Performance Management, SimpleStrata, Employee Performance, KPIs, Performance Tool | 2 min read
Whether you are running a big organization with hundreds of employees, or a small company with just tens, employee performance is a critical component for the survival of your business. Although the methodology, approach, and complexity may differ from a company to another based on the internal culture, industry, size or other factors, the core of a successfully implemented performance management remains the same; technology.
Based on the recent changes introduced to the workplace such as transparency, data availability, access to resources and competitive demand on them, new concepts became part of modern organizations, which can form the distinction between their survival or failure. Whereas previously, employees were just a component within an organization, now, successful employment is at the core, and employee experience is a goal that most organizations strive to achieve, as it helps increase productivity, retention and company stability.
Learn how SimpleStrata can help you measure your employee performance in an easy and engaging way. Try it now
To achieve an employee experience which attracts and retains the targeted highly skilled workforce, an organization must have a robust performance management system, which provides an accurate and fair evaluation of employees, while at the same time, is considered easy to understand and adopt, by both the HR personnel and other employees.
Thus, the traditional manual performance management is not an option, even for small companies, as it results in a huge waste of time, inaccuracy of data, lack of visibility, subjectivity, and conflicts. Consequently, it ends up as an annoying process for all the involved.
On the other hand, executing your performance management process through a system yields a bunch of advantages, below are the main ones, to mention just a few.
Implementing the right performance management tool will allow you to witness those advantages, which you won’t be able to achieve if you are using traditional ways for monitoring and tracking performance, such as emails, excel sheets and annual reviews.
At SimpleStrata, we’ve accompanied several organizations through this journey, and our numbers speak for themselves. As of now, more than 5,000 employees are effectively reporting and tracking their KPIs through SimpleStrata, with increased engagement and productivity levels.
Are you struggling to manage your employees’ performance and increase their work productivity?
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Originally published Jul 8, 2019 12:07:05 PM, updated November 19, 2019
3 min read
Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
Not doing so will put your business at a risk of increased support costs as employees become less productive while trying to figure out how to utilise the business’s technology.
On the operational side, there are 3 categories of platforms that we believe are essential:
Foundations of remote working
Systems of record
Systems of engagement
Laptops
Internet Access
VPN: A Virtual Private Network is imperative to remote working as it creates a secure, reliable, & safe connection between the employee & the organization’s resources.
Storage Platform: Every organization needs a cloud storage platform such as TechnAdopt to enable file sharing and easy access for all employees.
Productivity apps: Teamwork is the number 1 pillar of business in which it involves using shared assets like documents, reports, infographics, & structured & unstructured data. These assets can be created with the likes of the popular office suites like Microsoft Office365 in addition to document management systems, corporate intranet, HR Systems, CRM, & ERP to name a few.
Simple Strata: With this shift in work norms, companies might not have the instant visibility on the efforts taken by an employee to complete a certain job, & consequently might not know what to improve first. Our systems will detect causality and based on that, will analyze and provide reports to identify the employees who are facing difficulties in performing their jobs in comparison to others. With this visibility, the company will be able to adjust its new processes or provide support for employees who are facing challenges in the most suitable way.
ESP: The Enterprise Submission Platform is a linear workflow that enables function owners to automate their business processes without reliance on IT personnel. This platform will allow users to create requests and approvers to approve them from any location with the use of the web or the app. It is necessary especially in remote working situations as operations need to keep moving regardless of the whereabouts of users.
Engagement Pro: Engagement Pro is an application that helps you plan, organize, & track projects - all in one visual, collaborative space - to increase visibility & alignment within team members. This tool facilitates remote collaboration on projects.
Opportunity Pro: Every company with a sales department surely should use a CRM platform. Opportunity Pro enables the sales team to improve their winning rates by having accurate forecasts, details about customers & their needs, & keeping track of all actions taken & planned in order to close a deal. Rather than managing each sales team member individually, managers will be able to have top view visibility on all the pipeline remotely and will be able to review team members accordingly.
