Just a brief visit to CIPD in Manchester this year proved a worthwhile opportunity to catch up on what is happening within the industry and both 360 degree feedback and performance appraisal were very visible.

In fact there was a lot around assessment, diagnostics, evaluation, appraisal, talent metrics and alike; the continued ascent of online, web-based, SaaS and Cloud software is fuelling lower cost and easy to deploy solutions.

Whilst this is all good, the challenge for providers of such software solutions is to ensure that they don't obscure what's really important in all of this,  meaningful conversations, face-to-face interaction, literally 'the human touch'; efficiency is one thing, effectiveness is the goal.

John