Microsoft retires employee feedback tool, wants staff to talk face to face now

Microsoft is retiring its eight-year-old employee feedback tool. The company reportedly wants managers and employees to replace formal peer reviews with regular, real-time conversations.

In Short

• Microsoft is retiring its peer-feedback tool, Perspectives
• Introduced in 2018, Perspectives lets employees seek feedback from colleagues
• Microsoft says ongoing in-the-moment conversations offer more useful feedback than formal requests

Microsoft is retiring Perspectives, its internal employee feedback tool that it has been using to help employees seek feedback from colleagues. The move is reportedly part of a broader overhaul of the company's performance review process. According to an internal message viewed by Business Insider, Microsoft believes regular, real-time conversations between managers and employees offer more value than formal feedback requests.

Introduced in 2018, Perspectives allowed Microsoft employees to seek feedback from colleagues, with responses shared with both the employee and their manager. As part of the overhaul, the company has retired the tool and stopped accepting new feedback requests. Existing requests can still be completed, while employees have until September 15 to respond to active requests and export their feedback history before the platform is fully shut down.

"The Perspectives tool is being retired," the internal message said. "Feedback remains an important part of our growth mindset, and we heard from employees and managers that feedback is most valuable when shared through ongoing, in-the-moment conversations rather than formal requests."

While Microsoft has not explicitly said these conversations must happen face to face, the company reportedly wants managers and employees to share feedback through regular conversations rather than formal peer reviews. It believes that feedback remains an important part of its workplace culture but is more valuable when shared during day-to-day work.

The retirement of Perspectives also comes as Microsoft is reshaping its broader performance review system. The company is simplifying employee ratings into five categories while making distinctions between high and low performers much clearer. At the same time, managers have reportedly been asked to reduce the number of employees in higher-level engineering roles as Microsoft continues its efforts to flatten parts of its organisational structure.

The change in Microsoft's employee review is also in line with a broader trend across the tech industry, where companies have tightened performance reviews and placed greater emphasis on accountability. Microsoft, too, has introduced several changes in recent years to better distinguish between high and low performers.

Notably, Microsoft introduced Perspectives in 2018 to replace its older Feedback Tool, which allowed managers to collect and summarise peer reviews. Unlike its predecessor, Perspectives was designed to make the feedback process feel less formal and less intimidating.

According to a 2022 Quartz report, Microsoft deliberately avoided using the word "feedback" in the tool's name because executives believed it carried negative connotations. The platform was introduced as part of CEO Satya Nadella's push to build a "growth mindset" culture centred on learning and collaboration.

With Perspectives now being retired, Microsoft is not doing away with peer feedback altogether. Instead, it wants managers, employees and colleagues to share feedback through regular, real-time conversations rather than formal requests on a dedicated platform.

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