Gaining ground with CPM

A few facts:

1. Today, more than one-third of senior managers say that “finding talent” is their most significant managerial challenge.
2. Companies that implement regular performance feedback are reported to have nearly 15% less turnover rates. 
3. The cost of rehiring is estimated to be between 90-200% of an employees salary.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to calculate that keeping employees engaged pays off.

At MessageBird, our 350+ employees represent over 40 nationalities and have backgrounds equally diverse. Whether it’s the first job out of university or they’ve joined us from a large global corporation, the one commonality is that everyone appreciates regular feedback.  And it’s not just our company.  In a global study conducted in over 1000 organisations across 150 countries, a whopping 96% of employees said that they want to hear feedback more regularly.  96%!

What’s stopping organisations from implementing more ongoing feedback cycles?

For anyone who has gone through a formal review process, the time it can take to gather the information to make an assessment of an employee’s performance can indeed feel like a very heavy lift.  Remembering the good along with the areas for improvement can feel like a herculean task if not documented well along the way. What’s worse is that if you don’t get it right, you run the risk of demotivating or even losing an employee.  It’s no wonder many organisations put giving feedback on the back burner. 

The case for CPM

After receiving our Series A funding round, MessageBird hired rapidly to get going on the roadmap we wanted to build.  In less than a year, we more than doubled our employee base. With the rapid hiring blitz, on-boarding employees was a challenge and setting goals and giving feedback felt like a luxury we couldn’t afford.  What we quickly learned is that establishing more consistent feedback processes was exactly what we couldn’t afford NOT to do.  As a rapidly growing company, we found that to better align the teams in times of change, we needed a more direct line to employees

It was precisely because we didn’t have all the systems and processes in place, that we couldn’t afford to not build in CPM practices.  In fact, it was out of the need to get everyone aligned more quickly that our CPM was born.

Through trial and error, we identified 3 key learnings when implementing our initial CPM processes:

There’s no better time to get started

The pace of business today, and certainly that at a startup/scaleup, can often feel like a constant sprint.  If you wait for the pace to slow before taking the time to give feedback, you’ll likely never find the time.  The sooner you start, the sooner it will become part of your process and the sooner you can see tangible results

While formal CPM processes and tools are certainly helpful, not having them is not a reason to delay. You don’t need to hire a consulting agency or deploy an HR tool to get started.  We learned that CPM can start with a simple commitment from managers to hold weekly one-on-ones.  Setting short term goals and having regular discussions around progress toward those goals would seem like a no-brainer, but when there’s a time crunch, one-on-ones can be the first thing to fall from the calendar.  We’ve found that by making regular check-ins a priority, we are able to better align the team for efficiency. When priorities change - as they will - we are more able to quickly align the teams behind those changing priorities. The added bonus is that face time with managers helps assimilate newcomers more efficiently, as well.

Participation Needs to be Cultivated

Particularly when building a company from the ground up, there is a sense of urgency around having all the systems in place that will make management easier.  Some of your employees will come from established businesses and have expectations about how things should operate.  Others will be new to their careers and be soaking everything in and wanting to learn from you.  Chances are, you’re not always going to have all the processes and systems in place that you want or that make it easy to establish norms right off the bat.  Still, it’s important to focus on progress over perfection. 

On our journey to building both our company and our CPM practices, we’ve found several different ways to establish an ongoing feedback loop that work for us. Survey tools and regular pulse surveys provide actionable data for us to improve and regular all hands meetings with open Q&A sessions ensure that feedback is not just top down. 

Course Correction is to be Expected

It’s probably human nature to want all the answers to all questions before communicating a plan or setting employee goals.  But, when employees don’t know what they’re working toward, it’s like driving in the dark without headlights - hey are often less confident about charging forward and therefore less likely to give their best performance. 

We’ve found that even short term goals and regular check-ins on progress toward those goals create more motivated employees. After all, most employees want to do a good job and are able to roll with the inevitable changes to priorities and goals when they have a better understanding of why the changes are being made.

While CPM can feel like a time intensive process, small steps toward more continuous feedback loops can create big leaps forward in both efficiency and morale over time.