Involves offers a trade marketing software, as well as a portal with relevant content for its audience. It is headquartered in the city of Florianópolis, but has branches in other cities, such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Bogota – and internationalization is one of the company's major objectives.
Its purpose is to make the promotion cycle go digital, transforming the existing relationship between retail and industry. Among its business values, the highlights are:
- music – the company was born of two bands;
- integrity;
- evolution;
- empathy;
- verve;
- me being me;
- getting involved;
The alliance with Qulture.Rocks
Involves first partnerd with Qulture.Rocks in 2017, with a focus on the praise and feedback products. Later, in 2019, they expanded to the performance review solutions as well. Today, the company uses the one-on-one materials and sentiment surveys.
And so Qulture has been contributing to some of the company's rituals, which include:
- alignment chats—onboarding, leaders and the direct report discuss the team's purpose, the company's values, expectations, which behaviors are unacceptable, and set the person's goals for the quarter. This chat is reviewed by all the people involved on a quarterly basis;
- one-on-ones and feedback culture;
- walking metamorphosis—this is how Involves calls its performance reviews, conducted every six months to generate inputs for people's development;
- flight plan—as the company calls the employee personal development plan.
Thus, among the main benefits identified with the alliance, the possibility of integrating the information in the same tool significantly facilitated the management rituals, besides enabling the generation of data and reports for the team's analysis.
The company's pains
The company's main pains related to its performance reviews. The former process was long and tiring, since it assessed employees, competency by competency. The People team, then, joined forces to correlate the competencies, identifying those possibly overlapping, and managed "shortened" the list.
Nevertheless, people's needs and expectations would still not be fully met. Moreover, with so many competencies involved, comments were optional, so people's perceptions and remarks were usually generic or even left unsaid – consequently, feedback was less effective. According to Jessica Costa, People Coordinator, comments more commonly consisted of praise, rather than constructive feedback.
The calibration process was, then, more extensive, exactly because it implied the analysis of too many competencies.
The "turning point"
The Covid-19 pandemic posed some challenges to the company in 2020. The performance review demonstrated that the teams, and especially the management, were heavily overwhelmed. The year's second review was delayed, only completed in September, which shortened the gap between cycles, since the next one would start in January.
These factors altogether contributed to the company taking some ideas off paper and putting into practice projects already assessed in previous periods. The big question was: how to simplify reviews without losing their essence?
The Involves solution
First, to make the process more agile, an analysis was made of what was crucial to the company and what was "expendable". In this sense, scores and grades were removed – as well as the calibration process, eliminating much of the burden.
In addition, management allowed the teams to work more freely by removing the professional nomination validation stage – as well as the minimum and maximum nomination limits.
The focus turned mainly to team development, as the review was split into two grounds: what the person is doing well and what he or she could improve. In other words, to generate inputs for the person to build his or her growth within the company.
The new review now contained only 5 mandatory questions (including comments), on a single answer page – to answer them, the person would chose the competencies on which he or she is doing well and leave comments; then, follow the same process for what could be improved.
Finally, to encourage participation and guide the teams, the People Experience staff prepared instructional materials on the following topics:
- how to select reviewers;
- how do I know if I am fit/able to perform the review or if I should refuse;
- how to write good comments, with examples;
- how to use Qulture.
The results
The team received very positive feedback. When applying a survey to understand how the changes were perceived, the average was 8.6 out of 10, with only 6% negative responses. Here are some comments from employees regarding the process:
"In all aspects, this metamorphosis went better than the previous ones. They were very tiring and large. This one was the most objective and, for the first time, I felt that I didn't have to look for a needle in a haystack for each person I was reviewing."
"I really like this pattern! I found it flexible, quick to answer, and I felt freer to put my thoughts together. That's it! Well done, you guys!"
"The mandatory comments brought greater inputs to the reviews overall (as a leader). Previously, as they were optional, comments that I consider key to understanding feedback and review were rarely provided."
Lessons learned
Among the lessons learned by Involves, Jéssica highlights that "less is more" and that we have to let go of the established patterns and consider what is actually essential and makes sense for the present context. By shortening the process, people were motivated to carry out the review, which enabled more effective results. Another important aspect is that having to add mandatory comments took people out of their comfort zone in a positive way. Also, splitting the review between what was well done and what could be improved makes people actually ponder and provide constructive feedback, not just praise.
This is a practical example of how performance reviews can be adapted to your company's reality. Want to know how Qulture.Rocks can help in this process? Contact us, talk to our experts and ask your questions!
