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Assessment & Evaluation

Employee Reviews and ROI: How Standardization Can Boost the Bottom Line

Tegan Jones

Although it’s no surprise that better performance equals bigger profits, many business leaders still scoff at spending money on HR. Without solid statistics that show where and how budgeted money will be recouped, many executives hesitate to increase funding for talent management.

Quintiles Transnational Corp., however, knows its ability to attract, retain and improve talent directly affects its ROI. As a provider of professional services for the pharmaceutical industry, Quintiles’ employees are its lifeblood — without highly skilled people to work with its clients, the company would soon find itself in financial trouble, said Tim Toterhi, director of learning and development strategies and solutions.

“Our whole business function is to get qualified people out to customers,” he said. “We don’t really have other products than that, so this whole area of getting people and managing talent is huge for us.”

To make sure employees get the guidance they need to best serve their clients, Quintiles recently standardized its employee-review process.

Using a new performance and talent management system, which was developed by SuccessFactors, the company has unified several organic assessment processes into one businesswide feedback system.

“We had a scenario before where people may not have been getting the ratings or reviews that they needed, so they were going in and doing their work without the best view of how they were performing on a consistent basis,” Toterhi said. “Now, we have a clear line of sight that ensures people are getting these reviews and that they’re having the coaching and development discussions that go along with that.”

Since the implementation of this system, compliance with performance reviews has increased from 40 percent to 97 percent. Toterhi said this jump in participation has helped create a more engaged workforce across the board.

Because employee engagement is directly related to improved performance, the review process serves as a way for Quintiles to increase profits.

“When we look at things like project responsibilities and expectations, there’s a clear differential between employees who are engaged and those who are not,” he said. “Where this comes to the fold for us is with the customers themselves and their willingness to refer — when we have engaged employees working, they’re much more willing to refer out.”

At Quintiles, talent management techniques are the backbone of customer service. By improving the quality of the human product it delivers, the company shows customers it cares about their business.

Performance metrics that provide solid numbers allow Quintiles to show clients that its people constantly are improving their skills to better meet their needs. Toterhi said this attention to detail and employee success increases customer loyalty and ultimately helps the business grow.

“The case for the ROI is, if you have people who are actively monitored, and you can point to performance metrics, you’ll be able to provide customers with people who are trained, who understand and who are getting constant feedback,” he said. “That’s really rare.” 

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