Meetupcall provide a bespoke meeting platform, combining audio and video conferencing. The company, based in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK was founded in 2009 and has 20 employees.
Corrin Logsdail is their People Development Manager. She joined the company in 2018 and is the driving force behind embedding performance management into the DNA of Meetupcall.
The issue
- No formalised review system.
- A few word documents were used but not consistently.
- Information on employee development was not held centrally.
- Employees had no clear understanding of how they were doing or goals to aim for.
Why change was needed
- A growing organisation – more people meant better organisation was needed.
- Required a better way to monitor the progress of employees.
- Wanted something to motivate and inspire employees to focus on their own development.
With my background in HR, when I joined Meetupcall, I knew the time was right to introduce a more formal approach to reviews. The company was growing, and employees needed more structure to help them reach their full potential. As well as that, managers needed better insights into how well employees were progressing and how they needed to develop to reach the next level.
Planning session at Meetupcall
Must-haves for a new system
- Easy to update and manage in house.
- Simple to customise to meet their specific requirements.
- Intuitive for users.
- Reasonable cost.
Why Appraisd?
- It does exactly what it says on the tin – no false promises about specification or functionality.
- Experts at performance management – totally focused on everything to do with the topic.
- Attracted by the simplicity and design of the system – easy for users to navigate and understand quickly with only minimal training and support.
I must have trialed at least 35 different systems. We were very clear we wanted something that was dedicated to performance reviews, not an all-in-one system that didn’t provide enough depth or flexibility. We chose Appraisd because it does what it does extremely well, and we felt they were on our wavelength and understood exactly what we needed.
Rolling out Appraisd
- Easy for Corrin to set up herself.
- Initial testing with the development team to establish the best set-up for employees to follow and understand.
- Customer Success team always available to answer questions or offer support.
Employees are fully engaged with the process. They have formal reviews twice yearly in January and July and these are supported by weekly 1-2-1s with their line manager. From the start, it was made clear that reviews were separate from salary and benefit discussions, avoiding any confusion and highlighting our commitment to their development.
Strong collaboration is at the heart of Meetupcall's success
The benefits
- Employees now have a clear grasp of how they are performing. The on-going conversations mean nothing discussed at a review is a surprise.
- Career progression is on the agenda, employees have a formal opportunity to express where they want to be, and a path is laid out to achieve their ambitions.
- Employees now know that just doing their job is the least that’s expected, the reviews have pushed them to want to do more, encouraging them to aim for aspirational goals.
- Having an opportunity to have discussions around their development has prevented employees from looking outside the organisation for their next opportunity.
- For senior managers, the reviews effectively highlight rising talent within the organisation, facilitating better succession planning.