How do you make a hybrid model work?

Everyone here at Virgin Money recognised a need for change when it came to our performance management. “Virtually every one of our employees had previously had a bad performance management experience – maybe not in the previous year, or even the year before that, but at some point everyone had been scarred by poor performance practices,” says Francis Lake, our Head of Organisational Development.

“Everyone had been scarred by poor performance practices.”

Our existing performance model had a weighted focus on process over purpose – leading to futile performance scorecards, ratings and appraisals being forced upon both employees and managers, creating resentment and demotivation. Needless to say, the impact on performance improvement outcomes was not a positive one.

For managers, this resentment was compounded by the fact that the existing performance system was failing them as employees, whilst at a managerial
level, the same system was also proving to be a huge source of frustration, creating mountains of neverending – and ultimately pointless – admin. A plan for positive performance change had to be put in place.

But for Francis and his team, the initial – and perhaps greatest – challenge was a long-engrained fear of change which had arisen after several failed performance improvement initiatives here at Virgin Money. 

“We had to change people’s mindset in this regard,” Francis says. “This time we were determined to get it right. In particular, switching managers away from viewing performance management as a list of tasks to be completed, and instead, encouraging them to think about how they could help people to perform better. That was a fundamental challenge for us.” He continues: “Before we went anywhere near a new performance management system, we knew that we needed to improve the capabilities of our line managers – both for their benefit, and the benefit of those being supervised by them. We invested heavily in a new management framework, which involved training our managers to get the best out of people.

“As part of this, we also spent time educating our people as to why frequent feedback and continuous conversations lead to significantly better performance outcomes – a key element that we needed everyone to understand and show a commitment to.”

Finding a partner

Whilst Virgin Money’s new management framework was being constructed and strides were being made to create a more positive performance-focused culture, Francis and his team were working on sourcing a new performance technology partner.

“Our vision was for a very different, much more simple model,” says Francis. “We wanted to do away with individual scorecards, instead focusing on team goals that would foster a culture of teamwork and continual improvement. Within this, our specification was for each employee to have two personal goals – one that they would set themselves, and one that would be set by their manager.

“We felt this was the best way to include employees and enable them to better manage their own performance and improvement. This employee and manager approach was also key to us fostering the sense of partnership we needed to make this a success.”

In our search for a better performance management system, increasing the frequency of performance feedback was a key stipulation. We also wanted feedback to be more simple and concise – both in ongoing ‘check-in’ conversations and quarterly employee-manager feedback meetings. Specifically, we asked employees to cite one thing they like and are happy with, and one thing that could be done better. As Francis explains, this change had results: “This has not only actively encouraged ongoing performance conversations, but ensured they are centred around positivity, encouragement, and incremental improvement.”

As we worked to create the right performance framework and train managers to optimise its eventual success, we knew that we would require a performance management that delivered a simple yet powerful end user experience. We didn’t want to distract people from what was important: building high quality, meaningful conversations. In March 2019, we decided to implement a new performance management platform from OneAdvanced to support our transformation. 

“We wanted to do away with individual scorecards, instead focusing on team goals that would foster a culture of teamwork and continual improvement.”