Mobile Apps:
As we live in the age of a “smart phone take-over”, it is essential that our work is accessible from the number one tool we use constantly. Whether at home or outside, employees should have the option to interact with team members via their phone.
Similarly, employers should expect their employees to have access to their work from anywhere, especially given the remote working situation. For that reason, all of our recommended products are available as mobile apps in addition to web as we have anticipated that a time will come where reliance will be solely on smart phones. We like to think we are pioneers in this field. 😉
Emails
Idenedi: A communication tool that provides an enjoyable user experience is one that sticks. Idenedi is a tool that has proven to be one of the most requested platforms as it combines ease of access with ability to deliver critical information. While emails remain the number one tool for exchanging work-related documents, they are lacking in the push notification department.
With Idenedi, managers will be able to pass important announcements regarding changes in the work environment with absolute assurance that employees will be notified. This is crucial especially in remote working as managers can track to check if important messages have reached everyone. They can even create a space for team members to interact in the comments section, and soon via chat.
As we have provided our recommendations for the infrastructure on the operational side, we also believe that there are steps to be taken to prepare teams mentally for this sudden shift in our work space.
Check out here our tips on how to adapt in the time of a global pandemic.
2 min read
You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it!
We sat down with Hanadi Sidawi, product manager of one of our most popular solutions “SimpleStrata” to get to know her more and understand her journey to becoming SimpleStrata’s product manager.
Hanadi graduated from Abu Dhabi University with a degree in computer science and a minor in business administration. Her professional career was kicked off when she became a trainer for basic computer courses. She then shifted into another company, where she worked as a legal assistant for 1 year and then got promoted to senior legal assistant, maintaining that position for 2 more years.
With that kind of experience under her belt, she was able to join Exceed as an HR Coordinator where her focus was on internal policies and labor law compliance in Exceed’s different branches. After some time, the bulk of work was getting more focused on employee performance. To familiarise herself with its methodologies and the system handling it, she began the process of self-teaching and read books to study the main frameworks that formulate the basis of Employee Performance Management and Strategy Execution.
That way, she become proficient in the language that provisions the performance solution that Exceed was developing and was working as a performance specialist implementing the methodology of employee performance in Exceed. As she worked more closely with SimpleStrata, she became proficient in it, which lead the way for her to become the product manager.
By getting more exposed to customers, Hanadi and the team came to know that the challenges that Exceed faced internally were common across almost all organisations from different industries.
Exceed had the methodologies but faced a challenge in communicating, implementing, and executing them the right way, as did the other organisations.
These challenges included:
After the system had reached the desired level of maturity, it was launched in Exceed first then to the market and was able to resolve the 99% of the challenges of many organisations, regardless of their size/industry.
Want to know more about the methodologies behind SimpleStrata?
Click here.
Success Stories
One of our larger customers, SCAMAF (Social Care & Minor Affairs Foundation) were using excel sheets to manually monitor and execute their strategy, which was not only very time-consuming, but it was also exhausting the efforts of employees involved who can be utilising their time in other more efficient tasks. Not only that, but the end result would usually have inaccuracies as human error is guaranteed with repetitive tasks such as this one.
What the SimpleStrata team did was they helped them migrate all their data, which was a huge number of excel files, into the system. They set up the system according to SCAMAF’s execution process, and they provided them with the required training to be able to understand and use the system.
They immediately were satisfied with the system as it had created the perfect environment for them that does not require human intervention. After using the system, they had clear visibility on individual performance as well as organisational performance. Whereas they previously had a full department dedicated to strategy execution, they now had only the Head of Strategy monitoring everything via SimpleStrata.
Statement from the SimpleStrata team:
Since we launched it to the market in 2019, we reduced the time and efforts of 20+ organisations with 3,000 employees across numerous industries: 50% decrease in the time required for collecting performance data & 40% increase in employees’ awareness on their goals and KPIs.
Intrigued? Click here for a FREE trial!
