The Company
Industrial Bank is one of the largest African-American owned and operated commercial banks in the U.S. Since being founded during the Great Depression more than 75 years ago, the company has worked hard to overcome countless challenges. But when it came to solving its performance management woes, Industrial decided it could achieve more by doing less.
âThere was a lot of back and forth, sending interoffice mail with corrections â a lot of red ink,â says Lynne Rowe, vice president and director of human resources. âAnd I was, by hand, tracking whose evaluation came through and what their rating was.â
Most businesses strive to ensure their performance review process is efficient. The banking world is no exception, but the degree of scrutiny is markedly higher.
âAll the departments of the bank get audited every year, and I was consistently getting dinged because inevitably one or two managers missed doing an evaluation on one of their employees or it wasnât done in a timely fashion,â says Rowe. âIt would be what theyâd call an audit finding. It would be included in the audit report, and all audit reports are presented to the audit committee of the board of directors.
âSo I said âOK, enough of this. Weâve got to get a more automated process.
The Challenge
A manual performance review system that provided zero insight into manager/employee progress throughout the process.
The Solution
In December 2007, Industrial purchased a desktop performance appraisal solution. The bank, which serves the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, had some success doing manager-only reviews but was still unable to track department and employee progress. This led to more missed deadlines and more frustration.
But InsperityTM PerformSmartÂŽ helped get Rowe and company back on track. Industrial signed on shortly after the productâs launch in April 2011 and experienced staggering results. With the manual process, manager-only performance reviews took about three months to complete. PerformSmart helped cut that time in half, largely due to the increased accessibility of a cloud-based solution.
How Insperity helped:
Kept management in the know regarding performance review progress
Provided employees and managers flexibility and ease of use when completing appraisals
Support team addressed any issues in a timely fashion
âBefore, the managers had to do the evaluations from their computer at work,â says Rowe. âWhen we switched to the Web-based system, it afforded them the opportunity to do them on the weekends if they wanted to, from the comfort of their own homes or wherever they wanted to do them.â
Additionally, by having the information for all 126 employees in all 10 offices stored within the application online, Rowe was able to gain insight into the entire organizationâs progress. This helped keep the process moving â and the auditors off her back.
âWe got a commendable rating when they did the audit last October,â says Rowe. âThatâs the first time we got commendable in the five years Iâve been managing this area. Thatâs the highest rating you can get on the audit, and it was because all of those evaluations were done.â
Industrial embarked on its first round of employee self-reviews in 2013, and the response thus far has been positive; perhaps a little too positive in some cases.
âI havenât had any complaints about the process,â says Rowe. âOf course, Iâm going to have to go back and let a few employees understand that when youâre doing the evaluation, you donât just give yourself fives (the highest possible rating) straight down the line.â
The Value
The switch from manual appraisals to PerformSmartâs automated process has saved Industrial time and also toned down the drabness that is characteristic of performance reviews.
âItâs not as tedious of a process,â says Rowe. âPeople would always groan when evaluation time comes around, but for these last two years, I havenât heard much groaning. The managers feel that the system is very user-friendly and they can keep it moving, and some of them have eight or more employee reviews to complete.â
Rowe warns against businesses thinking theyâre too small to take advantage of an automated, online, more tech-savvy performance review process like PerformSmart. And with Insperityâs dedication to service, youâre covered from implementation to deployment and beyond.
âOur implementation specialist was very diligent,â says Rowe. âHe let us know right from the beginning what we would be doing in each meeting, so we were prepared completely. It was laid out for us perfectly.
âThe tech support team is the best because theyâll make sure that, if I have an issue, they see it through until itâs resolved. Itâs a great product, but if you run into any difficulties, knowing that you have the service team behind you is equally as important â maybe even more important.â
âMany times you get a software system and youâre not using it to the fullest extent because you donât really understand all of the aspects. I got this one â it worked well for me.â