If you talk to almost any HR leader right now, they’ll tell you the same thing: performance reviews are one of the most painful processes they run, and they’re still not getting the results they want.

At the same time, expectations have changed dramatically:

• Hybrid and distributed work made “management by osmosis” impossible.
• Employees expect frequent, transparent feedback and real growth paths.
• Executives want data they can actually use for decisions about promotions, pay, and headcount.

The good news: the tools and practices to finally fix performance management exist today. And if you’re on Rippling, you already own a platform that’s designed for this exact shift. (Rippling)

As thePeopleStack, we spend our days helping companies turn Rippling into a true “PeopleOS.” Below is how we see forward-looking HR teams modernizing performance management in 2025—and how to make Rippling do the heavy lifting for you.

1. Why Traditional Performance Reviews Are Breaking Down

Traditional performance reviews were designed for a different era: co-located workforces, slow strategy cycles, and static job descriptions. That world is gone.

Recent research highlights a few big cracks:

• Annual reviews are in retreat. A range of recent analyses shows that organizations are rapidly moving away from annual-only reviews and toward continuous feedback and more frequent cycles. One 2025 roundup notes that companies embracing continuous feedback report ~40% higher engagement and 26% better performance outcomes than those sticking to annual reviews alone. (ThriveSparrow)
• Poor performance management is expensive. Gallup and others have tied better engagement (often driven by good goal-setting and feedback) to significantly lower turnover and absenteeism, and higher productivity. In high-turnover organizations, highly engaged teams see 21% less turnover than their peers. (Gallup.com)
• Hybrid work amplified the weaknesses. A 2025 Deloitte commentary on performance management notes that in a more dynamic, disrupted environment, a once-a-year, backward-looking process simply doesn’t support the agility leaders need. (Deloitte)

On top of that, AI is quietly reshaping expectations. Managers are already using AI tools to draft and revise performance reviews, and some organizations are experimenting with AI-driven insights for evaluation and development. Done badly, this creates trust and fairness issues; done well, it frees HR to focus on strategic work instead of formatting review templates. (TechRadar)

Bottom line: if your review cycle still feels like a painful annual compliance ritual, it’s not just annoying—it’s a competitive disadvantage.

2. What “Good” Performance Management Looks Like in 2025

Modern performance management isn’t about scrapping structure. It’s about changing the cadence and the intent.

Leading organizations are converging around a few patterns: (HR.com)

1. More frequent, lighter-weight cycles
   • Quarterly or semi-annual reviews, backed by continuous feedback and regular 1:1s.
   • Smaller, more targeted question sets instead of long, generic forms.
2. Real goal alignment (not just checkboxes)
   • Individual goals and OKRs explicitly linked to team and company priorities.
   • Performance reviews that surface progress on those goals instead of separate, disconnected narratives.
3. Multi-directional feedback & calibration
   • 360° or multi-rater input (peers, direct reports, project leads) to reduce bias.
   • Calibration sessions to ensure ratings are consistent across teams, not just within a single manager’s world.
4. Development focus over “gotcha” evaluations
   • Reviews that drive growth conversations, learning plans, and mentoring.
   • Data used to guide development and promotions, not just justify annual merit increases.
5. Data- and AI-assisted—but human-led
   • AI and analytics help HR spot patterns and risks faster (for example, identifying teams where ratings are consistently inflated or where high performers aren’t being promoted). (ResearchGate)
   • Human judgment remains central for handling nuance, context, and fairness.

This “new normal” is exactly the design center for Rippling’s Performance Management suite.

3. How Rippling Turns This Into an Integrated System

Rippling’s Performance Management product is built as a set of tightly integrated apps—Goals, Review Cycles, and 1:1s—sitting directly on top of your HRIS data. (Rippling)

Here’s how that maps to modern practices:

Goals & OKRs

• Assign and track goals across the org. You can push company, departmental, and team goals to the right people using attributes like department, role, or “Supergroups.” (Rippling)
• Surface progress inside reviews. Instead of manually pasting achievements into forms, reviewers see live goal progress as part of the review flow.

Review Cycles

• Configure cycles in minutes, not weeks. HR can define who’s in scope, what types of reviews to run (self, manager, peer, upward), and which questions apply to which roles—all driven by attributes like location, level, or org unit. (Rippling)
• Automated reminders and deadlines. No more spreadsheets to track who’s late; Workflows can drive nudges and escalations automatically.

Calibration & Compensation

• Built-in calibration. Rippling supports rating calibration and consistent rules for linking performance outcomes to compensation decisions. (Rippling)
• Connected to payroll and HRIS. Because Rippling is a unified platform, performance outcomes can be tied to pay changes, promotions, and role changes without messy CSV juggling.

1:1s & Continuous Feedback

• Structured 1:1s with persistent notes. Rippling’s 1:1s capability (live and evolving) gives managers a single place to track ongoing feedback, link it to goals, and carry context forward into formal reviews. (Rippling)

In other words, Rippling is built to support exactly the type of performance system that research says works best—provided it’s configured intentionally.

That’s where we come in.

4. The Hidden Cost of “Bad” Performance Management

Executives sometimes see performance management as a “nice to have” or a compliance obligation. The data says otherwise.

Poorly designed or poorly executed performance processes show up as:

• Higher turnover and lower engagement. Engaged teams show dramatically less turnover and absenteeism, and higher productivity; disengaged employees can deliver up to ~34% lower output and make significantly more errors. (Gallup.com)
• Manager time sink. When reviews are manual and fragmented, managers easily spend 3–8 hours per employee per cycle chasing forms, gathering notes, and rewriting text. Multiply that by 100–300 employees and the cost is eye-watering.
• Equity and legal risk. Inconsistent rating practices, opaque criteria, and missing documentation make it harder to justify promotion and pay decisions—and easier for bias and perceived unfairness to creep in. Deloitte and others emphasize that modern performance systems must be designed with fairness, transparency, and data integrity from the start. (Deloitte)
• Missed development opportunities. When reviews feel like a once-a-year to-do, they don’t drive real growth. People quietly disengage, or they leave.

