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Performance Management

Simplicity in Action at Health Net

Andy Gebavi

Moving from paper-based or semi-automated processes to robust talent management technologies can be a daunting task, even for the most technically adept organizations. The sheer depth of functionality software vendors offer can be alluring. Many organizations get distracted by all the bells and whistles and lose sight of their original mission to transform and streamline their manually intensive processes.

Health Net Inc., a health care firm headquartered near Los Angeles, transitioned from wanting all the bells and whistles to paring down the initial functionality it rolled out in its talent management applications.

“For the initial rollout, we deliberately avoided doing anything drastically different from our existing processes,” said Suzanne Rumsey, director of workforce planning. “We already had a manual goal-setting process in place, and our users knew how to set smart goals. The selling point to our users was that we were streamlining the existing processes by moving them online.”

Many companies are tempted to do it all right away. But this route probably will overwhelm their end-users and dramatically increase the complexity of their projects.

Many organizations implement “best-of-breed” solutions from multiple vendors focused on specific talent management processes. Health Net, for example, chose three vendors: one for recruiting, one for goal management, performance management and compensation and one for learning management.

Although this approach often results in the deepest functionality, it also can add complexity to the user experience if not deployed as part of an overarching talent management initiative.

To address potential user confusion regarding these various applications, Health Net decided to brand all talent management applications under a unified internal brand.

“All of our talent management applications have the same look and feel, and they launch from the same starting point in our intranet,” Rumsey said. “Our goal is that users won’t even realize they’re using different applications, for example, to update their goal plan versus enroll in training activities.”

By unifying all the components of its talent management initiatives under a single internal brand, Health Net also simplified the communication process by referring to the brand, rather than individual applications, in communications.

Starting simple, however, does not necessarily rule out the introduction of additional functionality in the future. Health Net started its talent management technology planning in 2006 by creating a three-year strategy.

By viewing all the separate pieces of its talent management initiative within an overall strategy, Health Net was able to create a timeline for how additional functionality could be layered on over a period of years.

“It’s important to understand your audience and to know how much change they can handle at one time and introduce functionality accordingly,” Rumsey said.  

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