“We love your system - it's easy to use and our project has gone really well!”
–Gabrielle de Wardener, Loyalty Management
“We love your system - it's easy to use and our project has gone really well!”
–Gabrielle de Wardener, Loyalty Management
Case Study: Performance Management and 360° FeedbackNectar is owned by Groupe Aeroplan, a leading international loyalty management corporation. The success of the Nectar scheme has seen over £1billion worth of rewards given back to participating consumers in just six years.
The UK-based company has grown dramatically over the past several years. This has been achieved through a successful commercial proposition, a culture of innovation and the value it places upon people, both customers and employees.
Rapid growth also presented a challenge for the HR department. When Gabrielle de Wardener joined the London office as HR Director in early 2005, the staff appraisal system mainly consisted of Microsoft Excel documents. Staff struggled to find time to complete the long, complex documents during working hours and the HR team faced the difficult task of manually tracking employees' sporadic compliance.
"The effectiveness of the Excel-based system was also frequently called into question as the scoring mechanism had become so granular that staff were quibbling over 0.1 or 0.2 of a point, rather than concentrating on fulfilling the objectives themselves," added Gabrielle.
The company replaced its Excel-based documents with Talent Innovation's online 360° feedback tool in 2005 and was impressed by the simplicity of the technology and the unusually collaborative working relationship with the firm. It seemed a natural step to ask Talent Innovations to implement an annual appraisal system so that the entire process could be managed online.
Gabrielle explains: "We really liked the way Talent Innovations worked with us rather than imposing a solution on us. We felt this approach would help us create an online appraisal system that worked with our existing business processes, while bringing down barriers to completion."
The project involved the customisation of Talent Innovation's existing 360° tool to incorporate the company's competency framework of seven generic competencies, defined at four different levels according to the relative seniority of the job role. Each competence is associated with a group of behaviours and the randomised 360° questions contain statements on each of these.
Development of the system was an ongoing process; through regular face-to-face meetings and telephone calls, Talent Innovations and Groupe Aeroplan worked together over the course of a year to fine-tune the system. For example, improvements have been made to the menu bar to ensure the layout takes the user effortlessly through the system in a logical manner.
We really liked the way Talent Innovations worked with us rather than imposing a solution on us. We felt this approach would help us create an online appraisal system that worked with our existing business processes, while bringing down barriers to completion.
Gabrielle de Wardener, HR Director
Mark Ainsworth, who heads up system development at Talent Innovations, is a rare breed - an IT specialist with a psychology degree, gained at Oxford University.
"This combination of skills is enormously beneficial; Mark approaches the project with the strategic goal of effective performance management in mind rather than seeing it simply as an IT system. His understanding of the human side of the HR appraisal process has been invaluable throughout.
"The ultimate triumph of the technology is its ease of use. The system was consciously intended to be genuinely intuitive so that no formal system training is required. Employees really like it, so much so that we've had no reports of negative experiences from our staff!" said Gabrielle.
The system now captures interim appraisals as well as end-of-year reviews, and displays objectives both for the individual and the cascaded objectives of their department. This gives managers an overview of the department's progress, as well as the opportunity to identify any weaknesses and address these in good time.
Further modifications have included an advanced system of score calibration - providing greater management information on the distribution of scores within departments and the company as a whole.
This also gives managers added visibility and control over the point in the process at which staff are shown their manager's assessment of their performance.The ultimate triumph of the technology is its ease of use. The system was consciously intended to be genuinely intuitive so that no formal system training is required. Employees really like it, so much so that we've had no reports of negative experiences from our staff!
An accurate and comprehensive archive of employee data is also being built up; each employee has access to their own record throughout the year, allowing them to track career development and look back over objectives. The HR team also use this life-long data when reviewing for performance-related bonuses and promotions, meaning that these decisions are now based on employee's actual performances rather than perceived performance.
Moving the appraisal process completely online has not only increased staff completion to 100% but has also made the entire appraisal system easier to track. The rounded approach to staff assessment gives employees a clear view of their progress and objectives, and managers have the overview they need to ensure that departmental objectives are met.
Gabrielle concludes: "Our collective aim was to develop a simple-to-use system effectively to measure performance whilst achieving maximum compliance and happy users. The Talent Innovations appraisal tool has certainly met and exceeded our expectations. The HR team can now quickly and easily track and compile data, and employees are benefiting from easier-to-complete, more useful appraisals, allowing them to meet their objectives more effectively."
The Performance Development Review (PDR) system by Talent Innovations is easily the most popular HR system amongst staff. Gabrielle sums up:
"This is reflected in good scores in the annual employee survey on LMG's appraisal systems and the 100% compliance achieved for completion of appraisals and objectives-setting by deadline. Equally telling are the many anecdotal remarks, from exit interviews and more generally, confirming the value of the system to managers and individuals."
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