Eric Handler headshot Written by: Eric Handler

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After decades of ticking the box “Does Not Meet Expectations,” annual performance reviews are being routinely fired by organizations seeking a more meaningful and immediate way to measure and develop employees.

Taking its place are real time applications that can be implemented nearly as instantaneously as the feedback they facilitate. A good third of U.S. businesses are on board, up 23 percent from a year ago. In fact, a Deloitte trends report said 88 percent of US companies are rethinking performance reviews.

Key organizational drivers include: 1) people development, 2) teamwork, and 3) agility. For modern workers, social apps are already fully integrated into their personal lives, so it’s natural to add work into the instant feedback loop. After all, Millennials, as it has been noted, are looking for a coach, not a boss.

The apps are scalable and makers say deployable within minutes, most with interfaces to platforms such as BaseCamp, SalesForce and Slack. From among a field that’s quickly burgeoning to dozens, here are four apps that you might want to explore, along with companies using them.

  • AssessTeam: AOL/Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, HR.com, Lifehack
  • DevelApMe: Closets by Design, Fox School of Business, Janssen, Penn Medicine
  • Impraise: Fronteer, GameHouse, inDinero, Intertrend, Ponds, Zanox
  • TinyPulse: Airbnb, Ascension, facebook, Hubspot, IBM, Michelin

 Additional Resource: For politically incorrect laughs, click here for Mad TV’s take on the perils of giving constructive criticism in the age of hypersensitivity.