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Employees aren't quietly hoping for feedback. They're asking for it — directly, repeatedly — and most performance review cycles still aren't built to deliver it. Incompass CEO Jessica DeVlieger joined Hebba Youssef on I Hate It Here to talk about why the traditional review is broken, why managers avoid the conversations that matter most, and what it actually takes to build a culture where people know where they stand.
Here are the highlights — full episode linked below.
By the time a formal review rolls around, most teams already have a shared, unspoken read on who's carrying weight and who isn't. Jessica's point: that signal exists in real time, all the time — it's just never captured or acted on until review season, months after it would have been useful.
I hate the way performance management is traditionally done because I think it actually doesn't solve any of our real problems. Employees want that clarity…employees just really want to know where they stand…But somehow everything we do in performance management doesn't actually tell them anything.
— Hebba Youssef
Most managers don't dodge hard conversations because they don't care — they dodge them because the format makes every piece of feedback feel like a verdict instead of information. Jessica walks through what actually needs to change about how performance gets discussed, not just how often.
I think probably the biggest miss [on the part of leaders] is lack of clarity…Clarity is kindness…The most important principle that leaders can practice is to identify a clear headline so that even if the employee hears nothing else, they understand this headline.
— Jessica DeVlieger
Buying a performance management tool doesn't fix a performance management culture — and it can actively backfire if it's layered on top of the same broken conversation. Jessica names the most common mistake companies make when they roll out new performance software.
[The biggest mistake I see companies make implementing performance management software] is not being clear on what they're trying to solve for. Ask yourself: what's the problem you're trying to solve for? And get super clear on what success looks like. Only then should you start looking at solutions.
— Hebba Youssef
Asked how she'd rebuild the whole system with no legacy constraints, Jessica's answer is close to the thesis behind Incompass itself: gather input from the people who actually see the work, correct for bias systematically, and give people an honest, standing answer to "how am I doing" instead of a twice-a-year event.
[If I could wave a magic wand and redesign performance management, I would] immediately get rid of the process-heavy inputs so people preserve their energy to do something with the learning. I would keep the ritual of calibration but make it more reliable and more data driven, and I would mandate conversations with each employee [at the end of a cycle] because again, if you're not closing the loop in a clear, kind way, why bother doing it at all?
— Jessica DeVlieger
This is a short recap — the full 45-minute conversation covers a lot more, including why employees always spot underperformance before managers do and how to build a culture where performance talk is normal, not scary.
🎧 Listen to the full episode on I Hate It Here →
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