You’d be hard-pressed to find an HR leader who thinks traditional performance management is perfect.
Forced rankings, stressful conversations, and delayed feedback frequently create more problems than the ones they were intended to solve. “Performance management as we’ve known it ironically damages performance,” says Lucy Adams, CEO of Disruptive HR and former HR Director at the BBC. She has made it her mission to challenge these norms and offer innovative, practical alternatives, and she will share this blueprint in her keynote presentation at EmpowerHR Europe 2025.
We spoke with Lucy ahead of the event to explore how HR leaders can shift from a mindset of compliance to empowerment, transform their roles from traditional gatekeepers to strategic enablers, and leverage technology, not as a replacement for human connection but as a means to deepen it. Get a snippet of what Lucy will be talking about at Empower HR.
Shifting from a mindset of compliance to empowerment
She argues passionately for treating employees as capable adults, advocating a shift away from overly prescriptive management approaches.
“This covers a whole large number of topics. Moving away from parenting to treating our people as adults, moving away from one size fits all to a more consumerized approach, and moving away from processes that are … the old traditional bureaucratic way of doing things, to ones that are much more human-centric,” she says.
Adopting this adult-to-adult approach can enhance organizational agility and foster genuine innovation and transformation.
Rethinking performance management
Lucy confronts one of HR’s most entrenched traditions directly: the annual performance review.
She argues these systems are outdated and detrimental.
“We wouldn’t wait until the end of the year for the big feedback session, because as human beings, we can only change one aspect of our performance or habit at a time.”
Instead, she advocates for replacing outdated annual appraisals with regular, employee-driven check-ins, agile goal-setting, and team-led evaluations to better match the fast-paced nature of modern work environments.
Leveraging AI to enhance, not replace, human connection
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent, she urges HR professionals to use AI thoughtfully, to amplify rather than replace human interactions.
“AI used well actually frees HR up to be more human, to re-embrace our superpower … We get people, we understand how they tick,” she says.
Building better systems, not fixing broken ones
She highlights the importance of creating systems that genuinely support employees and improve organizational effectiveness, rather than compensating for weak management. “So many of our current processes, which we’ve then tried to automate, have been about propping up and compensating poor leaders and poor managers, and so we make them do stuff that they’re not very good at.”
The foundation for these improved systems, she believes, should be rooted in empathy and focused on meaningful employee experiences. “The better systems are the ones that start with the human at their center, and are very focused on creating a better human experience.”Lucy will share more about her vision for HR at EmpowerHR EMEA on May 15, 2025. Register now to explore practical strategies for transforming your organization’s approach to performance, culture, and leadership.
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