America's Got… Performance Management

Cale Hamer
Product Manager, Global Talent Management
Ultimate Software

I was flipping through channels a couple of weeks ago and catching glimpses of both the Grammy Awards as well as a multitude of reality-based singing shows when I came to the epiphany that performance management is much like singing.  Most people try to do it, but few people do it well. Though unlike singing, performance management is actually relatively easy to do, especially when done in a way that is thoughtful and when the organization puts their people first.  When this happens and personal development takes place, financial performance will be positively impacted. The problem is many organizations don’t approach performance management as a method for executing on business strategies. They simply see it as an annual process they have to do in order to adhere to legal policies and check a box off for HR. One common thought  is that performance management process is a process of documenting ratings that justify compensation and personnel decisions—many of which have already been made before the performance review even begins.

If done well performance management can be much more. It can:

• create a shared sense of performance expectations across a company,
• give employees meaningful feedback that helps them improve their effectiveness and drive their development,
• increase overall collaboration within the organization, and
• provide the organization with insight into the talent of the workforce.  

When done poorly, performance management has about the same level of strategic value as the process for completing expense reports. It simply documents what people did in the past and places very little emphasis on improving what they might do in the future.

According to a study by the Business Journal in May of 2011, the number of U.S. workers who voluntarily quit their jobs was at its highest level since 2009. There were 2 million quits nationally in May 2011, compared to 1.79 million quits in May 2009. The major reason behind this was the decrease in employee engagement. A national survey by Mercer cites that about 20 percent of U.S. workers are feeling disengaged, while another 32 percent of workers are seriously considering leaving their organization. (Carlock, Catherine. “Greener pastures: Statistics show increase in the number of people changing jobs.” The Business Journal. 2 Sept. 2011. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.)

This is why we promote a collaborative, engaging, and experiential performance management process. We believe that the process should not only be person-centric, but that it should also be experiential versus date- or event- based. Individuals should be continually engaged with their organization, their manager, and their career path instead of receiving an annual review that leaves them feeling like headcount rather than an instrumental part of the organization.

So when you’re looking at your existing process today, what would your people say about their engagement in their career development and performance reviews? Are they collaborative and ongoing? Or do they feel administrative? If these areas were improved, don’t you think your bottom line would improve with them?

It’s something we’re passionate about and spend a lot of time thinking about at Ultimate. We’re focused on building a talent solution that provides for ongoing collaboration, flexible review processes, and abundant opportunities to identify and build upon individual skills and competencies. We believe in not only building an engaging user experience, but giving each person the tools they need to be engaged within their organization.

I look forward to sharing more in the coming months on ways to improve your performance processes and about how UltiPro can get you there.

Cale Hamer

HCM Trends: Work

Cecile Alper-Leroux
VP Product Strategy & Development
Ultimate Software

With the start of every new year, predictions are made about the hottest new trends for the next twelve months, and the HCM world is no exception. The social media trend is shedding the loaded “social” term to become embedded “collaboration” or “connecting” in HCM solutions, and the concept of work management is taking hold in various permutations across the industry. The concept of “Work” is among these trends and one I am particularly taken with for a number of reasons.

First, we humans have been at some form of work forever (ok some people may not need to work, but I don’t run in those circles), and we continue to spend the bulk of our waking hours at work.  And second, people are the primary drivers of work, be they working collaboratively or alone.  So I’m ever surprised by the fact that work management systems—where many of us live out our work lives—have very little awareness of people, what they do best and how they prefer to work. They are all about “managing” and tracking the work. At the same time, much of the new “work management” in HCM seems to be geared at closing the loop for goals, commitments, and tracking work communication.  Again, this is all with a focus on the work—which is fine overall—but does not necessarily shed light on optimal patterns of people doing work and how visualizing work across teams of people versus just for one person or a project can truly change and improve an employee’s engagement and motivation.

