Case Studies
Employee Performance Management Around the World in 30 Days
SAVVIS quickly and successfully implemented an automated, web-based employee performance and talent management system to all of its offices around the world enabling the organization to:
- Align corporate and individual goals;
- Implement consistent and objective employee appraisals,
- View real-time reports on appraisal results from all 48 international offices; and
- Easily adapt the system to meet their changing needs.
Company Profile
SAVVIS, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVVS) is a global leader in IT infrastructure services for business applications. With an IT services platform spanning North America, Europe, and Asia, SAVVIS has over 5,000 enterprise customers and leads the industry in delivering secure, reliable, and scalable hosting, network, and application services. These solutions enable customers to focus on their core business while SAVVIS ensures the quality of their IT systems and operations. SAVVIS' strategic approach combines virtualization technology, a global network and 25 data centers, and automated management and provisioning systems.
Challenge
Before the implementation of Halogen eAppriasal™, SAVVIS sought an employee performance and talent management system that could support the rapid growth the company was experiencing. Dave Potts, Director of Organizational Performance for SAVVIS, was tasked with identifying and establishing a new system as an immediate and high priority.
"One of my initial goals was to align corporate strategy with individual employee performance strategy. That was truly the driving factor," says Potts. "A secondary factor was to standardize the way performance appraisals are done at SAVVIS. We wanted a uniform process."
Difficulties existed for SAVVIS as a result of these essential processes not meeting the organization's requirements. Problems ranged from a lack of feedback for employees to a misalignment of corporate, department, group and individual goals. When previous attempts were made to evaluate employee performance, it was difficult to be objective or to compare results across the organization because evaluations were not standardized, and the organization did not have the capability to aggregate information. In addition, with offices distributed globally, the success of any paper-based system was inherently limited.
Solution
An HR team, headed by Dave Potts, moved quickly to evaluate numerous vendors over the course of a 2-week search for the solution that best fit their business needs. During the search they identified two high-priority criteria that were immediately met by Halogen solution. The team wanted the new employee performance and talent management system to be easy to use from an implementation, administration and end user standpoint. In addition, they wanted a solution flexible enough that they could configure it to create their own process and workflow rather than one that would require them to work within a prefabricated process.
"With Halogen we were able to configure the look, design and process flow as our own. The goals and business competencies we included were up to us," said Potts. "The flexibility to make choices regarding these different elements definitely speaks volumes."
Once the team selected Halogen, the implementation of the solution went very quickly. Just two weeks after signing with Halogen, SAVVIS had an administrative site with a test process up and running. After a month, the organization successfully rolled the new process out to its more than 2000 employees across the globe.
"We worked closely with the implementation experts at Halogen and got everything up and rolling," said Potts. "The process was seamless."
Using the new system, appraisals are done annually, but SAVVIS coaches its supervisors that real effective performance management is done year round. Supervisors are asked by the organization to provide on-going feedback, make progress checks and make sure goals and objectives are aligned to the company's and to the specific job.
Each employee is given an annual performance appraisal made up of specific steps designed by the SAVVIS team, with the help of experts at Halogen. Supervisors rate their employees using a standard employee evaluation form designed by the organization. The supervisor enters information on the employee's objectives, goals and business competencies that are being appraised. Afterwards, the supervisor and employee meet to discuss the appraisal and the development plan. Following the discussion, the supervisor and employee either reach agreement or make changes. Once there is agreement, the employee, manager and HR representative sign off on the appraisal.
Results
Since its quick implementation of Halogen eAppraisal, SAVVIS has been able to:
- Align and communicate the goals of the organization and of its employees;
- Centrally monitor the appraisal processes around the globe; and
- Instantly receive and work with the results of appraisals using real-time reports.
The organization's primary aim of aligning the goals of its employees with those of the organization and clearly communicating those goals has been met using Halogen eAppraisal. Halogen's On-Target Goals feature made that alignment process easy.
"We are really excited. Before we had to rely on managers to connect those goals, but that downstream process took quite some time," said Potts. "Now we have enabled all our managers, supervisors and employees to look and see the true alignment."
Other benefits that have been realized with the implementation of the new employee performance and talent management system include the ability to centrally monitor all international appraisal processes instantly and ensure that all the appraisals are uniform, regardless of where they are taking place. In addition, once the appraisals have been completed, the organization now has the ability to work with the results and to use real-time reports to access a detailed picture of the organization's performance landscape.
Halogen eAppraisal enables SAVVIS to reinforce the strong linkages between setting goals, providing feedback, evaluating performance and rewarding performance. SAVVIS employees, who look forward to seeing their hard work formally recognized, have enthusiastically embraced the tool, which allows individuals to set goals with their managers, track performance and then discuss how performance relates to pay.
One of the benefits Potts would emphasize, if he were advising any other organization considering adopting an automated, web-based system would be to make sure the system is flexible and powerful enough to keep up with the dynamics of the organization.
"We are a very dynamic organization in a very dynamic industry. Our legacy includes mergers and acquisitions with multiple companies and cultures," said Potts. "Change is the culture here, but consistency, especially with performance management, is the goal."
The Halogen system has provided SAVVIS with the flexibility and scalability to meet growth expectations. At any given time, SAVVIS can manipulate and tweak whatever elements of the employee performance appraisal system it requires, quickly and easily. It is not a static solution.
Having implemented Halogen eAppraisal in just one month for more than 2000 employees, SAVVIS is now able to easily and clearly align corporate and employee goals and make sure those goals are effectively communicated. On-going appraisals can be monitored across the globe and once completed, the organization benefits from detailed, real-time reports on the results. The new Halogen eAppraisal system represents the beginnings of a pay-for-performance culture in the organization and is flexible enough to scale to meet future needs.