James Strickland

Great performance management empowers employees to take charge of their own development. Set up continuous performance management using tools like objective setting, 360 degree feedback, regular performance reviews, 1:1s and development planning.

performance management peoplegoal

Create alignment across all departments, teams and individuals

Keep the company's strategic vision top of mind for everyone

Hold leaders accountable to the targets they set

Publishing inspiring, challenging company objectives gives everyone a goalpost to work towards and brings meaning to the work they do for the company.

Company objectives are the overall strategic objectives for the full organization. By making company objectives publicly available to all employees you can help keep them top of mind and give everyone a framework from which to build their own objectives.

The Company Objectives app includes the following:

Objective name and details - keep it short, specific and inspiring

Strategic themes to group your objectives together, such as Growth, People & Culture and Operational Excellence

Key metrics by which the success of the objective will be measured

A section for ongoing updates and progress reports

Company objectives should be owned and updated by the senior leaders in the organization. Employees can align their own goals to these objectives, and can provide their thoughts and updates to the company objective by using the Comments section of the app. This gives everyone a sense of ownership of the company's growth and transparency in what you're all working towards.

Set, track and publish your organizational objectives to drive awareness and ensure everybody is aligned.

Company Objectives

Create measurable, challenging individual objectives

Hold everyone accountable to the targets they set

Align employee targets to the organizational strategy

OKRs is the best-in-class objective setting method used by companies like Google to create challenging, clearly defined goals. Each objective contains three key results that define how the objective will be measured and employees are encouraged to challenge themselves to go above and beyond what's expected.

Employee defines the objective with a clear name, description and target date. They set three key results that will measure the success of the objective.

Manager approves the objective with comments, or rejects it and sends it back to the draft state for the employee to update.

Once approved the OKR moves to the updates section where the owner tracks the achievement of key results, indicates their overall objective status and marks their progress. They can also define the percentage contribution of this OKR to their total number of objectives to create weighted objective targets in your OKRs reports.

At the target date the OKR is closed off and locked for any further updates.

The industry standard is to make all OKRs transparent across the business to create accountability and encourage cross-functional teamwork. However, you can also define the app permissions to make objectives confidential.

If you're using company objectives you can also customize this OKR template to add an element that aligns the individual OKR to one or more organizational objectives. This will give a strategic framework to individual OKRs and allow senior leadership to see how the organizational goals are being supported by all staff.

Set and track your objectives, and include key results that define how your objective will be achieved.

Objectives & Key Results [Classic]

Provide a structured agenda for employee/manager catch-ups

Set up a monthly schedule to automatically create new 1:1s for all employees

Promote regular check-ins to tackle performance issues when they arise

Monthly One-to-Ones are a cornerstone of continuous performance management. They're a dedicated space for employees and managers to catch up on work, provide feedback and share development ideas.

Having regular one-to-one meetings means you'll get timely feedback about your performance and have the opportunity to raise issues when they matter most.

Manager sets up meeting date and calendar invites are automatically sent out

A structured agenda to prompt the employee to provide updates on what's going well, what needs to be improved, current roadblocks and check in on work/life balance

Employee documents outcomes from the meeting

You should further customize this app to set default participants by relationship (manager, supervisor, mentor, as needed) and include any company-specific talking points that are important for your staff to be discussing. You should also stipulate that a face to face meeting takes place and give managers proper coaching to get the most out of their catch-ups.

Request a One-to-One meeting with your direct report and document the discussion.

One-to-Ones

Help team leaders to understand their team's strengths and weaknesses

Limit potential damage from thoughtless feedback by going through a gatekeeper

Help your peers improve and grow through constructive feedback

Reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses

Feedback can be a tricky subject for employees who may not be comfortable giving open criticism to their peers. Give everyone the option to send feedback to a manager, supervisor or HR and ensure their comments are kept confidential.

Peer feedback provides plenty of opportunities to learn from one another, but that feedback isn't always delivered with tact and understanding. If your organization is new to giving feedback or you'd prefer that managers summarize comments and deliver only the summaries to their reports, then confidential feedback is for you.

Three simple start, stop and continue questions to help providers frame their feedback in a specific and constructive way

An assessment grid to easily rate skills, teamwork and professionalism

Once you're more confident that feedback is given in a constructive way, you can install the full 360 Feedback app to sit alongside your confidential feedback process.

Send confidential, constructive feedback and observations to a colleague's manager or HR.

Confidential Feedback

Get a simple framework to run easy-to-use performance reviews

Automate the review setup to ensure employees and managers are prompted to check in

Get a top-level picture of star talent and underperformers using the performance ratings and data view

Performance reviews provide an invaluable opportunity for employees and managers to discuss progress and for senior leaders to assess the state of the organization.

Our flexible Reviews app allows you to run a simple and effective performance review whenever it's required - quarterly, annually or on start date anniversaries. App owners can also schedule reviews to be created automatically at a frequency you choose, so you can set up the app once and leave it to run.

An employee self-assessment to reflect on highs, lows, challenges and overall progress. We include one overall rating to help benchmark performance.

A line manager then provides their comments on the self-assessment and gives an overall rating. At this point a face to face discussion should take place to discuss what's been written.

The employee signs off the review with any additional comments after the in-person discussion.

The Reviews app is designed for just one supervisor to provide an assessment. We have an additional app to conduct Reviews with multiple managers. You can also add your own elements to assess performance areas, skills and competencies that are unique to your organization.

Conduct a simple performance review with your line manager. The process includes self-assessment, manager assessment and sign-off.

