If you’ve been an HR Business Partner for long enough, you would have experienced calibration meetings being a cumbersome process. A process where managers are asked to fill spreadsheets or PowerPoint slides in a specific format to capture employee information such as name, level, accomplishments, rating, justification, promotion nomination, succession plan and development plan. The main purpose of using these spreadsheets is to calibrate using information that was created in a consistent format that allowed for same standards and accurate data points while discussing employee contributions of a team in the managers meeting. It used to be a nightmare to manage this process especially if team sizes were large and dispersed in various locations. Thankfully those days are over! Goal setting, performance appraisals, calibration meetings, promotion nominations and compensation planning – everything needed to manage the talent of an organization – is now seamlessly integrated into SuccessFactors’ ‘Integrated Talent Management Solution.
With the Performance Review cycle just around the corner, I’m looking forward to use the calibration tool again with all its cool upgraded functionalities. This tool has different views that organizes and displays relevant talent data for a group of employees allowing managers to focus on the conversations and outcomes, rather than manual data collection activities!
What I love most about the calibration tool is:
- As HR Leaders, we have insight into the organization’s talent at our fingertips, real time.
- Executives benefit from being able to review real time aggregated data across all sections for a given calibration cycle.
- HR leaders, Executives and Managers get visibility regarding who the real superstars are through the 9-box matrix grid view. Thus allowing us to develop and reward appropriately.
- The calibration tool’s interface facilitates fairness by eliminating the issue of one manager’s “easy” rating system versus another manager’s “difficult” rating system since it’s easy to question and seek justification if someone is incorrectly rated too high or too low.
Key functionalities include easy of use, adding/removing people to calibrate appropriate groups, moving employees up or down a performance/potential rating using drag and drop, incorporates employee data from the Performance, Compensation, Succession and Employee Profile modules and allows us to use different filters to compare and calibrate a subset of employees within the calibration session.
Overall, this calibration tool is a powerful method for quickly driving a company to a high level of talent management maturity. It allows for managers to be more productive by avoiding manual data collection. SuccessFactors ‘Integrated Talent Management’ solution has enabled us, as HR Leaders, to acquire a whole different view of the workforce and a better understanding of the health of the talent overall.
