TikTok owner ByteDance reduces frequency of employee reviews amid firm’s reorganisation efforts and expansion initiatives

ByteDance is changing its bimonthly objective-and-key-results review into a quarterly process to sharpen operational adjustments at its business units

Chief executive Liang Rubo said the move will give the company more time ‘to reflect on truly meaningful progress’ and ‘be more flexible’

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Quarterly employee goal-setting and reviews at ByteDance will start in April. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:30pm, 20 Feb 2023Updated: 10:48pm, 20 Feb 2023

TikTok owner ByteDance will change its bimonthly employee goal-setting and review, a management scheme that encourages internal competition, into a process conducted every three months, as the company continues to streamline operations amid fierce competition across its industry.

By adjusting when its objective-and-key-results (OKR) framework is conducted, ByteDance co-founder and chief executive Liang Rubo said the Chinese tech unicorn expects to have more time “to reflect on truly meaningful progress” and “be more flexible” so that every business unit can “adjust its own cadence”, according to an internal letter released on Friday that was seen by the South China Morning Post.

The change will be applied at the Beijing-based company’s next business review meeting, which was rescheduled to early April from early March.

“By reducing the meeting frequency, we can facilitate more structured and in-depth theme discussions to cover more aspects of our business and management,” Liang said.

Beijing-based ByteDance will soon conduct its objective-and-key-results review of employees every three months. Photo: AP

Founded in 2012, ByteDance has been conducting OKR reviews for at least eight years, adopting the same framework to define measurable goals and track outcomes that is widely used by Silicon Valley tech giants from Intel Corp to Google owner Alphabet.