2 min read
KPI reporting can clearly communicate the progress of a company towards its performance goals. Not only the managers can access key results in an instant and transparent manner, but also make informed strategic decisions.
Here are the top benefits of investing in a great KPI reporting tool for your organisation and management.
1. They Let You Measure Results
Measuring is an important part of KPI reporting. It is the primary key that informs you about the success or failure of your work. You need to measure the progress made towards the achievement of your target: the number of sales increased (sales performing), the number of new customers or anything in your business you want to measure.
KPIs provide actionable information because they are always measurable and quantifiable. For example, if one of a hotel company's identified CSFs maintains a high level of occupancy throughout the year, a KPI would be the percentage of occupancy of rooms, measured on a weekly basis, using the previous year as a benchmark.
2. They Help You Set Business Goals
You need to set a target and aim to reach it in a set period. You can set more than one targets and create different keys for each of your targets to ensure you measure your progress and then try to achieve your goals.
It's often difficult to keep all departments or teams within an organisation aligned and working toward common goals. Once an organisation's Mission, Vision and CSFs have been written into a strategic plan, KPIs break down complex information into understandable metrics and provide feedback on the organisation's progress. Communication of progress toward KPIs keeps everyone moving forward in the same direction.
You May Also Like: Guide to the Must-Have KPIs for Service Companies
3. They Offer Incentives to Your Team
KPIs are often linked to incentives. Teams or individuals are offered an incentive to improve their KPIs to a particular level during a specific time period. In order for this to be successful, the KPIs have to be clearly understood and quantifiable, and reporting must be accurate. The information provided by KPIs empowers people to improve their own personal performance along with that of the organisation.
4. They Help Your Find Issues in Your Business Strategy
Managers can use KPI to identify any issues present in the construction of business. Any type of problems such as labor productivity issues, danger to employee safety and failures to meet the expectations and needs of customers. KPI enables businesses to recognise these issues to take appropriate action to rectify these problems. Companies can also resolve customer’s issues and concerns with the help of KPI by analysing feedbacks from clients to check whether the expectations of clients are met or not. This approach also helps in eradicating future potential issues that may occur in the future projects.
4. They Let Your Discover Strengths in Your Strategy
With the KPIs, companies can easily unearth potential strengths to use any opportunities that you can use to enhance the performance of your business. Businesses can easily find the strengths whenever a post-project review shows a high score and this score indicates your performance in your performance. Companies can follow the same procedure to upgrade the performance of their company if your post-project review shows high score.
5. They Align Your Marketing & Sales Efforts
With help of KPIs, companies can easily measure and calculate all efforts that also includes marketing spend and sales department so that all departments can work in a harmonised way. When goals are decided by companies, team members start work in collaboration. This approach brings two departments closer for better insight.
6. They Save Business Expenses
With KPIs, you can easily recognise any cost saving prospects related to the project construction and also craft ways to curb any extra costs that may occur in future. KPI basically include tracking of uncommitted costs and also upsurges committed costs as and when required. Business can easily add factors like contingent costs and price escalation into the committed costs to restrict financial exposure. The knowledge that is gained from the audit can assist companies to manage all labor and material costs when they do bidding for construction in the future.
Are you considering getting your own KPI dashboard?
Try SimpleStrata
SimpleStrata provides a complete solution which enables organisations to communicate and execute their strategy in an effective way, by helping them:
Manage Results
Set goals, objectives, and KPIs
Generate periodic measures
Distribute to employees
Schedule review meetings
Generate results’ scores
Manage efforts
Plan initiatives, projects, jobs
Link to strategy plans
Schedule and assign activities
Monitor progress
Generate efforts’ scores
Create visibility
Define correlations between results and efforts
Generate business intelligence dashboards
Provide insights about corrective actions
You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it!
KPI reporting can clearly communicate the progress of a company towards its performance goals. Not only the managers can access key results in an instant and transparent manner, but also make informed strategic decisions.
When speaking of performance management, many think of the annual performance review process. But the annual performance review or appraisal is only a small component of employee performance management.
