April 25th, 2022
It’s the moment all managers dread - announcing the annual review cycle.
Whether you’re leading a team of 3, managing a huge department, or responsible for HR processes across the organisation; at some point or another you’re going to be responsible for performance management.
But with that comes so many questions and anxieties. How can you measure whether someone’s ready to step up into managing their own team? How can you compare one team with another when they work on entirely different aspects of your business?
And then there’s your team! Do they know what they had to do to earn a promotion this year? Can they even remember what they were working on almost 12 months ago?
It’s unsurprising that most employees leave within a few weeks of their performance reviews. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study showed 86% of employees would change jobs if their new company offered more opportunities for personal development.
Shiny new job descriptions entice them away with clear explanations of what they need to do to step up, often with a good salary bump to boot!
It’s a huge problem costing businesses millions every year, killing employee satisfaction and retention rates, and ruining reputations.More management, more problems
Meet Sam & Giorgio - together we manage a combined headcount of almost 40 people at a leading digital agency, covering all levels from juniors and graduates through to senior engineers and department heads.
However, career development and progression at the company hasn’t historically been a transparent process and there was a great deal of uncertainty surrounding how progression was assessed.
We had a clear concept of career levels but no formal method for individuals or leadership to calibrate and express what being at a certain level entails, nor what is required to grow to the next level.
Understandably, the stagnation of personal growth opportunities has led to frustration for some of our team and stood out starkly against the company values we hoped to uphold.
Furthermore, with each new hire, we risked further diluting the company culture and increasing the ambiguity of responsibility and opportunity within existing roles.
Most organisations manage reviews, progression and performance management in one of two ways:
Option 1: Finger-in-the-air approach
Clearly the worst approach you could take as a leader for helping employee’s progress - but sadly still one that is used all too frequently, just masked behind meetings and “senior leadership” decision making.
It leaves the door wide open for all sorts of bias, inequality and more to sneak in and collapse your team’s motivation to progress. Obviously, this was a hard no!
Option 2: Ladder based progression
Many frameworks, both old and new, utilise a ladder based approach, whereby employees must meet all the requirements at each level of a ladder in order to progress to the next, encouraging a ‘checkbox’ approach to personal development and resulting in a ‘cookie cutter’ team.
We wanted to recognise that all employees are different and that each applies a unique combination of skills and experience to their work. There are many paths to a successful career and we wanted to support the growth of many different shapes of employees that together create a robust and flexible team. This also celebrates that there are particular kinds of work which contribute greatly to the growth of the company, but which are often overlooked.
We knew there was a better way to manage our team’s growth… so we built it!
Personal progression has been shown to be a significant factor in employee job satisfaction and, in some cases, to be a more long-lasting motivator than a pay-rise! In fact companies who invest in their team’s career development see an incredible 94% increase in employee retention.
With Flourish, we’ve developed a solution to personal progression that is equitable, incentivised, transparent and which encourages the growth of a robust, flexible, and inclusive team:
No more spreadsheets or complex docs to fill in to manage career progression conversations
Move away from ladder based competencies and homogenous teams, creating a stronger company from both a performance and cultural perspective
Instantly upgrade performance management capabilities thanks to templates created by ex perts in the field and used by huge companies globally
Keep teams aligned, show them how and where to grow, and help them see what adds value to your org
Power up your 1:1s, remove the risk of managerial bias and give employees a fair opportunity to present their case for promotion
Gather rich data on individual, team, department and organisation level growth, skill gaps and more
Translatable across teams, industries, between companies and more
Building a better approach to personal development enables more honest, open conversations about career goals, promotions, opportunities and, of course, compensation.
Although this is a mammoth change of approach, we’ve seen the difference it makes first hand. Book a free no obligation demo of Flourish today and see for yourself!
