As a kid, I used to see my father every year going through a cumbersome manual process of creating annual employee evaluation reports, including assessment of employees’ performance, comparison with previous reports, and then finalization of that year’s reports. Thank God we grew up in the age of millions of online services, with web apps for enterprise functions like online employee appraisal systems, talent management systems, review systems, and more. Whatever the name may be, they all provide us with pretty much the same ease – fuss-free, paper-free, migraine-free organized way of employee assessment process.
WorkforceGrowth is one of those online talent management software that came into being in the era when there were very few such online systems, and it arose merely from the organizations’ need for a smoother and easy to use assessment system. Let’s see how it can help your company with the five main areas of talent management: Motivation, Engagement, Collaboration, Productivity and Retention.
Getting Started
It’s generally not possible to not fall in love with a new system right away, but nonetheless you can sign up for the 10-day free trial. If you like it, well and good…you pay for it and enjoy the facilities. Even if you think you can do without it, the system allows you to enjoy free 10 days, and it just might prove you wrong in that time.
The sign up process for WorkforceGrowth.com is fairly simple. You sign up by filling out a form using your company’s information such as company name, URL, email address, phone number and number of employees. After signing up you’re directly taken to your company’s profile.
Registration Form to Sign Up for WorkforceGrowth
Setting Things Up
Your company’s profile is where all the fun lies. You can either watch a tutorial of the setup process or you can learn yourself by just pushing and playing with various sections in the self-explanatory menu. I’d suggest learning yourself since the system is pretty intuitive. The support staff is also available and is usually happy to answer the silliest questions you may have.
Company setup is a breeze using the Bulk Upload tool. It lets you download a spreadsheet, fill it with some basic information about your company, and, Eureka!, your WorkforceGrowth account is now loaded with all the information it needs to develop your complete organization chart. The hierarchies from this chart are then remembered by the system during the review automation process.
Step by Step Guide to Upload Company Info in One Go
Company Reviews on Autopilot
WorkforceGroth includes one thing that I haven’t seen in any other system so far: Automated Reviews. Yes, the system does everything for you.
Oh come on now, don’t furrow your brows and wonder what the catch is. There’s no catch. Just three steps: assign a review template, then a review frequency (annual, bi-annual etc.), and finally a review period to each employee, and that’s all there is to it. What’s left now is to enable automated reviews, and you’re set.
A few days before the reviews are due to be sent out to your employees, the system sends the HR personnel a mail informing that the draft review has been created. I was honestly so amazed by this. I practically didn’t have to do anything and the system provided me with all the reviews.
A Sample Draft Review
Reviewers get to rate employees based on relevant competencies using rating based or descriptive questions. They also get to leave their comments on the employees’ strengths and weaknesses. After the manager’s approval, the reviewee is able to see how he got evaluated by others.
An Example of How a Completed Review Looks
Does your company have a hierarchical structure and you want your managers to stay in the loop in your talent management process? Then, the Team Reviews section is for you. This section provides managers with the complete overview of all the reviews of their team including score, pending and completed reviews and the detailed reports of all the reviews.
An Example Showing Overview of a Team
Dashboards
And here we have my favorite part of the software – everything under one roof. On Personal Panel, I have my goals, feedback requests, surveys, notifications and much more. The visual depiction of my pending and completed reviews is simple yet gives a nice twist to it. And on Admin Panel, the view is equally amazing. A complete quick overview of employees, departments and most importantly reviews with one click access to any of them is all right in front of you.
Administrative View of How Reviews are Coming Along
Top management’s bird-eye view makes me wish I was a CEO myself. It provides an overall review of all departments based on their performance evaluation scores and achieved goals.
An Overview of the entire company for Executives
Analytics
The Analytics section of WorkforceGrowth is very attractive and quite interactive. It’s a very fun way of getting an overview of your performance, your team’s performance and hence, your company’s performance. Its detailing is honestly commendable.
A Combined Overview of the Insight into Performance of All Departments
Rewards and Recognition
Your company couldn’t possibly be doing talent management and not motivating employees through rewards and recognition simultaneously. By appreciating your employees in front of their peers, you boost their morale, develop motivation and a sense of responsibility in them and encourage to achieve more in their work. Using the various Kudos provided by WorkforceGrowth, you can do just that. You’ll be surprised by how much just a simple Kudos can do. And if you follow up those digital kudos with a real-world reward, you might find your employees more motivated than ever!
Easy-to-Give Rewards (Kudos)
Customization
The best part about this software is the degree of customization it allows. Almost all the features mentioned above can be tweaked, using a list of configurations that let you specify your preferences. Some of the preferences that these configurations let you assign weightages, make peer reviews anonymous, use numerical or descriptive rating systems, or even simply wipe out an entire module.
Final Thoughts
From the ease of implementation to user-interface to various intuitive features that surprised me, I found WorkforceGrowth to be a treat for the entire organization, including employees, the HR team, and executives. All of that, for an all-inclusive price of $5 per employee per month means it has to be one of the best performance management apps on the web today.
Unfortunately I could not cover a ton of other exciting features in this review, but I can safely say that it is worth a shot. One month’s use of the software has taught me enough to be boasting about its capabilities, so give it a shot and see if it’s what your company’s needed to help you manage your talent.