Keeping in touch with staff

QUICK, regular contact is more effective than annual performance reviews.

Vinomofo co-founder Andre Eikmeier says issues are dealt with as they arise rather than having staff stew over them.

Companies are increasingly looking for an edge to retain staff, remain profitable and increase productivity while facing financial challenges and a tight economy.

One way of improving engagement and productivity, says American entrepreneur David Hassell, is to improve communication between management and staff.

Hassell, an influential player in the tech start-up industry in California, is making inroads into human resources and performance review practices. Two years ago he launched his 15Five feedback system, which now has users in more than 100 countries, including 30 companies in Australia.

The system provides a mini performance review for employees answering a series of questions on a weekly basis. The reviews take employees up to 15 minutes — providing a quick overview of what they have been doing, whether they are meeting goals and how they feel about work.

Reviews are then forwarded to managers, who spend five minutes going through them.

“From the manager’s perspective you get a snapshot of all of the things that are happening with your staff. There’s almost zero effort,” Hassell says.

“You get a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening. It’s super efficient and saves time. For an employee, they get to give their own perspective on how they’re going and they get to have a voice in the company.”

Hassell has been described as “the most connected man you don’t know in Silicon Valley”. He organises invitation-only dinners for some of most influential entrepreneurs in the US, an annual gathering for Silicon Valley chief executives in Hawaii — including venture capitalists from Apple, Google and Facebook — and he has been the president of the San Francisco chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation.

He credits environmentalist Yvon Chouinard for coming up with the 15 and five review idea, which was created as means for the mountaineer to efficiently keep tabs on his business while climbing.

Hassell commercialised 15Five in 2012, raising more than $1 million in venture capital.

Like Chouinard, Hassell did not want to be tied to his desk year-round, and wanted other executives to be able to keep in touch with employees.

“Everyone has laptops and phones and we don’t want to be stuck in a worksite — we want to be fluid,” he says.

“If you let go of the fear that you can’t see your people and they’re doing their work elsewhere, if you put your trust in them, you can know what they’re doing. Because of that there’s going to be a broadening market for (systems like this).”

There is little or no stress involved if feedback is delivered on a weekly basis, compared to an annual performance review — which staff often dread and stress about in the weeks leading to them.

Other Australian companies are adopting regular feedback methods, recognising the growing need for increased engagement between staff and managers. Corporate training and advisory organisation Leading Teams advocates regular reviews to ensure workers and their managers are not in for surprises during evaluations.

While working with sporting bodies including the Sydney Swans, Leading Teams has helped instigate a program where players and team managers constantly provide peers with feedback to ensure everyone is on the same level and understands the club’s culture and goals.

Swans chief executive Andrew Ireland says it can be confronting for some players, but they quickly learn regular feedback can make them a better player in a cohesive team.

The Davidson Institute, Westpac’s educational arm, advises that performance reviews need not be “tiresome and difficult”, and should not contain any surprises if held regularly.

“Feedback should happen regularly to ensure all parties are on the same page and any issues can be addressed quickly,” the Davidson Institute says.

Wine retailer says 15Five ‘a spot fire eliminator’

BOUTIQUE wine retailer Vinomofo turned to 15Five two years ago as a way of measuring performance and improving organisational culture.

Melbourne-based co-founder Andre Eikmeier says it has made a “massive” difference, with issues being dealt with as they arise rather than having staff stew over problems, failing to raise concerns.

He says it has been difficult to keep up with rapid growth since the company began in 2011. “We were putting a lot of face-to-face time in once a month and trying to keep in touch with culture but we found it impossible and for a while we dropped the ball,” Eikmeier says. “We tried different ways, we had an open-door strategy, but people wouldn’t do that. Then we found 15Five and it made it easy for us to have feedback and constant communications.”

In the past three years the company has grown from a handful of staff to about 50, and it has 270,000 Australian customers and revenue of $26 million. Vinomofo’s central office is in Melbourne but it has a small site central to wine-growing regions in Adelaide.

Eikmeier says staff undertake a five-minute review every Monday morning, based on goals they achieved the previous week, goals for the coming week, concerns they have or tasks they found challenging. Staff can also reflect and reconnect with their work from the previous week, learn from anything new and set challenges.

The reviews are handed up the management chain as they come through, and Eikmeier spends about 30 minutes a week reading and responding.

“If somebody’s got an issue it turns into a conversation and everything gets solved at the start of the week,” he says. “You’re asking them to be accountable culturally and making them think about the right stuff.”

He describes the system as “a spot fire eliminator” because it prevents issues festering.

“If people have responded about things three or four weeks in a row, you know it’s not just a gripe, it’s a problem. We can then work on that.”