Insights on Performance Reviews: Week of December 16, 2019

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I’ve been researching the performance review process and talking to customers about what they like and don’t like about the process. Here are the key insights from the week of December 16, 2019:

• E is a CEO + founder of a Seattle startup.

  • After seeing the demo, he immediately thought of his own clients. They’ve been looking for a “skill-tracking” or “competency-ranking” solution.

  • He mentioned that a lot of companies are moving to BambooHR. They are known for their clean interface, and he felt we have a BambooHR-esque interface.

  • His first suggestion: integrate into a perf mgmt platform. They’ve integrated with HRIS and webinar platforms. It was easy for them to expose an API endpoint; they personally prefer it if their customers do the integration.

  • Currently they are charging $5 / mo. per user. Sometimes they have customers who say they could use an alternative (“Boost?”) which also happens to cost $5 / mo. too. He counters with why pay the same price when we offer so much more value?

  • He mentioned “reporting” as a potential feature concept. It seemed more like a label he used to encourage me to dig deeper into the customers needs. He suggested we look into “no bias” angle and offered to connect us with Textio. No bias feels like compliance.

  • He mention that getting early customers are important, even if they are free.

  • He encouraged me to trust my gut when selling, but do understand the process for the buying decision. He mentioned that he sells to accounting firms and lawyers where partners are involved even though the main contact is someone else (like Tracy). He suggested we target small and medium sized enterprises (50-100).

  • Also, he encouraged me to ask prospects: “What do you think something like thing would cost?”

• V is a values and culture consultant. Her background is both PR + HR.

  • She is very curious about measuring the impact of culture (and values). Her POV: the most common metric measuring culture is via employee satisfaction. One of her favorite employee satisfaction questions is “I know what I do helps the company.”

  • She found that purpose-driven businesses have a closer connection with values.

  • Her clients range from small non-profits / startups to large companies. For example, she helped Dell/EMC with their culture migration.

  • An interesting quote from Victoria: “values as behaviors.”

  • Some clients come to Victoria to get help w/ retention (which helps w/ engagement).

  • She does a lot of work to help her clients to “translate values everyday”: 1) How do we showcase values? 2) How do we storytell those values?

  • She also thinks about how her clients can “engage” w/ values + have “more touchpoints.”

  • She believes most companies want a software solution that just “shouts” (aka broadcast) to employees their culture, values, and mission. V, instead, loves companies who believe in analyzing the systemic causes of poor culture + values.

  • Her words of caution: 1) be careful of any system where “mgmt feels punitive” and make sure “feedback is given on a regular basis.”

  • Her background: 15 years as her own consultant. She lives between two cities: Los Angeles + Boston. She also spent time in NZ.

• M is a recent Amazon employee.

  • They have a feedback tool called Forte that allows Amazonians to request peer feedback. They’re limited to 2-3 sentences. The Forte tool is available from December to February.

  • Generally feel that performance feedback is not done well at Amazon, despite Amazonians belief that they have an upfront (aka confrontational) culture.

  • He mentioned that we should prepare for Q&A around, “Will your feedback tool make feedback more cookie cutter?” I mentioned a variety of different responses, and he liked my emphasis around analytics.

  • We talked about phrasing feedback and saying things like “that makes you sound stupid.” He mentioned that it could be more appropriate for people who have close relationships. He also mentioned that he’s cognizant of how his physical stature can affect giving feedback. That is, the same feedback delivered by someone who is larger in physical stature can be received differently than if it was delivered by someone who is smaller in stature.

  • He mentioned that one of the most surprising things about Amazon is that there’s no process. Or in other words, process is a marker for either 1) inefficiency, 2) adherence to the status quo or 3) failure to focus on the goal.

• L is a current Amazon employee. He liked the concept. It hit close to home for him because he recently had a performance review discussion the previous Friday we met.

• O is a current Microsoft employee. January is when Microsoft collects peer reviews. It’s called “Perspectives.” He’s excited to try the tool.

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