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Continuous Feedback = Continuous Problems?
TL;DR
Every HR leader eventually agrees on one thing: annual performance reviews are too slow. They arrive after the work is done and usually after resentment has already set in.
Episode 10 is about what happens after that agreement. When leadership says, “Let’s move to continuous feedback,” and everyone nods, only for managers to realize what that actually means for their day-to-day work. And it backfires on HR.
Kelly and Daniel (CEO) agree that annual feedback is broken and decide to move to continuous performance management. The idea is sound. The execution runs into resistance almost immediately.
Managers push back hard, arguing they already give feedback in Slack, already track work in Salesforce, HubSpot, and Jira, and don’t have time to duplicate effort in an HR system. Kelly realizes the problem isn’t a lack of willingness. It’s fatigue. And the answer isn’t asking people to do more. It’s stopping HR from asking them to repeat themselves.
The Situation
Daniel said it plainly once the meeting started, “We’re moving too fast for annual reviews. By the time feedback shows up, the moment’s gone, and the goals have changed twice.”
Kelly nodded. “I agree.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You do?”
“Haha, yes - c’mon Daniel, don’t we agree on most things?” she asked, laughing. Kelly added, “We’ve been treating performance like something you summarize after the fact.”
Lena leaned forward. “So what changes?”
Daniel answered before Kelly could. “We move to continuous feedback. Ongoing. Real-time.”
Kelly paused because she’d seen where this usually went. “We can do that,” she said. “But we need to be careful about how we ask people to participate and how they do it.”
Daniel waved it off. “Managers already give feedback. This just formalizes it. And we anyway have that HRIS tool right? Just ask people to fill it up there.”
Kelly didn’t push back. Sometimes the best way to get your point across is to let the moment unfold. Only a few days till she got to say “Well, I told you so.”
The Spiral
The announcement landed midweek.
Nothing dramatic. No big language. Just a note explaining that managers would be expected to document feedback more regularly and update goals on a monthly cadence.
By Friday, Maya’s days were stacked wall to wall.
The complaints all sounded different, but they meant the same thing.
“I already give feedback every day. It’s called Slack.”
“My team lives in Salesforce. Goals are already there.”
“You’re asking me to do the same work twice.”
“This feels like HR busywork. What do I get out of this?”
One manager said it quietly, without heat. “Kelly, I don’t mind giving feedback. I mind pretending it didn’t already happen unless I type it into the HR tool.”
Maya passed everything along. She didn’t editorialize.
Kelly listened and felt the familiar tension settle in - time to get to work.
The Pivot
“Are they wrong?” Maya asked Kelly. She was visibly exhausted having to face managers the entire week.
Kelly shook her head. “No, they’re exhausted. Same as you”
Kelly opened the performance platform on her screen. Empty fields waiting for input. Prompts asking for reflection that had already happened elsewhere.
“I don’t say this often, but this is an HR-Tech problem” Kelly mentioned. “If having a blank box meant institutionalizing Continuous Feedback, I’d be the happiest. But that’s not how behavior change works. And ideally, we shouldn’t be forcing them to change what they do.”
Maya leaned back. “They’re not avoiding feedback, are they? They’re just avoiding duplication.”
“Yep. I’m going to side with the managers here. We keep saying we want continuous performance,” Kelly said. “But we keep designing systems that interrupt work instead of understanding it.”
The Reframe
Kelly spent the next two weeks doing something she rarely had time for. She listened.
She sat in on sales standups. Shadowed product reviews. Watched how managers actually gave feedback when they weren’t performing for HR.
It was happening constantly. Just not where HR could see it. And unfortunately, not linked with the performance management process - which was a big issue.
Coaching happened in real time. Corrections happened in context. Goals lived inside the tools that measured progress.
Kelly and Maya started researching what other companies were doing. Not “best practices.” Actual implementations.
Most tools did the same thing. Forms. Prompts. Dashboards.
Then they came across something different.
A system that didn’t ask managers to start over.
One that pulled context from where work already happened.
A platform that could actually even help managers share better feedback in real-time.
And they were already using this platform for Engagement Surveys!
Kelly didn’t say much at first. She just stared at the screen, her mind racing.
“This,” she said finally, “is what people mean when they say AI-native.”
“I can’t believe we didn’t think about Klaar.”
The Meeting
Kelly brought Daniel and Lena back together. “The issue isn’t that managers don’t want to give feedback,” she said. “It’s that we’ve been asking them to perform it twice.”
Daniel frowned. “I’m so tired of all this complaining. So what actually changes?”
“We stop treating the HR system like the place where work becomes real,” Kelly said. “We let it reflect what’s already happening.”
Daniel leaned back. “You’re saying the system adapts to the work.”
“I’m saying it has to,” Kelly replied. “Otherwise people will keep opting out quietly.”
“Wait, do we have to pay more? Can’t we make do with our HRIS?” Daniel asked.
“How important is this to you, Daniel?” Kelly replied indirectly.
“Understood. One more question: shouldn’t we explore some of the other more well-known tools in the market?”
“Valid question but we have used several of these tools in the past. You yourself have said that they are not built for modern companies. We are not looking to digitize a paper process - we need an AI-native tool that’s not built around the constraints of the last 20 years. Now, can we move?” Kelly posed it as a question but Daniel knew that the conversation had just ended.
The Aftermath
The pilot started small. No announcement. No fanfare. Sales first. Then Product.
The complaints didn’t disappear overnight. But they softened and gradually took the shape of agreement.
“I didn’t realize how much feedback I was already giving.”
“This actually mirrors how we work.”
“I’m not chasing reminders anymore.”
Maya stopped by Kelly’s desk one afternoon. “You know what’s different?” she said. “People aren’t arguing about feedback.”
Kelly smiled. “They never were. They were arguing about being asked to pretend.”
The Pattern
- Performance management breaks when HR mistakes visibility for participation.
- Feedback fails when systems ignore how work actually happens.
- When you are implementing continuous performance management, or for that matter, any process, a great question to ask is “Why would people do it the way we are telling them to? What’s their incentive? What’s in it for them?”
Kelly Recommends
At the risk of a blatant plug, if you are serious about Continuous Performance Management and the way it actually works, if you are an AI-forward leader, if you are a modern CPO who has a hard time identifying with practices that seem more like a straightjacket and not an enabler, Klaar is for you.
Dear Kelly:
What would you want us to cover next? Drop your suggestion here!
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