Betterworks

What do you like best?

It is very easy to use. The tabs are organized in such a way that everything I need is easy to find. It's very intuitive. One can just go in and start using the system.

Another thing that I like about it is the fact that it's customizable. We have done a couple of changes to the specs so that it more closely matches the needs of the company. We have integrated many things such as career development focus for the coming quarter, and testimonials from other users.

One can also view the goals of other employees if they are tagged as viewable by anyone. It makes it easy to benchmark one's goals with the goals of a comparable employee or team.

I can view my goals, the goals of my manager, the goals of my direct reports, and the goals of other people who are not necessarily on my team. If there are corporate goals that many employees are supposed to put under their individual goals, one can very easily view them, and copy-paste if needed.

The fact that you can request feedback from other employees makes it very easy to take other people's points of view when a manager makes a performance evaluation of a team member. One can simply type the name of a person that your team member works with, say an internal client, and request them to provide useful feedback. If you have many direct reports, all that feedback may be accessed in one place. Compared to asking for feedback via email, this method is so much more convenient. With email, I could get several pieces of feedback and have a hard time searching for them, but with Betterworks, they're all in one tab.

I also like it that the manager is alerted once their team member has completed their self-assessment. This makes it easy for the manager to move on the next step of the appraisal process by putting in their own comments to what the employee has written down.

I also like the fact that goals from the previous year are still visible.

What do you dislike?

I suppose the idea of linking my goals with the goals of another person is a bit tricky. That's one thing that I need to figure out how to do. I work around it by just copying and pasting other people's goals that are relevant to me.

I think the term that is used is alignment. When you align your goals to someone else, your goals get linked together. This means that if one person does not meet their goals, it will impact the other person's rating.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Try it out, it simplifies your life. Ask people who have used the system to get an idea of what their experience is.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The main benefit is the fact that it's a central repository of everyone's goals. All employees who are not front-liners have their goals documented in the system. This makes it very easy to do performance appraisals. One simply needs to compare what someone has achieved versus what they originally wrote down as a goal at the beginning of the year.

The option to click on radio buttons that specify whether someone has achieved all of their goals, some but not all, or not at all, takes the guesswork when determining whether someone has completed their goals or not. The percentage of completion for each of the goals also makes it easy to determine just how far an employee has gotten towards accomplishing all their goals.

This makes it easy for all employees to articulate, document, and update their goals for the year. As soon as they make some progress towards the completion of their goal, they can simply update each one, using both the percentage completion, and a comments section that allows them to enter useful information such.

The company also uses Betterworks to get people to say their career focus for the next quarter will be. This is giving employees a chance to tell their manager what's on their mind as far as career growth is concerned.

Another thing that we have added to the system are 3 options that allow an employee to declare what they would like to happen to their career. They can choose any of the following options: enhance, expand, or explore. The first option means they would like to further deepen their knowledge and skills about their current role. The second option means they are looking for advancement, either in the form of a promotion or additional training, or additional coverage. The third option means they're ready to look for roles outside of their current team or larger group.

This makes it so easy for anyone to tell their manager exactly what they want to happen to their career. There is also some room for them to enumerate the actions that they will take to support their chosen career focus.

When it's time for the manager and the team member to have their regular meeting, the manager can simply access what the team member has written down, react to it, and prepare for their one-on-one.

Here is a list of benefits that we have seen: faster collaboration, ease of entering one's goals and documenting progress, higher compliance to documenting one's goals, and greater employee satsifaction specifically in the area of performance management.