Gallup: 74% of employees are reviewed once a year or less. 6 ways to add review cycles without adding manager admin.

A midweek question for People leaders in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Tallinn: if your CEO asked for quarterly reviews next year, would your managers cope? Most mid-market teams already struggle to get one annual cycle finished on time. Four cycles run the same way means four times the chasing.

Neutral research says the pressure is real, and so is the risk. Gallup, Gartner, the CIPD and a CEB survey reported by SHRM point the same way: annual reviews still dominate, they already take a lot of manager time, and simply doing them more often doesn’t make them better.

1. What the research actually says

In plain language:

• Most people are still reviewed annually. Gallup reports that 74% of employees receive a performance review once a year or less often. Only 14% strongly agree their reviews inspire them to improve, and only two in 10 strongly agree their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.
• Reviews already eat manager time. In a CEB survey reported by SHRM, managers said they spend an average of 210 hours a year on performance management activities, and that each employee spends another 40 hours. The same CEB research found more than 9 in 10 managers dissatisfied with how their companies run annual reviews.
• Cutting effort backfires. Gartner found that two-thirds of HR leaders focused on making performance management easier or less time-consuming. But fewer documentation requirements, no ratings and fewer formal steps can, taken together, cause workforce performance to decline by more than 16%. Organisations that instead made performance management more useful, closely aligned with employee and business needs, saw a 24% boost in workforce performance.
• Frequency isn’t quality. The CIPD’s evidence review on performance feedback found that making feedback more frequent does not usually make it more effective: in one study, professionals who received monthly feedback improved more than those who received weekly feedback. How feedback is given (specific, constructive, fair) matters more than how often.
• The shift is still happening. The CIPD notes that annual reviews have been questioned in favour of more regular conversations, and Gartner found 81% of HR leaders were making changes to performance management, while less than one-fifth believed it was effective at achieving its primary objective.
• HR is asked for proof. Leaders increasingly expect HR to show, with data, whether managers are effective.

Honest caveats. These are separate studies, run at different times and mostly in the US or in large organisations. Gartner’s figures are from 2019, the CIPD evidence review is from 2022, and the CEB figure is older. None of them measures how often mid-market European companies review. Revolut People, where I work, sells performance management software, so treat the product sections as coming from an interested party. Use the research as a signal, not a controlled study.

2. The mid-market hurdle: more cycles, same managers

In a 200–600 person company, the People team is often two to five people, and most managers carry a full workload of their own. The annual review already takes weeks of reminders. Each manager opens a blank form, digs through a year of Slack messages and notes, rewrites goals from memory and sends it in late. HR then chases, collates and builds a summary in a spreadsheet.

Move that process to quarterly and nothing gets better. You get four rounds of blank forms, four rounds of chasing, and managers who start treating reviews as box-ticking. The CIPD’s evidence review makes the point: the quality of feedback, whether it is specific, constructive and fair, matters more than giving a large quantity of frequent feedback. If a frequent cycle eats the time that conversation needs, you’ve made things worse.

3. 6 ways to add review cycles without adding manager admin

1. Agree the cadence with your people, and say why. The CIPD’s evidence review suggests agreeing the timing of feedback explicitly with the people involved, and Gartner found employees were four times more likely to say performance management was worth the time and effort when they judged it highly useful. Write one sentence on what each cycle decides: development focus, goal reset, pay input.
2. Make the quarterly check light and the annual review full. Not every cycle needs every section. A quarterly check might cover goal progress and one development question; the fuller review once or twice a year adds peer input and ratings. In Revolut People: review cycles are configurable and scorecards take custom questions, so you can keep a quarterly check short.
3. Never start a manager from a blank page. The biggest time cost is rebuilding context. Goals and the last cycle’s answers should already be on the form, so the manager reviews what changed. In Revolut People: the scorecard opens with the person’s goals filled in and previous-cycle data carried forward, so managers write about the change, not the whole history.
4. Collect input from more than the manager. Self, peer and upward input spreads the effort and gives a fairer picture. Keep it short: two or three questions each. In Revolut People: self, peer, upward and manager reviews run inside the same cycle.
5. Fix the process before you buy the tool. Gartner’s research is the useful steer: organisations that closely aligned performance management with employee and business needs saw a 24% boost in workforce performance. That usefulness comes from the process, not the tool. Map who does what in your current cycle, cut any step that doesn’t feed a decision or a conversation, then pick software that fits that process.
6. Measure the time, not just completion. HR is under pressure to show manager effectiveness with data. Track three numbers per cycle: on-time completion, average manager time per review, and the share of reviews followed by a one-on-one within two weeks. Get a quick baseline with the performance health check, and run your next cycle against the review cycle checklist.

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4. Where Revolut People fits, and where it doesn’t

Revolut People started as the in-house system Revolut uses to run performance. The part that maps to this research is Reviews: configurable review cycles with self, peer, upward and manager input, and a scorecard that opens with each person’s goals and their previous-cycle data already in place. That’s what makes a more frequent cycle realistic, because managers update what changed instead of starting again.

To be straight about the limits: software won’t decide your cadence for you, and it won’t make a review useful if nobody acts on it. Gartner’s research points the same way: people judge performance management worth the effort when it is useful, not just when it is quick. Decide what each cycle is for, keep the forms short, and protect the one-on-one that follows. Related reads: why annual reviews fail, Gartner on reviews and calibration, and research on goals that lag priorities.

Bottom Line

Most employees are still reviewed once a year or less, reviews already take managers a lot of time, and cutting steps without a plan can make performance worse. For a mid-market People team in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics or the Baltics, the answer isn’t to copy the annual review four times. It’s a light quarterly check with a clear purpose, forms that start from goals and last cycle’s answers, and a measure of manager time per review. Try it with one department next quarter and compare the minutes per review with your last annual cycle.

FAQ

What does the research say about how often reviews happen?

Gallup reports that 74% of employees receive a performance review once a year or less often, and only 14% strongly agree that their performance reviews inspire them to improve. The CIPD notes that the value of annual reviews has been questioned in favour of more regular conversations, while structured reviews remain important. So the direction of travel is towards more regular check-ins, but most people are still reviewed annually.

Does reviewing more often mean more admin for managers?

Not necessarily, but only if the process is designed for it. In a CEB survey reported by SHRM, managers said they already spend an average of 210 hours a year on performance management activities, and each employee 40 hours. Gartner found that two-thirds of HR leaders focused on making performance management easier or less time-consuming, but cutting documentation, ratings and formal steps can cause workforce performance to decline by more than 16%. The aim is less admin per cycle without losing the useful parts.

Is this independent research?

Yes, in the sense that none of the sources sells performance management software: Gallup, Gartner, the CIPD, and a CEB survey reported by SHRM. They aren’t all recent: the Gartner figures are from 2019, the CIPD evidence review is from 2022, and the CEB figure is older. Most of the data comes from the US or from large organisations, so treat it as a signal for European mid-market teams, not a controlled study. Ash works for Revolut People, which sells performance management software.

How often should a mid-market company run performance reviews?

There’s no single right answer. The CIPD’s evidence review suggests agreeing the timing of feedback explicitly with the people involved, and notes that more frequent feedback isn’t automatically more effective. A common pattern is a light quarterly check on goals and development with a fuller review once or twice a year, with one-on-ones in between. Start with one department before changing the whole company.

Is Revolut People available in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics and the Baltics?

Yes. Revolut People is available to businesses with a registered entity in the UK, the EEA or the US, which covers Ireland, the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries.