As a small business in a service industry, productivity and profitability depend almost entirely on our employees performing at their full potential. The challenge is then how do you effectively manage performance? How can a small organization streamline human resources through meaningful performance reviews, aligning employee goals to organizational goals, and make informed decisions when recognizing top performers. How can you make sure you have the right people in the right places and motivated to reach peak performance? The answer is SuccessFactors.
In August of 2009 we launched our Idea of the Month and Blog of the Month campaign to solicit ideas from our employees and reward those who come up with the best ideas. The first chosen idea was from Jessica Skewes, one of our project managers in web. Her idea was to begin doing 360 reviews of employees so they could receive feedback on performance from not only their managers but also their peers and their customers.
So began my search for software that could accomplish 360 performance reviews. I had just finished redefining our review process for performance in the previous quarter and was somewhat apprehensive about launching another process for evaluating employees. My challenge would be, how could we possibly keep track of all the feedback from different sources and understand then what it all meant? I needed to find a solution that was low cost and at the same time improve the process for the managers. More layers on top of an already complex review process would not be acceptable.
Being we're a creative company and many of our tools are already online web-based systems, Software as a Service (SaaS) as the term is called in the industry, my search began with a quick Google search for web based 360 performance review software. I found plenty, but there were only a few that gave me all the features I needed and in the end there was one that stood out above the rest. SuccessFactors for small business.
SuccessFactors gave me everything I needed in a performance management system.
Centrally Managed HR system with employee profiles that act almost as a social networking site for your company. After adding an employee into the system and entering their information, employees can then edit their profile and add skills and interests. For a larger company this works great for employees who want to find other people in the organization they want to learn from or share interests with. Maybe setting up a study group for certification testing or creating a bowling league. Ultimately these features make an employee want to use the system more, treating it like a social networking site as they would with something like Linkedin.
Performance Reviews, which also include 360 reviews, deliver quality feedback, they reduce paperwork since their done 100% online with precision workflow that you can customize as well as writing assistance, coaching advisors, and other tools that help an employee and manager create quality and meaningful performance review.
The Goal Management system was icing on the cake. It allows me to create organizational goals and goal themes that I can share across the company. This allows employees to easily set goals and align them with the rest of the organization. I can then track the progress of goals and ensure we're driving the company to maximum results. The goal system then can be tied into the performance system and employees can be scored on their goal progress and reviewed accordingly.
Finally the reports and dashboards allow the leadership team to monitor the health of our employee performance process. I can monitor progress against goals, view rating distributions for performance reviews and look for competency gaps. This helps me make more education decisions to improve workforce productivity, energize and motivate our employees, and most importantly drive top and bottom line results to increase our bottom line.
SuccessFactors had it all, and at an affordable price, we couldn't be happier. Their implementation team was very organized and extremely helpful. Implementation took me less than 20 hours with another 3 hours of training for employees. We successfully launched our first performance review in Q4 of least year and we'll be launching the goal tracking system this January as well as 360 performance reviews in Q2 of 2010.
Since signing on to SuccessFactors I've seen them mentioned in Fortune Magazine as one of the top tech stocks to watch over the next 10 years, and watched them be showcased on CNBC. Their stock (SFSF) has climbed from $10 a share since signing with them in October to almost doubling to a current $18 a share. Their customer list is staggering and includes Fortune 100 companies that make up some off the leading companies in the world. In addition has buy in from Jack Welch, former CEO from General Electric who often keynotes at many of their events on how companies can become more successful through using technology like SuccessFactors to make it fast and easy for any business to take Jack's ideas and put them into motion. Simply by focusing on and rewarding people for their performance.
We haven't yet experienced SuccessFactors full potential. We've only begun tapping into the power and insight it can provide or organization. While training our staff I had asked if anyone had every pulled their company file before and looked up a previous performance review. Not one of them raised their hands. How can any employee know how well they are doing, how they have improved, and what do they need to do to improve in their performance. If nothing else, this software will give our employees visibility into how well they are performing and help them understand how to reach their full potential and realize the rewards for those efforts. We know however that SuccessFactors will give us so much more for both the employee and for the organization.
If you're reading this and looking for a solution that translates organizational goals into individual ones, that monitors employees progress against those goals, and monitors employees performance along the way. The difference maker for you, just might be SuccessFactors and could be the answer to real action, real execution and real growth for your company.
