Performance reviews are an important tool to help managers and organizations motivate and engage their workforce. Narrative-based feedback provides employees with more personalized analysis and can shed light on individual paths for improvement, while numerical feedback offers clear benchmarks for employees to track and meet specific targets. In a new study, researchers examined whether one format — or a combination of the two — was seen as more fair and motivating by employees. They found that while narrative feedback is perceived as the most fair, it can be especially meaningful for those employees with room to improve.