Aspectus is a global brand, marketing and communications agency who work with the technology, financial services, capital markets, energy, industrial and professional services sectors.

We spoke to Tamsin Jackson, People and Experience Director, to understand how they improved their performance development processes with StaffCircle’s intelligent communication tools and continuous feedback.

Making communication easy

Aspectus has experienced large growth in recent years and as such they needed a performance management platform that would support their growth.

Tamsin explained: “We were growing quite significantly, from what felt like a smaller business where there was less process. Things such as reviews were done by your manager, but each team had a slightly different process and nothing was centralised.

We used emails for company-wide communication, but this only worked up to a certain point, and as you grow, the more emails you get. We didn’t want our employees to skip over, lose or miss important company emails. We needed an internal hub that we could record of all communications and important announcements or events.”

The platform’s company feed allows customers to post important information to company-wide or custom feeds so that employees never miss a memo again. “StaffCircle allows you to resend [a communication] to everyone that hasn’t opened it just help increase engagement, so that’s a useful function.” With the option to ‘like’ and comment, leaders can see which employees are interacting and which aren’t.

Paperless performance management

To meet their growth, the Aspectus team needed to digitise their performance management processes. Whilst performance management was always completed, their processes were inefficient. They were looking for a solution that could offer autonomy and a clear record of their employee’s performance, without the need for countless sheets of paper.

StaffCircle’s digital platform automates the entire performance management process. Allowing customers to drive performance management with best-practice automated processes, backed with dedicated engagement and development tools. Performance management has gone paperless, enabling real-time custom insights and businesses are reaping the rewards.

Tamsin shared the Aspectus experience: “Objectives and reviews were all done professionally before, but there were times where they had been recorded on a piece of paper and put to the back of a cupboard or the bottom of a drawer, only to be found at the employees next year’s review.

Now, with the StaffCircle platform it’s front of mind. People have more ownership of their own objectives and goals for the year ahead, as well as allowing everyone to have a record of reviews and progress as well.”

Complete team visibility

The move to a digital performance management platform has led to clarity for everyone at Aspectus, with the whole HR team now able access valuable data insights.

Tamsin said: “Beforehand, sector heads were only able to see the progress of those they directly managed. Now in StaffCircle, they can have an overview of their whole team’s performance and objectives, enabling an overview of team skills, for training opportunities and recruitment.

Continuing: “We use a lot of the reports for the board pack. The 9-box grid is really useful because that’s a combination of performance and potential of each employee. It’s helpful to see an overview of the team or the entire company to see where they sit on the grid and where people are in terms of their objectives.

One of the biggest elements of the reporting we use is the engagement statistic that allows us to report on the communications we send out. It’s a lot higher than it would have been if we were just sending things out via email.”

StaffCircle has seen many HR leaders turn away from the traditional annual appraisal in favour of continuous feedback. It provides a better employee experience, opening up real-time communication on progress to improve engagement around performance and development.