Enquero is committed to continuous improvement — they do not take a “set it and forget it” approach to their performance programs. The global technology company continuously improves all of their processes, from goal-setting to recognition. Our below Q&A with Marietta Harvey, VP and Global Head of HR, and Cana Trahan, Senior HR Specialist includes best practices on building a high-performing culture for a newly remote workforce.
Reflektive: Can you tell us a little bit about Enquero?
Cana: Enquero is a technology solutions company headquartered in Silicon Valley. We have 600 employees around the world, including Hyderabad, India and Lafayette, Louisiana. Enquero was founded in 2014, and we help organizations digitize information, skills, and experiences.
Reflektive: What was performance management like prior to using Reflektive?
Marietta: The platform we used before did not fit our culture and the continuous feedback model we desired. We weren’t seeing the results we were looking for.
Reflektive: What was the turning point that inspired you to make a change?
Marietta: We were planning our next review cycle, and really needed a customizable solution that would fit our needs. We wanted to modify questions, send nudges, and incorporate feedback into our reviews. Reflektive enabled us to accomplish those things. And it equipped us with powerful people insights to consistently improve our programs.
Reflektive: That continuous improvement is great to hear. Can you speak more about Enquero’s recent transition to a remote workforce, and how you’re continuing to prioritize talent management while employees are working from home?
Marietta: Since our employees are working remotely, we knew it would be crucial to maintain our culture, and focus on the employee experience. We needed to create programs and activities to foster connectedness, morale, and collaboration. In light of this, we accelerated virtual meetings and social events such as:
- 25+ social events to foster connectedness (snapshot below)
- Town hall meetings with executives to improve communication and transparency
- Technology such as Reflektive to drive a continuous culture of feedback, collaboration, regular employee/manager check-ins, and recognition
- Virtual training sessions
Reflektive: Those initiatives sound like great ways to keep your culture going while employees are remote. How did you decide which programs to launch?
Marietta: We leverage Engagement data from Reflektive to understand how employees are feeling, and how our performance programs are going. The data enables us to strategize, rather than just checking the box. It also supports our talent management efforts, as we can coach and develop employees based on our insights.
Cana: We like sending quick employee surveys and often leverage the pre-built survey templates in Reflektive — it makes our work so easy!
Additionally, we use People Intelligence to pull insights on how our programs are performing. For instance, we saw that we hit a 100% completion rate for our most recent check-in, so we know we made the right improvements to that process! Other powerful insights come from our engagement surveys.
Reflektive: How do you decide when to send out surveys, and what questions to include?
Marietta: In the past several months, we’ve sent out the following surveys:
- December – Full Engagement Survey: This provided benchmark data that we can use to see how sentiment changes over time. We were also able to slice the data by location to understand how sentiment varies for US-based and India-based employees.
- April – Coronavirus Sentiment Survey: Reflektive’s survey helped us see what Enquero is doing well and where we can improve regarding our handling of the pandemic.
- May – Work-from-Home Survey: We achieved a 98% completion rate for this survey! The survey helped us assess how employees are feeling about their remote work set-up, and where there are opportunities for improvement.
- July – Employee Activity Survey: This survey helped us better identify the types of activities and events that employees would like while they work remotely.
We also have onboarding and exit surveys in Reflektive for new and departing employees.
Learn more engagement survey best practices with Reflektive’s Ultimate Guide to Employee Engagement Surveys.
Reflektive: What changes have you made based on insights from your most recent engagement surveys?
Marietta: We’re always making changes based on our learnings! Instead of “set it and forget it”, our motto is “set it and improve based on employee feedback”. We’ve enhanced the following programs:
- Onboarding Process: We learned that new employees felt overwhelmed by information on their first day. Now, we’re separating out the first day orientation (covering pay, benefits, and other crucial items) and a monthly new hire orientation. The latter includes a deeper dive on policies, procedures, company culture, and tools.
- Ongoing Feedback: Employees desire continuous feedback to grow in their roles. To address this need, our HR Business Partners ensure that managers and employees are conducting regular 1:1 conversations and having quarterly check-ins.
- Career Mapping: We developed “Grow with Enquero” career paths for each role so employees know how to develop and advance.
Reflektive: Are there any other unique performance programs you’ve rolled out differently, that have benefited your employees? What results have you achieved?
Marietta: We are using OKRs (Objectives, Key Results) as part of our check-ins. We take a bottom-up approach on setting goals. This helps employees focus on their unique developmental goals, while still enabling them to view and support company and business unit objectives. And we’re seeing results from this unique approach too – we’ve observed 80% OKR adoption since launching Reflektive, with an average of 3 goals per employee. We have 1,424 goals total – and this is less than six months after we rolled out Reflektive’s Goals module!
Cana: The added goal visibility in Reflektive definitely helped. I accomplished my two biggest goals – implementing our iCIMS platform on a global scale and enabling HRBPs with reporting knowledge. Seeing these goals front and center in Reflektive was a helpful reminder!
Reflektive: That’s great to hear! Are there any company-wide goals that you’ve been able to achieve?
Marietta: One of our company-wide goals was creating a culture of thanks, and Reflektive helped us do that. 77% of Enquero employees have received recognition already. The recognition lives on an employee’s profile — it’s really quite motivating! Employees like that they can give recognition directly through Microsoft Teams.
Reflektive: It sounds like Reflektive’s integration with Microsoft Teams is really helpful for driving a culture of feedback. Do you use other Reflektive integrations?
Marietta: Yes, we use the ADP Workforce Now integration. It feeds data into Reflektive so employee information is always up-to-date. This was crucial for us in selecting a performance management system. Now everything is digital, and I never need to do manual updates!
Reflektive: Are there any other benefits for you and the HR team in using Reflektive?
Marietta: Yes, we’ve seen many. The HR Business Partners are having a higher level of collaboration and partnership with employees and management. We’ve been able to support employees more effectively through productive conversations. For instance, with our remote workforce, the boundaries between work and personal time have become blurred. We’ve uncovered that some employees feel that although they are motivated, they have workload challenges. We are working with both employees and managers to address this.
Reflektive: Final question: can you talk more about your experience with your Customer Success Manager and Support team?
Cana: I love my Reflektive team! My CSM is so helpful and a great partner, and responds faster than I could imagine. Reflektive support is the most responsive support team I’ve ever worked with. Even getting the developers involved has been so timely. With other companies, it can take a month or weeks of wait time. Even if it’s a complex issue with Reflektive, support is great and keeps me informed every step of the way.