Located in and around a major city in the US, this PeopleFluent customer is a large multi-specialist clinic system with over 30 locations. Across a large range of medical specialties, the clinic has served its community since the middle of the 20th century.

The Challenge: Scaling Systems and Processes to Manage Headcount Growth

The clinic is readying itself to grow over the next decade. It anticipates expansion of its location portfolio, professional roster, and specialist medical coverage as it evolves to meet the complex challenges of the healthcare sector. The clinic has established an HR Systems and Process Improvement team to tackle the logistics of this growth. This team has been empowered to identify gaps in coverage and potential improvements for existing systems.

In 2020, performance management and compensation were identified as two key areas among those requiring improvement. Previously, the clinic had been operating a home-grown performance management system. Developed many years prior, this system was proving difficult to scale and maintain. Meanwhile, its existing compensation processes presented similar problems. The HR Systems and Process Improvement team felt there was an over-reliance on spreadsheets and manual uploads to the existing system. They felt the system lacked a proper compensation model on which to base decisions. It also needed a robust way of connecting performance information with compensation.

Any replacement systems needed to be user-friendly, with the potential for quick implementation. The HR Systems and Process Improvement team envisaged any new platform slotting into the place of existing processes. This approach was intended to change very little from a manager's perspective while building the data points and connections that would support the creation of a true performance management cycle.

The Solution: Expanding Possibilities With PeopleFluent Performance and Compensation

The clinic selected PeopleFluent’s performance management and compensation solutions and implemented them in late 2021 and early 2022 respectively. This decision was made on the basis of the team’s confidence in each platform’s ability to scale to future organizational growth, and the overall ease-of-use of both platforms.

PeopleFluent Performance was fully integrated with the customer’s appraisal process in the first year of use, with a greater focus on goal setting and management emphasized in the second cycle. The platform is enabling a big shift in this area: managers and employees can agree on goals and input them into the system, and track progress through development conversations held throughout the year. These goals can also be tracked against organization and enterprise goals. The platform also allows for a wider range of useful reports, keeping managers informed about this progress.

PeopleFluent Compensation has been implemented with a similarly phased approach. The clinic is using it to manage merit worksheets in the first cycle, with the addition of employee bonus management and other features in the second. In both cases, PeopleFluent’s platforms are allowing the clinic to prioritize streamlining what it already does, avoiding disruption, before taking steps to expand its scope and improve in new areas.

During implementation, the customer’s training team ran online sessions for management staff. The overall simplicity of submitting appraisals and worksheets, as well as a series of job aids and tutorial videos (both self-made and provided by PeopleFluent support) helped ensure a smooth transition to using the new platforms.

The Results: Streamlined Processes and New Approaches

PeopleFluent Performance is now available to the clinic’s entire employee population—around 3,500 people. PeopleFluent Compensation is used by a more specialized group of around 25 people, although it will of course be used in decision-making across the entire organization.

The customer’s HR Systems and Process Improvement team continues to receive positive feedback about both platforms from managers, indicating that the goal of making an unobtrusive and easy-to-use change to its processes has been met.

Both platforms are bringing increased efficiency over those they’re replacing: in the case of PeopleFluent Performance, the team estimates that time spent administrating performance appraisals has been reduced by 40%. It believes that having the ability to more easily send reports out is a key driving factor for this improvement. The platform’s clear signposting of outstanding performers is another. The team has gone from not being able to run mid-year check-ins to being able to work with goals all year round.

Though implemented more recently, PeopleFluent Compensation has been lauded for the efficiencies and time savings it has bought, particularly by offering a single point of truth. Discussing the improvement, a spokesperson for the clinic remarked: “With PeopleFluent, it’s just there, tracked, approved, and all in one place”.