SmartPak Increases Employee Satisfaction With Performance Management By 252% In Less Than 1 Month

The Challenge

In 2016, the SmartPak team started to reach a breaking point with their antiquated HR programs. Their processes were primarily paper-based and too bureaucratic. Running programs such as their annual performance reviews on Microsoft Word was adding countless hours of work rather than real business value.

“For us, it was a lot of work, stress, and process that had very little output benefit for the associates,” said Rob McClellan, Chief Technology Officer at SmartPak. “The reviews were overstated, and everyone was rated a 4 or a 5, with rare exception. Many people sort of blended together, and we had no way of knowing if meaningful conversations between employees and managers were happening. It was too retroactive. Reviews often addressed things that happened 14 months before. That didn’t really fit into the “speed” aspect of our values.”

The Solution

SmartPak decided they needed a solution that made performance management processes simpler but didn’t require them to completely redesign their program. McClellan introduced Reflektive as a potential solution to his executive team after being exposed to the products at a former company. He committed to champion this program and roll out Reflektive to his IT team first.

“It wasn’t that I just hated the existing process, but I was willing to invest in alternatives, and work on the design aspects with HR.”

Rob McClellan
Chief Technology Officer at SmartPak

With Rob at the helm as the executive sponsor driving this initiative (with HR playing a supporting role), this made a huge difference in affecting change quickly and powerfully. It was also advantageous to start with the IT department since they had experience testing software, assessing data and training people to use new technology.

The Results

Before launching Reflektive to the entire company in January, SmartPak’s IT department tested the new process under McClellan’s leadership. They carefully tracked the eNPS for their pilot and achieved these impressive results in just four short months:

SmartPak left their annual goal setting process in the past, and they are currently running quarterly check-ins with all of their employees through Reflektive. Instead of a backwards-looking approach, the new process aims to bring real, positive change to the organization by asking each employee to regularly evaluate what immediate benefits they can bring in order to drive the SmartPak mission forward.

Overview
SmartPak is an equine health company that is primarily about healthy horses, and secondarily about happy riders. They sell countless combinations of horse supplements as well as equine accessories. They’re proud of their highly specialized, knowledgeable workforce that is serious about supporting healthy horses. Their dedication to employee success earned them spot on the Boston Globe’s Top 100 Places to Work list.

Industry
Retail

Year Founded
1999

Headquarters
Plymouth, MA

Employees
200

Mission
To make the world a better place using our smarts to power healthy horses and happy riders.ValuesSpeed, Maniacal customer focus, Analysis, Risk taking, Team, Execution, Respect