Using Performance Management to Build a High-Performance Culture
Company Industry – Insurance
The Situation:
- A 75 year old diversified financial services organization with a proven track record of success
- A recent acquisition doubled the size of the organization to 11,000 employees
- Suffered major losses after the acquisition due to lack of preparedness and poor financial health of the acquired company
- Current net revenue was (989.2M) – the largest loss in the company’s history
- Only about 30% of employees currently completed performance reviews on a regular basis
- Complete change in leadership team
What We Did:
Built a sustainable performance-oriented culture by:
- Redefining the company vision and desired culture
- Explicitly articulating new behavioral expectations for leaders and all employees
- Creating a new performance management process that included:
- Aligning and cascading goals throughout the company to create a clear line of sight with measurable results
- Holding managers and employees accountable for behavior and results
- A strong developmental component to encourage a continuous improvement focus on performance
- Creating an explicit linkage between pay and performance and educating everyone how it works
- Providing training, tool kits, and job aids to assist managers
The Outcome:
- The year following implementation the company had it’s best financial performance in over four years, 301.1M in net revenue
- In the first year of implementation, 98% of employees had performance discussions with their managers. In year two, 96% of employees had set goals for the year
- 94% of employees reported that they understood how their pay was derived from their performance
- 95% of the managers reported that they believe that the new process will help their work unit to achieve its goals