Fixing performance management is not just an HR clean-up project. It’s a risk reduction and value-creation project.

5. A 60-Day Performance Management Modernization Plan (on Rippling)

Here’s a pragmatic roadmap we use with clients who want to modernize quickly without boiling the ocean.

Phase 1 (Weeks 1–3): Assess & Redesign

Goals:

• Understand your current state and pain points.
• Define what “good” looks like for your company size, culture, and growth stage.

Activities:

1. Stakeholder interviews
   • HR, people leaders, a sample of managers, and a handful of ICs.
   • Focus on: What do you hate about current reviews? What do you actually find useful?
2. Review current artifacts
   • Existing templates, rating scales, competencies, timelines, and communications.
   • Any old calibration decks or complaints from previous cycles.
3. Define your performance philosophy
   • How often will you review (quarterly, semi-annual)?
   • How tightly will reviews connect to compensation?
   • What mix of manager vs 360° feedback fits your culture?
4. Design the new framework
   • Role-based templates (IC, manager, leader).
   • A small set of core competencies and values.
   • Rating scale and calibration guidelines.

This is where thePeopleStack typically runs a PeopleOps & Systems Audit focused specifically on performance management and related Rippling modules.

Phase 2 (Weeks 4–6): Rippling Configuration & Workflows

With the blueprint in hand, it’s time to make Rippling do the work.

In Rippling’s Performance Management suite, we:

1. Set up Goals / OKRs
   • Configure company, department, and team-level goals.
   • Decide how employees will set and track their own goals and how often they’ll update them. (Rippling)
2. Configure Review Cycles
   • Define which employee attributes determine cycle participation (e.g., location, level, tenure).
   • Build templates for self, manager, peer, and upward reviews, mapped to the competencies and questions designed in Phase 1. (Rippling)
3. Design Workflows & Automations
   • Automated invitations, reminders, and escalations.
   • Routing for exceptions (e.g., manager changes, leave of absence, or probations).
   • Optional: workflows to trigger performance-improvement plans or follow-up 1:1s based on certain outcomes.
4. Prepare Calibration & Compensation Linkages
   • Configure rating bands and calibration views.
   • Align performance outcomes with your compensation cycle so HR isn’t reconciling performance PDFs with payroll spreadsheets. (Rippling)

This is where thePeopleStack’s Rippling implementation & optimization team typically takes the lead, so HR doesn’t have to become a Rippling power user overnight.

Phase 3 (Weeks 7–8): Rollout, Training, and Continuous Feedback

A beautifully configured system still fails if people don’t know how to use it—or don’t believe in it.

Key steps:

1. Pilot the new cycle
   • Start with a single function or business unit.
   • Run a shorter, controlled cycle (e.g., mid-year mini-review) to test the flow.
2. Train managers and employees
   • Short, practical sessions on: how to write good feedback, how to use goals, how 1:1s and reviews fit together.
   • Show managers how Rippling centralizes performance history, goals, and feedback so they don’t have to maintain private notebooks. (Rippling)
3. Communicate the “why”
   • Clear messaging from leadership: this is about better growth, fairness, and clarity—not about adding bureaucracy.
   • Reinforce what’s changing (cadence, templates, connection to pay) and what’s staying the same.
4. Capture feedback & iterate
   • Post-cycle surveys for managers and employees.
   • Tweak questions, guidance, and timelines based on actual experience.

We often package this as a Performance Management Modernization Sprint: 60 days from “this is painful” to “this is structured, automated, and actually useful.”

6. Where AI Fits (and Where It Doesn’t)

Given all the headlines, it’s natural to ask: should AI write our reviews?

Our view (supported by recent research and industry reports) is:

• YES to AI helping with:
  • Suggesting structure and language based on bullet-point notes.
  • Highlighting patterns in feedback and ratings across teams.
  • Surfacing anomalies (e.g., a team where ratings are consistently higher/lower than average). (SAGE Journals)
• NO to AI fully taking over:
  • Writing reviews or deciding raises/promotions without robust human oversight risks bias, fairness issues, and legal exposure. Surveys already show a worrying portion of employees suspect their reviews or even termination communications were AI-generated, and many reported emotional distress as a result. (TechRadar)

Rippling gives you a reliable data backbone and workflow engine; AI tools can assist with drafting and analysis. But the relationship side of performance management still belongs to managers and HR.

7. How thePeopleStack Can Help

If you already have Rippling (or are about to), you don’t need yet another point solution for performance management. You need a partner who can:

• Design a performance framework tailored to your size, culture, and risk profile.
• Configure Rippling Performance Management (Goals, Review Cycles, 1:1s, workflows) so it reflects that framework.
• Integrate performance data with payroll, compensation, and PeopleOps practices.
• Train your managers so they actually use the system—and use it well.
• Provide ongoing optimization as your org grows and your needs change.

That’s exactly what we do at thePeopleStack as a Rippling-focused consultancy.

Ready to Fix Performance Reviews for Good?

Three practical next steps you can take right now:

1. Run a quick audit of your current performance process: cadence, templates, adoption, and connection to pay.
2. Identify your “north star” for performance: is it growth, fairness, succession planning, retention of top talent, or all of the above?
3. Talk to us about a Performance Management Modernization Sprint on Rippling—60 days to move from painful annual ritual to a modern, automated performance system your managers won’t dread.