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Assessment & Evaluation

Automation Can Facilitate More Personal Assessments

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

Accounting and consulting firm O’Sullivan Creel LLP found performing employee evaluations becomes a much more manageable task when it is an automated process. Where a paper-based operation is unstructured and disorganized, an automated one is clear, consistent and, ironically, more personalized.

When we were dealing with paper, and even when it would be saved electronically, I had no clue who had started an appraisal, who had finished, what the results were, [or if] we [had] any kind of consistency in and among the goals that were being set,” said Kathy Anthony, a Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and partner at the firm. “It felt disjointed, something I could never get my arms around. People saw it as a necessary evil that you had to do once a year.”

She said employees no longer dread the company’s performance management process. In the first year of automation four years ago, the company saved 386 hours that had previously been spent completing the process.
“Since we’ve added this, we’ve realized how easy it would be to add in that personal piece,” Anthony said.

Employees can go into Halogen’s eAppraisal system prior to the annual performance management meeting and complete self-appraisals that detail their accomplishments for the year and their goals for the next. Then the performance adviser meets with each employee to discuss both past and future, and that’s when the collaboration happens and a detailed plan with specific goals is created.

“So we have the plan: It’s there, can be looked at anytime through the year [and] can be updated on a daily basis if they choose,” Anthony said. “They come out of it with something that is so personalized to them, but it aligns with the vision of the firm. Everybody wants to believe that [his or her] performance is going to help the firm, and it does when you slice it, dice it and bring it down to the employee level.”

Anthony said performance advisers spend as much time discussing an employee’s career as is needed.

“We actually spend maybe an hour or two, and that’s our choice,” she explained. “We want to spend that much time talking about your career, what are your aspirations, and let’s help accomplish those. In the old days, we just filled out a form and went on down the road. It is a much more meaningful process now. We do touch base midyear, and we make sure everybody’s on track.”

O’Sullivan Creel’s performance management assessments also have been successful in providing each employee with a personalized growth path.

“You know it is working because people are achieving their objectives,” Anthony said. “I don’t think it’s any longer a one size fits all, especially in the accounting profession. Years ago, you came in at a level, you worked there for two years, [and] you’d go to the next level. It’s not like that anymore. Progression, career development, everything is now very personalized, and that tells me it’s a success when people are meeting their own personal career goals.”

Automating employee evaluations is an increasingly common talent management strategy partly because it provides a real-time opportunity for personalization, which is exactly what employees, especially younger ones, want and demand.

“[The young people] want to know what’s expected of them,” Anthony said. “They want to help plan their destiny, and if we’re not plugged into what they want and what they need from an employer, they’re not going to stay. They’re going to go wherever they want to go and do whatever they want to do, so we have to work twice as hard these days to create an environment where they want to be. And a big part of that environment is ongoing feedback.”