From Performance Reviews to People Intelligence: Rethinking How Organizations Assess Talent

October 7, 2026 – Performance management is increasingly moving beyond a once- or twice-a-year exercise as organizations look for more timely insight into how leaders and teams are actually performing. For search and talent leaders, that shift is creating new opportunities to use people data more strategically in decisions around succession, development, retention, and leadership readiness.

As companies place greater emphasis on speed, accuracy, and evidence-based decision-making, the quality of workforce data is becoming more important. The ability to compare leadership behaviors with business outcomes can give organizations a clearer view of who is driving performance, where risk may be emerging, and which individuals are best positioned for larger roles.

Incompass is among the companies looking to change that dynamic by giving organizations a faster, more consistent way to capture and use performance intelligence across the workforce. Around the world, companies have performance management processes that take hours to complete and deliver subjective, qualitative, and biased feedback. The Incompass’ platform combines data science, AI/ML, and an employee-centric approach to make its review process two to three times faster than traditional 360 reviews.

The company also offers “quantify the qualitative,” providing scores for each assessment, the ability to easily track improvement, and to compare employee performance across the organization and over time. Incompass estimates a nearly 8x ROI on the time savings alone, not to mention the savings associated with retaining high potential employees and having the data to make faster decisions on low performers.

Jessica DeVlieger, co-founder and CEO of Incompass, recently sat down with Hunt Scanlon Media to discuss how real-time people intelligence is changing performance management, improving leadership decisions, reducing bias, and giving organizations better data for succession, development, retention, and other critical talent decisions.

Jessica, what does it look like when a leader can deploy people intelligence around a specific business question rather than waiting for an annual or semiannual process?

This is about having performance data to inform critical business decisions the same way companies rely on other types of data – revenue data, product data, market share data – to help shape important decisions.

What are the business moments where you believe leaders most need trusted people intelligence — succession planning, reorganizations, promotions, leadership changes, M&A, or something else?

Those are great examples of the kinds of decisions that can be made more confidently if there is good talent data available. Reliable data that compares leadership behaviors with business outcomes, can also help inform future hiring decisions and behavioral expectations.

Speed is becoming increasingly important in talent decisions, but so is trust in the underlying data. How does Incompass give leaders faster answers without sacrificing rigor, fairness, or confidence in the results?

Incompass does this through a combination of factors: an innovative UI that both increases reliability and speed, combined with AI coaches to improve written feedback, and an algorithm developed initially for grading at the Wharton School that helps remove rater bias.

How does this model change the role of HR and people leaders when performance data is no longer primarily tied to a formal review process, but can be used continuously across the business?

We believe there is still a need for annual performance reviews as a part of business compliance; however, we also believe that if companies are using a platform like Incompass to regularly give and get feedback and build people intelligence on an ongoing basis, that annual process can be significantly more efficient and effective since it essentially becomes a reflection back on the feedback that has already been processed throughout the year. As the pace of business and change continue to accelerate, there is no longer the time for either a protracted performance review process or for employees to have to wait an entire year to know where they stand.

“Having bias-adjusted, comparable data helps leaders have a more accurate understanding of how works gets done and by whom.”

Incompass emphasizes bias-adjusted and comparable people data. Why is that especially important when organizations are making high-stakes decisions about leadership, succession, development, and retention?

The biggest talent mistakes often occur because decisions are made based on a single person’s recommendation, on anecdotal evidence, and/or based on the exposure that decision-makers have to employees. This kind of approach typically favors extroverts and can lead to overlooking the employees that quietly hold teams together and are critical culture carriers. Having bias-adjusted, comparable data helps leaders have a more accurate understanding of how works gets done and by whom.

Looking ahead, do you see performance management evolving into a broader people-intelligence function, where leaders can ask questions about their workforce in real time and use those insights to guide strategic business decisions?

We can imagine a world where people data becomes a part of decision making the same way other types of data are today. We could imagine performance management being subsumed by this function. We don’t, however, see performance management leading this evolution – there is just too much baggage and initiate around this ritual!

Related: HelloSky Bringing AI Into the Core Workflows of Executive Search Firms

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media