A management expert in Australia made headlines last year by telling companies they should ditch employee performance reviews. Now he has another proposal that is sure to be controversial in HR departments: Companies should get rid of reviews that measure employee satisfaction and engagement. 

"They take three months to plan and three months to analyze, so once companies get the information, it's six months old already," Jon Williams, a managing partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers told the Australian Financial Review. "They're a centralized human resource process that was not designed around employees. They work well for one person — those in the HR administrative center — to say they have a complete picture of how the organization is working. That's great if that's the person you're trying to keep happy."

Other prominent consultants have criticized the standard performance review as focusing too much on ferreting out the weakest employees, rather than finding ways to put the skills of the strongest performers to better use.