How Harbinger saved around 90% time in its recent performance review process and 97% of employees like the new continuous process

I was shocked to see some scary stats last week –

• 92% of employees want feedback more often than just once a year.
• If they felt they received an unfair performance review, 85% of employees would consider quitting.
• 77% of human resources leaders say annual reviews are not an accurate representation of employees’ work.

"I'm so disappointed with our company performance management process". Doesn’t this sound familiar. Doesn't these comments also sound familiar: "My earlier manager left the company so I didn’t get that piece of feedback"; or "My manager only focused on the most recent feedback and ignored what I achieved in the past"; or "I didn’t get the time to list my achievements and on the last day of the review process I did a shoddy job of doing my self-review", and so on.

Many companies state that they have done away with the midyear and annual review performance appraisal process and encourage employees and managers to have frequent check-ins. However, we still hear that check-ins don't happen regularly, are haphazard and don't add much value. And eventually, some annual review happens because these organizations don’t have the necessary systems and processes in place and, at times, lack the real drive and need to implement such an initiative.

At Harbinger, to be honest, we were grappling with similar issues and decided that things needed to change. That is when we decided to go the continuous performance feedback route. In letter and spirit. We embarked on a journey to build a tool that would not only track employees’ feedback every month but also be a platform for the employee and the direct reportee to connect, engage, have a dialog, and more. We wanted employees to transparently know how they were doing at work,  have the system nudge the supervisor to improve the quality of feedback, give employees the power to rate their manager on the quality of the feedback, and do more. That’s when POLESTAR was born.

Have we been successful? Here’s some hard data:

In a survey conducted a few months ago,

1. 97% of people said that they felt that POLESTAR was a good platform.
2. 98% of people said that they felt having a monthly check-in was a good practice.
3. 95% of people said that having visibility of the progress of their goals on a continuous basis was a good practice.
4. On an average, around 95% of people have at least one check-in (one-on-one meeting) every month. Many have more than two meetings in a month!
5. In the recent performance review (July 2022), there was a time saving of around 90%! This was comparing the earlier performance evaluation process (midyear and annual self-appraisal, manager feedback, skip feedback, calibration meetings, appraisal discussion, and more) vs. the continuous one-on-one's (O3s) done by POLESTAR.

Let me give the summary upfront – This is a great tool that has completely revolutionized the way we give feedback:

1. It has taken transparency with employees and trust to another level.
2. Employees and managers are delighted with POLESTAR.
3. There is a HUGE saving of time that is used to focus on customer and employee development.
4. It’s a tool that not only focuses on employee performance but also employee connect, dialogue, trust, and open communication, among others.
5. Data and insights that come out of the tool are very valuable in making intelligent decisions.

So, what makes this an amazing tool?

• It’s integrated into our current Human Capital Management System (HCM), which allows data to seamlessly flow between the two systems using APIs. It can easily be integrated to most HR systems.
• There is a vibrant and customizable dashboard with information that is useful to individual employees.

• Each role in the company has a set of defined goals and associated weightages. These are flexible to suit the employee’s role on that particular assignment/project. For example: default goals can be made not applicable, new custom goals can be added, weightages changed – tailor making this to the role of the employee at that time.
• Goals are rated, and each rating has a point system. So, when all goals are submitted at the end of the one-on-one (O3), the points are multiplied by the weightage that gives a final goal score of that O3. This is visible to the employee, and as months go by, the employee can see a graph of their performance on a monthly basis – so there are no surprises.
• Employees have their personal diary on POLESTAR where they can make notes, and list achievements that flow into the online form when an O3 is initiated.
• To encourage dialog and trust between the manager and the direct, there are sections to record special achievements, the tasks on hand and the priorities for the next month, concerns that the employee might have, positive and adjusting feedback (we don’t say negative feedback!), coaching and learning suggestions, and more.

• There are various nudges to assist the manager do a better O3. For example: If the manager doesn’t give any positive or coaching feedback for 90 days, they’re nudged before submitting the O3; if the employee raises a concern that is not resolved in 90 days, it gets escalated to the skip manager – so the manager needs to take ownership of closing the concern, various dashboards that give real-time information, and more.
• Every quarter the manager is required to rate the direct on his/her potential and whether the direct is playing a role that is higher/same/lower than their designation. This helps us recognize people with high potential and performance and further helps identify potential people to promote.
• When the manager submits an O3,the system sends an email to the employee with the score. In this email, the employee can rate the quality of O3 done by the manager and what they liked or disliked about the experience. Every quarter, a list of top performing managers and what was liked about them is shared with the entire organization. At the same time, managers who receive poor scores are coached.
• Handling cases of poor individual performance (PIP) is supported by concrete data from the system making the process fair, transparent, and objective.
• There are loads of reports and analyses that are available for HR to make intelligent decisions. Some of them include:

- Whether high performers are getting adequate recognition.

- Concerns in the open state which need to be closed.

- Performance of employees in real-time or in a specific timeframe.

- Potential and performance reports that help identify promotion cases.

- Employees’ ratings and feedback for their manager which help recognize great managers and coach managers who need help.

- Training course and L&D needs which is shared with the L&D team for preparation of the training calendar.

- Goal status reports which help identify which goals of a particular designation need focus on and where development action can be taken.

Ok. So you heard me. What about seeing what employees at Harbinger have to say about POLESTAR:

• Continuous feedback (POLESTAR) vs. midyear annual reviews – This is incredible as nothing comes in as a shock from anywhere. There is clear understanding about the goals and expectations. For me this did wonders and coming from a non tech background at no point of time did I feel lost about what’s the standard expected and if I am travelling in the right direction. The coaching comments added by my lead helped me stay on track.
• Polestar is just an amazing application. It helps improve the employee – manager connect. The good aspect about the application is its positive feedback mechanism. It is very important for the employee to get positive feedback as it boosts up the potential to do much more better. And getting it from the manager immediately and continuously through Polestar, makes it more interesting. Manager can also mark the goals to complete/incomplete, which gives employee the idea on where the employee stands and what needs to be worked upon. Polestar not only connects employee and manager on a professional level, but also on personal front as we can talk about growth plans and next steps and also helps in developing good bonding between the two.
• Polestar's mechanism for creating, editing and updating the goals for my directs is helpful in defining the exact expectation with the employee. Rating scales defined for each of these goals helps the employee understand exactly where they stand on a particular goal. This continuous feedback motivates the employee to identify their strengths and work harder on their weaknesses without having to wait for their annual reviews. 

Want to know more about POLESTAR and how it has revolutionized continuous performance feedback and engagement for us? Write to me at Neville.postwalla@harbingergroup.com