The modern workplace is evolving. Do you want to move with it?

Start by canning these four outdated workplace practices:

1. Hierarchy

What was good for the Industrial Age is obsolete in today's relationship economy, yet most companies still operate this way. Back in the old days, hierarchy and “do what you're told” worked. Bodies performed simplified, repetitive tasks on the production line, needing commands and direction from the ivory tower.

Many of today's millennial talent want a flat structure that allows the freedom to be inclusive so they can collaborate, participate, innovate and self-organize. Worldblu research shows that organizations that promote freedom-centered leadership (versus hierachical, fear-based leadership) create cultures in which everybody — regardless of title, rank or position — has the choice and responsibility to exercise leadership skills.

The companies involved in the research that promote an inverted pyramid of freedom, autonomy and democracy saw an average cumulative revenue growth rate over a three-year period that was 6.7 times greater than that of the S&P 500 companies.

2. Upper management hoarding information

Transparency is the new normal, and executives that hoard information have to adapt. The more information they hold back, the less knowledge their employees will have to make better, smarter decisions.

What do I mean by “transparency?” Well, it's going beyond the traditional business definition of full disclosure of financial information to investors. This is simply too narrow a focus.

The first display of transparency is to the people who work inside your organization. Information has to flow freely among managers and employees, and then outward to shareholders. Your people can't innovate or function well at the rate and speed you want unless they have access to relevant, timely and valid information.

And who's responsible for creating the systems, policies and shared behaviors for a culture of transparency to happen? It falls on the leadership team. If you can't be honest with your own employees, how can you be honest with your customers, suppliers, and the public?

3. The dreaded annual performance review

There's a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I can say the same about this obsolete HR practice, which is a time-consuming “check in the box” ritual for busy managers who feel obligated to do it.

This is an emotionally disengaging hot-seat event for employees and an annual hunt for a mountain of paperwork by HR just so things stay in compliance.

Get rid of this tradition because it simply doesn't work. Instead, upgrade to frequent feedback — monthly one-on-ones where you get to coach employees and evaluate their progress in real-time, not just their results.

This is what your millennial high achievers and high potentials crave and want in order to keep them developing, building strengths and adding value.

Twilio, the cloud communications company based in San Francisco, for instance, ditched its performance reviews to focus on more frequent communication.

CEO Jeff Lawson said in an interview with The New York Times: “We don't wait until the annual performance review to give feedback. You never want to have a surprise. This is especially important with millennial workers, who really want feedback. They want to always be learning, always be growing, and they're looking for that constant feedback. It's not that they're looking for constant praise, but rather they want to keep score. They want to know how they're doing.”

4. That equally dreaded annual employee opinion survey

These annual rituals can help improve key metrics, but because they only happen once a year, there are several drawbacks that make them outmoded.

They're too long and have too many questions, so employees get survey fatigue. It also takes too long to analyze the results for action planning. Things may have already shifted by the time HR and upper management roll out a new program.

Employees often don't receive feedback. As a result, your people don't take the process seriously, which hurts the integrity of the survey responses. If they don't see the value of it, they're not going to respond honestly and may not respond at all. That may explain why your numbers are so low.

Too much responsibility is put on middle managers to fix problems, and they just can't handle the weight. Newer companies understand that employees in the front lines are typically the ones that have the best ideas for problem solving and will gladly involve them in the process and solicit their opinions.

Real-time measuring of employees through short pulse surveys is a much better process. Companies with a strong service orientation to their employees understand that they have to spot trends before they escalate to problems. A frequent pulse survey will specifically target an area for improvement and typically include five to 10 questions.

But for it to work as it's intended, leaders must be prepared to act on the responses, otherwise it defeats the whole purpose. Because they happen so quickly and are so specific, you can keep your finger on what's going on with your people.

By welcoming these short surveys as a corporate norm, inclusive companies know they can leverage the opinions of millennial employees about what they want out of work, as well as tap into and take advantage of their knowledge. Here are two questions you could include on a quick survey: Do you have a clear understanding of your career or promotion path? Hypothetically, if you were to quit tomorrow, what would your reason be?

Marcel Schwantes is principal and founder of Leadership From the Core, which is

designed to create engaged and profitable work cultures.