Features
Reviews
Reviews that are structured and scheduled allow you to identify your rising stars as well as those in need of additional help.
Listen, learn, grow
The aim of a large company is to ensure that the efforts that went into establishing a successful business continue to shine through for the benefit of its customers, staff, and shareholders.
To accomplish this, you must first understand your company’s operations and employees thoroughly. It is simple to get a comprehensive full business appraisal process set up with Inform People.
Identified Industry Issues
Offline review completion in a business of any scale is almost impossible to track or report on without dedicated effort that can pull people away from their other responsibilities. Responses can get lost and the valuable information within them filed away without being acted upon.
Inform People’s Solutions
Using the online Review module, integrated into the Virtual PA, you can host any type of two sided formal review from Probationary to Exit Interviews.
There are numerous methods to conduct an appraisal. That is why our module is adaptable, configurable, and designed with your company objectives in mind, promoting flexibility.
There’s also Tasks and Objectives which can be used for tracking progress outside of formal review periods.
What you get
- Self-assessments handed to line managers for second stage
- Structured competencies with calculated ratings
- Ability to select training requirements from custom lists
- Free-form comment sections
- Automated completion and rating reporting
- Optional third stage for approval
- Features to promote flexible appraisals
- Custom review templates for different roles
Improving performance through reviews
A company’s weakest link is the key to its success. While you may be able to keep track of who enters at the top levels, regional and local managers are responsible for developing a strong workforce from the bottom up.
You may quickly identify whether new workers are following your company’s ideals. New team members can readily interact with one another, schedule goal assessment meetings, and provide senior management with a single view of performance and completion.
What you get
- Check performance against company guidelines
- Schedule reviews for specific stages of induction
- Tackle concerns before they become issues
- Set goals to be addressed at the next review
Let’s get technical for a moment
Reviews consist of a ‘Type’ and a ‘Schedule’. This allows for multiple Reviews to be run simultaneously and open/close as required, to support all potential applications such as an annual Health Questionnaire, Probationary and Risk Assessment review all being available at once.
Types are a template that defines what is included in the review and in what order. They also set who has permission to complete each section within; from ‘Appraisee’, ‘Appraiser’ or ‘All’ and whether or not it is compulsory or optional.
Schedules take a Type and give it a unique name, and date based rules. This allows one Type to be hosted multiple times, perhaps repeated annually if no changes are required or for multiple groups of reviews with staggered start and end dates.
Review Sections
A summary of the compulsory sections in the review is listed and is updated as each section is completed.
Used to calculate an overall ‘Rating’.
Each competency has a title and some example talking points for guidance.
The person being reviewed is required to pick a rating for each competency and provide a supporting statement (this is a suggestion and self reflection).
The reviewer is then required to pick their own rating and provide a statement in the 2nd stage of the review which then becomes the actual given rating.
Neither party can edit the other’s answers.
A prompt title and a free text box beneath, which can be locked to either the person being reviewed, the reviewer or accessible to both parties.
Allows the person being reviewed to set ‘Future’ objectives, with a goal date, that will carry into their next review automatically.
There is no way to directly add ‘Past’ objectives, these will always be set from previous reviews.
Each ‘Future’ Objective can be given an overall Goal, date to be achieved by, and comments for each ‘Stop’, ‘Start’ and ‘Continue’.
A Start Rating should be provided and the End Rating will be set by the Appraiser in the next review.
Allows the person being reviewed to set both Past and Future objectives.
Future objectives will carry into their next review and any Past objectives can be rated.
This element can be set to allow either (or both) of the parties to set Past and Future objectives and rate any Past ones.
2nd stage reviewers also have the option to Reject objectives, with a reason and add in alternatives.
Each review can have its own drop down list of options for training requests.
A selected choice requires a supporting comment.
Each question can have multiple options to select a single answer from.
If required, some answers can open a follow up text box where supporting information can be supplied.
Questions where the answer can either be Yes or No.
If follow up is required then Multiple Choice Questions should be used.
A compulsory free text box that acts as a digital signature for the form, required in each stage of the review.
Performance reviews
Managers may use performance reviews to check in on their employees, commend rising stars, and address any problems that may be affecting output or employee happiness.
Employees can:
- See improvements over time with collected data
- Assess training needs
- Set future goals and reflect on past achievements
- Reject answers which do not have enough detail
- View completion reporting in organisational structure format
Exit interviews
Employee turnover can be costly for big businesses, especially when it’s due to a decrease in performance. People take the time and money you put into their training with them when they leave.
You may use our Reviews tool to ask departing workers questions so that you can better understand their reasons for leaving in order to make more informed decisions in the future.
Make the exit beneficial for you and your ex-employee by:
- Triggering questionnaires by leave date
- Creating a checklist for returning property e.g. uniforms or laptops
- Collecting opinions of your wider business processes
- Use feedback to adapt approaches and reduce turnover
Tasks and Objectives
Everyone, as a default, gets access to their own personal Calendar, with easy access from the top menu.
Entries are a personal way of adding to the Calendar – to log date-related notes, past, present and future.
Tasks can be added by yourself or your manager, they can have proof added to them in the form of notes or an uploaded document, but do not require additional sign off as a default.
Objectives work in a similar way to those embedded in a formal review – they can only be added by a Manager to someone in their responsibility – but they must be completed by both parties. The colleague who is assigned an Objective must provide at least one of the following: a note in the text field or an uploaded file of proof. With an Objective, when it is signed off by a line manager, they will also provide a Rating.
Reporting
Access to reports is controlled by Permissions and a user’s account position on the Org Structure.
All involved parties will see an active review task listed on their VPA when it is their turn to take action.
They can use their Overview page to see all available reviews, which allows managers to monitor completion when reviews are still on their team member’s VPA.
An org structure view of all completed reviews and their rating results. A download of all review status information is available via this option.
An org structure view of all reviews and their completion status (expired, not started, in progress and complete).
A download of all review status information is available via this option.
Live reports can filtered by the following:
- Username
- First Name
- Last Name
- Location
- Review
- Status (Not Started/In Progress/Completed)
- Rating (based on defined ratings, different per client)
Optional additional reporting can be created on demand such as an export of all answers to certain questions.