Gartner: rethink performance

The old performance review was built for a slower company. Work happened in clearer lanes. Managers had time to observe it. A yearly rating could pretend to capture what mattered. Gartner is now arguing that this model no longer fits how companies actually run, and that performance management has to be rebuilt around continuous feedback, lighter manager workloads, and much more visible decision-making (gartner.com, gartner.com). That shift starts with a blunt fact about managers. In research published April 7, 2025, Gartner said 75% of CHROs surveyed believe managers are overwhelmed by increased job responsibilities (gartner.com). In a separate October 15, 2024 release, Gartner said three-quarters of 805 HR leaders reported the same problem, and nearly as many said leaders and managers were not equipped to lead change (gartner.com). That matters because the modern manager is supposed to do everything at once: coach, evaluate, communicate strategy, absorb change, and now supervise AI-assisted workflows too. Once that role gets overloaded, the review process breaks down with it. Gartner’s October 2024 guidance on AI in performance management says the main input for any better system is high-quality performance feedback, yet many organizations still struggle to get employees to provide continuous feedback at all (gartner.com). Gartner’s own training materials make the point even more directly: continuous feedback is “essential” for employee development and organizational success (gartner.com). The practical message is simple. If feedback only appears at review time, the data is thin, stale, and easy to distrust. Trust is the next problem, and Gartner ties it to behavior more than software. In an April 22, 2025 press release, the firm said distrust most often comes from leaders withholding information, scapegoating, or reversing decisions without explanation (gartner.com). Gartner found employees are 4.3 times more likely to trust leaders who explain decisions, and 6.5 times more likely to trust leaders who genuinely care about their concerns (gartner.com). That is the logic behind the call for radical transparency. Not transparency as branding, but transparency as operating discipline. This is where engineering leaders get pulled into what sounds like an HR story. In software teams, the manager often sits closest to the actual work while also translating goals from executives into roadmaps, staffing choices, and promotion decisions. Gartner’s 2026 CHRO priorities research says leaders now have to “routinize” change rather than treat it as an exceptional event, and that organizations that embed culture into daily work can see employee performance rise by as much as 34% (gartner.com, hrexecutive.com). For engineering managers, that means the job is moving away from periodic judgment and toward constant calibration: shorter feedback loops, clearer reasons for decisions, and fewer hidden criteria. AI makes that change harder, not easier. Gartner warns that AI can reduce administrative burden in performance management, but it can also deepen employee doubts about fairness and transparency if the underlying process is weak (gartner.com). The firm says managers still have to edit AI outputs, add context, and stay accountable for the final call (gartner.com). So the real rethink is not about replacing the annual review with a nicer app. It is about deciding that performance is a live system, and that the manager’s most important deliverable may now be an explained decision.