How Adobe continues to inspire great performance and support career growth
How Check-in started at Adobe
In 2012, Adobe replaced annual performance reviews and ratings in favor of a less structured approach that we call Check-in. Employees were frustrated with annual performance reviews as they found the process cumbersome and bureaucratic. It also created barriers to teamwork since the experience of being rated and stack-ranked for compensation left many employees feeling undervalued. We realized that in order to do our best work, we shouldn’t wait until the end of the year to share feedback. Rather, we should have open and ongoing conversations year-round. From this sentiment, Check-in was born. Check-in is an ongoing, two-way conversation where employee and manager discuss performance and career growth, and exchange real-time feedback. It's a meaningful conversation about what's going well, what can be improved, and what to focus on next to drive business impact and career growth.
Embracing a new, digital-first Check-in
As the way we work has gone through a major shift, what hasn’t changed is Adobe’s commitment to providing exceptional employee experience and supporting employees’ career growth. As we embrace hybrid work and an ever-evolving business, we recognized a need to evolve Check-in to help scale our business and support employee growth. This became more evident as we gathered feedback from hundreds of leaders and employees across teams and territories in the past year to understand how Check-in has been working. We are no longer the same company we were a decade ago – the number of employees has nearly tripled, we are more global and matrixed, the way we work has changed, and it will continue to evolve. To that end, we’ve launched a digitally enabled Check-in to keep the focus on ongoing conversations, but with a consistent, centralized place for our employees to document goals, discuss performance with their managers, and map career aspirations.
"Feedback and ongoing conversations between managers and employees are at the heart of what make check-ins successful - both to ensure employees have the clarity they need to be successful in their roles and to support their career growth."
- Gloria Chen, Chief People Officer and EVP, Employees Experience
Adobe performance management, then and now.
Before: The annual performance review
After: Digital-first Check-in
