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Enterprise Bank and Trust, a rapidly growing financial services leader, uses Halogen's talent management solutions to provide effective feedback to all its employees and to ensure consistency, accountability and alignment across its 12 locations. Their new automated system enables them to:
- Effectively track and measure the banks high-performance objectives;
- Identify and bridge gaps in the organization's core competencies;
- Gain instant insight into how the bank handles its talent; and
- Save HR time and frustration by removing the burden of maintaining and demonstrating compliance for the purpose of internal and external audits.
Enterprise Bank and Trust: Investing in High Performance
Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Enterprise Bank and Trust is a high-growth commercial bank that caters to the needs of privately-held businesses, their owner families and other success-minded individuals. They manage over $3.5 billion in banking and trust assets and serve more than 3 000 clients. The bank has 12 locations across St. Louis and Kansas City and employs close to 300 employees, all of whom are focused on delivering exceptional service to their valued customers.
Rapid Growth Makes Collecting Actionable Information and Maintaining Quality Feedback Nearly Impossible
With its growing number of employees, the bank's existing paper-based performance appraisal process was increasingly a burden and a barrier to measuring their high-performance objectives.
"We have always pushed to maintain a high-performance workplace. In the last few years that challenge increased as we acquired several other banks in the area," said Laura Van Well, HR Officer with Enterprise Bank and Trust. "Our headcount was booming and at times trying to get employee evaluations turned in was like herding cats."
HR had no means to verify what steps were being completed or where delays were taking place. In addition, since they were only able to track whether the final evaluation was submitted, HR had no insight into whether employees' self-assessments were completed or if performance review meetings were actually taking place.
"At the end of the entire process all we could confirm was that a rating sheet was submitted with the employee's final rating," said Van Well. "Even getting those forms returned was a big paper chase. We often didn't get things turned in to our team because it was just a nightmare trying to manage and chase down all the paper."
This administrative burden became particularly pronounced during regular internal and external audits on employee performance. "At any time we could be requested to produce signed performance rating sheets for 15 people. We would have to go to the paper files, see if we even had them, and then track down the sheets in the 15 individual files," said Van Well. "If for some reason we didn't have one rating sheet, we had to track down the manager on the phone and explain that they were being audited. At times, it was like pulling teeth to get the information that was needed."
The previous process and paper chase also prevented meaningful communication between employees and managers, which should be the heart of the performance appraisal process. So Enterprise's HR team wanted to ensure that managers didn't waste time on inefficient processes, but instead spent more time on face-to-face meetings and providing employees with effective feedback.
The HR team began to search for a solution that would automate the whole process and provide them with centralized, actionable data related to completion rates, as well as enable managers to provide their direct reports with the kind of effective feedback that would promote career development.
Engaging the Entire Team to Find an Integrated, Flexible Solution
Van Well initially investigated half-a-dozen vendors, researching each of them online and looking to professional association discussion boards for experienced insight. As she collected more information on prospective vendors, and participated in product demonstrations, others in the organization also became involved. The bank's Senior Vice President of HR and the rest of the HR team provided input and sat in on the final demo, along with the IT team.
After careful consideration, the team selected Halogen's talent management solution. Halogen's capacity to manage development planning, goal setting, performance reviews, succession planning and compensation in a single system made the decision very straightforward. "We all liked that we could have one, easy-to-use system to meet all of our talent management needs. One of the other big differentiators with the Halogen suite is the real-time reporting and tracking capability; something that just wasn't possible before. With fingertip access, we now have a whole new level of information and insight into how were doing with talent in our organization," explained Van Well.
Deployment options were also an important consideration. The IT team did an assessment of their own server capabilities and associated cost, and elected to have Halogen host the system. Both IT and HR are happy with this choice since it reduced the work involved for IT in rolling out the new system, and HR can expect quick response times from Halogen's customer support.
Improved Appraisal Quality, Strengthened Competencies, and Time Savings
Having an effective employee performance and talent management system in place enables Enterprise Bank and Trust to know exactly what is getting done during each step in their performance management process. The Halogen system saves the bank's HR department a lot of time and frustration. The time savings come not only from eliminating the need to chase down late appraisals and handle paper, but also from easing the reporting demands of frequent audits. Where in the past, coming up with the required materials during an audit was a nightmare, now it requires only a few mouse clicks.
With the Halogen system, the HR team can also easily identify competency gaps. HR can see the bottom and top rated competencies identified in the appraisals and then customize their training to target lower ranked competencies. "Our in-house training curriculum this year offered three classes that directly addressed the three bottom-rated competencies for our managers and supervisors," explained Van Well. "As a result, two of those three competencies have moved out of that bottom category. The effectiveness of this targeted training is clear and would have been impossible to validate using paper alone."
Beyond the elimination of administrative and reporting burdens, the quality of performance appraisals has greatly improved, because managers and HR have more time to focus on giving employees effective, quality feedback.
Managers have provided very positive feedback about the system. They specifically appreciate being able to go and look at their associates' data at any stage. And right from the first appraisal process, they've raved about Halogen's e360 Multirater™ product. In the past, managers and employees had the option of including outside client feedback, but it was a voluntary step that many people did not complete. "The managers that use the new 360 multirater feature absolutely love it," says Van Well. "The organization has also received a lot of informal feedback about the performance journal, which was not really available in our old manual process. With the Halogen system everyone who uses it loves it."
Performance Based Learning Management for a Brighter Future
Enterprise Bank and Trust is also eager to implement Halogen eLearning Manager™. The organization's current learning management process is manual and the bank is determined to automate it, just as it has done with its employee performance management system. This will put more accountability and power in the hands of employees, and closely tie learning and development to performance. The bank knows that this connection and the overall integration and automation of its talent management processes will have a very positive impact on the organization as a whole.
"All of the Halogen talent management modules have exceeded our expectations," said Van Well. "I would definitely recommend Halogen to other financial organizations looking to improve their employee performance and talent management."
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