Why We Replaced Annual Reviews with Peer Feedback Using Lattice 2026 and Glint

For years, our annual review process was a source of frustration for both managers and individual contributors. The once-a-year cadence meant feedback was stale, biased, and disconnected from day-to-day work. After months of research, we replaced our legacy annual review system with continuous peer feedback powered by Lattice 2026 and Glint — and the results have transformed our performance culture.

The Problem with Annual Reviews

Our old annual review process relied on top-down, once-yearly evaluations. Managers struggled to recall 12 months of work, leading to recency bias and inconsistent ratings. Employees reported feeling blindsided by feedback, with 68% of our workforce in a 2025 internal survey saying they didn’t receive actionable input until months after projects wrapped. Turnover in high-performing teams ticked up 12% year-over-year, directly linked to dissatisfaction with performance management.

Why Peer Feedback?

We shifted to peer feedback because it’s timely, contextual, and reduces hierarchical bias. Peers work closest with each other day-to-day, so their feedback reflects real-time contributions, not faded memories. Research from Gallup shows teams that prioritize peer feedback see 27% higher engagement and 19% lower turnover — metrics we desperately needed to improve.

Enter Lattice 2026 and Glint

We evaluated 12 performance management tools before landing on a integrated stack: Lattice 2026 for structured peer feedback workflows, and Glint for sentiment analysis and feedback trend tracking.

Lattice 2026’s peer feedback module let us build custom, role-specific feedback templates that prompt peers to highlight specific contributions, growth areas, and collaboration wins. We set up quarterly peer feedback cycles, with optional ad-hoc feedback between cycles. Lattice’s AI-powered summarization tool aggregates peer input into digestible highlights for managers, eliminating the need for them to parse 10+ individual responses per direct report.

Glint complemented Lattice by giving us real-time insight into how employees felt about the new feedback process. Its pulse survey tools let us ask targeted questions about feedback quality, psychological safety, and perceived fairness. Glint’s trend analysis also helped us identify teams where peer feedback was lagging, so we could deploy targeted training before issues arose.

The Results After 6 Months

Within six months of launching the new system, we saw measurable improvements across key metrics:

• Employee engagement scores rose 22%, per Glint pulse surveys
• Manager time spent on performance admin dropped 40%, thanks to Lattice 2026’s automation
• 89% of employees said peer feedback was more actionable than previous annual reviews
• Turnover in high-performing teams fell back to 2024 levels, a 12% reduction
• Bias in performance ratings dropped 35%, measured by comparing peer feedback to manager evaluations

Lessons Learned

Rolling out peer feedback isn’t without challenges. We initially saw low participation from remote teams, which we solved by adding Glint reminders and Lattice 2026’s mobile-friendly feedback submission. We also trained employees on how to give constructive, bias-free peer feedback, which improved feedback quality by 40% in the first quarter.

One unexpected benefit? Peer feedback surfaced high performers we’d previously overlooked. Lattice 2026’s peer nomination feature let employees highlight cross-functional collaborators, leading to 15% more internal promotions from non-managerial roles in Q1 2026.

Final Takeaway

Replacing annual reviews with peer feedback using Lattice 2026 and Glint wasn’t just a process change — it was a culture shift. We moved from judging past work to supporting future growth, and our team is stronger for it. If your organization is stuck with outdated annual reviews, we highly recommend testing a peer feedback model with the right tools to back it up.