Google’s chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi, told employees that a support check-in would come before an employee received one of the two lowest ratings in their feedback.
“We created them because we were hearing Googlers were not consistently receiving feedback outside of the two perf cycles,” she said at the all-hands. “The idea really is, if you weren’t meeting all of your expectations, wouldn’t you want to know ahead of time?”
Some employees have said GRAD, which this year replaced Google’s previous performance tool, has had a rocky start. One manager described it to Insider as “a mess.”
Cicconi seemed to acknowledge as much during the all-hands Thursday.
“I think this shift is needed and it will get easier with practice, so we’re sticking with them,” she said. “Thank you for your patience and hanging with us with GRAD, especially managers. I know it’s been bumpy, but it will start to feel like normal, and it will get easier and easier each time that we do it.”