And as an organization that puts people first, I believe that bridging that disconnect and humanizing work management is the next frontier. I challenge all of us to think about how we can better understand the connections between people and work—we don’t just do work and we certainly don’t treat all work in the same way. And I am convinced that there exists ways to make people more successful by knowing empirically what work they are best suited to and visa versa… so stay tuned!

Cecile

Building A Great First Impression and Keeping It

Lisa Sterling
Sr. Director of People Engagement
Ultimate Software


Oh the excitement of learning you just landed that job you always wanted. And it’s with a company that is different from anywhere else you have ever worked. They take care of their people, they’re engaged with the community, and they have a great business model. You’ve definitely hit the big one with this opportunity.

Now it’s time to start the job and begin your introduction into the organization. This is your first opportunity to see how this company truly engages with their people. This engagement may occur on your first day of employment or perhaps, if the company is more progressive, before you even set foot onsite.

Timing of the engagement is only one measurement of an organization’s commitment to their people. It’s also how they engage with their employees. Will you receive a large FedEx or UPS package with 50 different forms to read, sign, and send back with photocopies? Will you show up that first day with no idea of where to go or who to speak with? Or, will you already be engaged before day one through a website in a way that begins to educate you on what it’s like to work there, who you’ll be working with and their stories and, of course, a more manageable process to complete all the necessary documentation.

This is a crucial phase in successfully hitting the ground running. Eighty-five percent of new hires decide within the first six months if they will stay with an organization or not. Many of those individuals use their onboarding or orientation process to formulate that decision. It’s costly to the organization ($4 billion spent by NA companies each year on new hire orientation) and demoralizing to the new hire when this is done in a haphazard manner.

That’s where Ultimate Software makes a difference. Our focus is to help organizations move from simple orientation to strategic onboarding of new hires. We believe the time to begin engagement and interaction with the new hires is before they become employees and well after they are “oriented.” Onboarding is an ongoing experience and not an event.

With effective and engaging onboarding, organizations can connect with individuals early in the engagement process. Their communication can exhibit the culture of the organization with every interaction. Yes, the management and acknowledgement of forms and provisioning of processes are instrumental, but onboarding involves so much more. New hires can identify additional socialization opportunities and execute on them. An executive can send a welcome note to the new hire. You can communicate with the new employee about a new hire lunch or celebration. And you can engage them in a 30-, 60-, 90-day assessment and observation experience. The opportunities to interact with your new hires are limitless.

Just remember, everything you do or, more importantly, don’t do, is being judged by your new hires. Make the introduction and entrance into your organization great experiences so new team members can achieve success right out of the gate and continue to believe you are the best place to work.

Best Company to Work for: A Technology Story

Adam Rogers
Chief Technology Officer
Ultimate Software


I've watched software companies come and go in the market during my almost 15 years at Ultimate. In that same timeframe, our team has managed through some major technology transitions. DOS to Windows, first-generation Web-delivered products, a brief experiment with hosting and, in 2002, we rolled out SaaS, which wasn’t even an industry term at the time and is now widely considered the future of business software.

What’s fascinating to me is that Silicon Valley has created this mythology that companies, especially business software companies, can only ever succeed in one wave of technology. The leaders in mainframe solutions aren't allowed to thrive in Client Server, and so on. And to a large extent this is true, but not for the reasons typically evangelized by CEOs and industry watchers. Because it isn’t at all about technology, it is about culture.

When Scott founded Ultimate, it was with a belief that taking care of employees and customers was the foundation of a good business.  Technology was a means to an end. And I think that philosophy has enabled us to weather technology transitions that caused dozens of Silicon Valley companies to fall off the map. So for me, being recognized as one of the top 25 companies to work for in America is really a technology story. It proves to me that technology will come and go and the companies that thrive over the long haul are the ones that put people first. Congrats, team.

Photo Credit: http://www.parsintl.com/WEB/FORTUNE100BestCreditNotice2012.html