.

Peer feedback, delivered via internal social networks, forms or short surveys, is part of a bigger workplace shift as employers like General Electric Co., Accenture and Deloitte drop annual performance reviews in favor of constant, instant assessments for staff. Usually, that feedback comes with names attached, but some firms are trying anonymous systems, too, with mixed results.

The majority of customers using Cornerstone's performance-management product have experimented with anonymous or peer-to-peer feedback, with many currently piloting the features, said Chris Stewart, a vice president at Cornerstone who works directly with clients. It isn't yet clear whether many will permanently adopt them, he said.

Troubles can arise when employers lack a plan of action after employees hear more about their performance, said Mr. Stewart, a former HR director at Ticketmaster. "Employees are receptive to the feedback, but when they go to look for training, resources or mentoring, they are not there," he said. "That tends to defeat the purpose and create a negative sort of environment."

Unsolicited positive reviews motivate employees, but negative comments by workers rarely improve performance, since managers perceive it as "noise" and "whining," said Jason Averbook, a former workforce-technology consultant and now chief executive of TMBC, a firm that advises companies on managing performance.

Other challenges arise when employees can covertly sound off to a colleague's boss, as noted in a New York Times story this month about Amazon. Workers may rightly fear that their colleagues are stabbing them in the back or bringing up petty complaints, said Mr. Averbook.

When that happens regularly, it indicates "a culture that's kind of childish and competitive," said Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer at Netflix Inc., a company that experimented with many types of feedback processes during her tenure. She helped craft a set of values for the company; one behavior aligned to those values was "You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face."

Even when managers put such guidelines in place, criticisms are often leveled without any evidence, said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management.

As an HR executive in previous jobs, he found himself "going down rabbit holes to try to figure out the motivation behind" workers' critiques, to determine if the feedback was legitimate. That happened often enough to create frustration and a lot of wasted time.

An Amazon spokesman said Anytime Feedback "is just another way for people to give feedback throughout the year--like walking into a manager's office, calling, or sending an email." He added, "most Anytime Feedback is positive, and it's up to each manager to decide how to use the feedback."

Indeed, employers worry they'll get too much positive reinforcement and not enough honesty in peer review systems, said Jason Corsello, Cornerstone's vice president of corporate strategy and development. Managers are in an awkward spot when employees praise a member of a team, "but the manager thinks they're a low performer," he added. Human-resources executives struggle with encouraging managers and workers to offer candid comments, or "constructive criticism," in cubicle-speak.

Employees and managers at Hearsay Social, a maker of digital marketing software for the financial-services industry, rely on peers for semiannual 360 reviews and regular "hotwash" sessions after meetings to rehash what went well and what could improve.

Steve Garrity, Hearsay's founder and chief technology officer, said he's also considering short, weekly surveys to get a regular read on how things are going for his 175 employees. Continuous peer feedback--particularly when it is anonymous--isn't on the menu for now.

"We are giving people regular feedback on things that matter," he said, adding that anonymous feedback may be "too prone to abuse to actively encourage people to take potshots anonymously," said Mr. Garrity.

Realizing that staff craved more feedback, professional services firm PwC last year introduced Snapshot, an app allowing workers to request short, instant assessments from their managers on areas such as technical abilities and business acumen.

The idea, said Tim Ryan, PwC's vice chairman, is to help employees develop themselves in real time, rather than once a year, although managers still have annual meetings about performance and development with its 42,000 U.S. staff. "We analogize it to athletes. They get feedback every time they come off the court," he said.

Snapshot comments are visible to an employee's HR manager, career coach, direct supervisor and the partner in charge of their team, but management can also pull aggregate data to determine, for example, whether bosses are grading employees too generously. Workers are expected to regularly seek out constructive criticism.

So far, only employees can solicit feedback on the app. PwC has mulled allowing managers to seek input on their staff, said Mr. Ryan, but it will have to wait until everyone gets comfortable with frequent, candid conversations. In all, he expects the total integration of this feedback system to be "a five-year journey."

Josh Bersin, principal of a Deloitte-owned consultancy that advises companies on talent management, said that despite HR hand-wringing, anonymous feedback will be bigger a part of office life. Managers will have to set limits, he said.

"You don't want to create a bad relation with the recipient, and the person giving the feedback doesn't want to get in trouble or look like a crank," he said. "You might need to monitor and possibly moderate some of the comments."

Write to Lauren Weber at lauren.weber@wsj.com and Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 25, 2015 19:39 ET (23:39 GMT)

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