Reviews

Automate a complex review process with many participants and make it easy to run

Set default participants and relationships so that review templates are pre-populated for employees

Ensure no parts of the review, compensation, benefits and bonus recommendation fall through the cracks

Have a thorough record of performance conversations at your fingertips

Easily automate complex performance reviews and enable multiple managers and reviewers to provide input on the appraisal.

Reviews no longer exist in a silo, and with multiple participants involved in assessing performance, approving bonuses and promotions, and then auditing, you can end up with a complex workflow that's difficult to manage manually.

This Reviews app includes states for multiple participants and is quick and easy to configure extra steps. App owners can add default relationships and participants so that workflows are set up from day one, with all relevant staff being able to access.

An employee self-assessment to review the highs, lows, challenges and achievements of the review period

A first manager assessment to comment on each area above

Further manager assessments which can be customized for supervisors, dotted line managers, senior leaders and more

All you need to do to add an extra step is click to add a new state and customize your template questions. Tip: if you're not using the Reviews app (with a single reviewing manager) you should change the title of this app after you install it.

Conduct a performance review with a line manager, supervisor and senior leader. The process includes self-assessment, assessments from the managers and a final employee sign-off.

Reviews (Multiple Managers)

Give employees many different perspectives on their skills, strengths and weaknesses

Give supervisors a broader picture of their direct reports' working styles

Easily highlight top talent and identify underperformers

Encourage open communication between team members

360° feedback gives everyone a broad picture of their skills, working style and team relationships. It encourages open and honest communication between staff and ensures that performance conversations don't happen with just a supervisor.

The 360° Feedback app has the following sections:

Nomination process to select feedback evaluators

Competency-based feedback questions and ratings

Employee's Feedback Profile showing an average of all evaluator scores and a written summary from the manager

360° feedback should be gathered for an individual from many different levels of the organization: from juniors, colleagues, supervisors and leadership.

You are encouraged to edit the template to include your own feedback questions, ratings and competencies.

Gather multi-rater feedback from peers to understand your strengths and blind spots. Nominate evaluators and send out a feedback questionnaire. Get your Feedback profile and compare self-perception against the perceptions of others.

360° Feedback

Identify and nurture top-performing talent.

Develop strategies for dealing with underperformers.

Maintain an organized and structured approach to work.

Document outcomes and have accurate records of past performance.

Continuous performance management empowers employees to take charge of their professional development while setting and improving standards of performance across the organization.

This performance management suite is customizable and designed to grow with your business.

This Performance workspace includes apps for:

SMART Goals - set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

OKRs - the proven objective-setting methodology used at companies like Google to define clear, challenging objectives measured by three key results.

360 Feedback - give and request constructive feedback from any colleague to get a broad view of performance and areas for improvement.

One-to-Ones - private meetings between employees and supervisors to discuss performance, wellbeing and development, and to document outcomes and action plans.

Reviews - flexible performance reviews to reflect on employee progress and make future plans for staff with any number of managers/supervisors/senior leaders.

Once you've installed this workspace the above functionality will be available. You are encouraged to make further customizations to each app including setting manager relationships, fixed participants and updating statuses.

Track, manage and improve your performance with Goals, Feedback, One-to-Ones & Reviews.

Performance

Cascade company objectives down through teams and departments

Align team members around an inspiring strategy

Track progress towards targets for each team

Creating concrete objectives for each team, business unit or department gives all team members a framework on which to build their own goals. Create inspiration for team members and accountability for achieving targets. By making all team objectives visible, you create transparency and opportunities for collaboration across all business functions.

The Team Objectives app includes the following:

Team objectives should be owned and updated by each team lead. Employees can align their own goals to these objectives, and can provide their thoughts and updates to the team objective by using the Comments section of the app. This gives everyone a sense of ownership of the team's growth and transparency in what you're all working towards.

Set and track your team objectives to align colleagues to the team strategy.

Team Objectives

Create a tried-and-tested framework for goal setting

Give employees the power to track their performance progress with guidance from their manager

Have an easy-to-view picture of all employee targets and statuses using the data view

SMART goals provide a framework to set well-defined employee targets and are a great place for organizations to start with goal-setting.

The SMART methodology helps you to clearly define what it is you want to achieve by asking five key questions:

Is this goal achievable given your skills, tools and resources?

How is the goal relevant to the broader organizational strategy and your own personal ambitions?

Is the goal time-bound with a clear target date?

The SMART goals app allows anyone to quickly and easily set up their objectives by following four simple steps:

Employees start with the goal-setting form and use the SMART attributes to build their goal.

SMART goals are sent to an approver who approves or rejects the goal with comments. If rejected, the goal is sent back to the employee to make updates and resubmit.

Once approved the goal updates are tracked by the employee including status updates, progress indicators and helpful flags.

When the target date is hit the goal is closed off and locked for any further updates.

SMART goals should be set at least every quarter, tracked regularly and discussed in the monthly one-to-one meeting.

Set goals which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

SMART Goals

Regularly check in on employee development, engagement and well-being

Promote relationship building between employees and colleagues

Identify problems early on so you can create action plans to improve

Regular check-ins are vital for employee development and for building productive working relationships between supervisors and their direct reports. They're a chance to reflect and take stock of your work, development, wellbeing and satisfaction.

This simple check-ins app allows anyone to set up a meeting with their manager, supervisor, mentor or a colleague. We leave it up to the initiator to create their talking points so that they can have a catch-up with their own agenda.

Setting up the meeting type, date and talking points

An option for the counterpart to accept or decline the meeting

The initiator documents the meeting outcomes and agreed action items

You should further customize this app to allow employees to link other information into the check-in (goals, peer feedback etc.). We have additional apps for Monthly One-to-Ones and Career Development One-to-Ones if you're looking for a more structured set of talking points.

Performance Management