Employee programs
Performance management is an ongoing process of setting individual and team goals and objectives aligned with the company’s strategic goals, measuring the progress of an employee’s progress towards these goals, and developing employees on skills needed to meet these goals.
Structure of Employee programs
Employee programs provide admins the ability to manage their company’s performance management activities. They also help organizations in distinguishing between distinct areas of their business. These areas can have different organizational-level configurations and can be managed by different program leads. A program contains reporting and navigation. An organization can use multiple Programs or just one. For Goals and Assessments, Employee programs contain cycles, which contain Waves. For 360 Performance reviews, Employee programs contain cycles, which contain reviews and then Waves.
Cycles are periods of time, such as a calendar year, when organizations plan to run Waves or Reviews in a Program. Cycles are required for individual Waves; however, multiple Waves do not need to exist per cycle. Cycles can overlap, but it is recommended that a main cycle and an off cycle exist, per the following example:
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Population 1 main Cycle — Goal setting launches February; mid-year ratings, self-assessments, and reviews occur from June to July; year-end ratings, self-assessments, and reviews occur September through January.
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Population 2 off Cycle — Goal setting launches August; mid-year ratings, self-assessments, and reviews occur December-January; year-end ratings, self-assessments, and reviews occur May through July.
Waves are time-bound instances of an HR process (for example, Year-end performance assessment or Mid-year goals setting). For each Wave in a program, the administrator defines a set of eligible or required users, and those users will receive access to applicable features for a defined period of time. For instance, if an organization wants ad hoc goal settings to be live constantly, that organization can configure Waves to span multiple years.
Phases are periods of time within Waves that enable specific users to take part in defined activities. For example, for year-end and performance reviews, only employees can self assess for a specific time, after which manager assessments take place. Finally, release and acknowledgement phases take place. In many cases, phases can overlap and the ordering of phases can be shifted to suit the specific needs of Waves.
Accessing Employee programs
To use Employee Programs, roles need one of the following permissions under the Feedback listed in Administrative permissions:
- Create Employee programs
- Manage Employee programs
To launch Employee programs, open Admin Suite and select Employee Programs from the Signal Capture section in the left navigation bar.
The Employee Programs screen shows all Employee programs that have been created in your organization. Use the search bar at the top of the page to search for Programs and Waves within Programs.
Creating an Employee program
To create a new Employee program, complete the following steps:
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Click New Employee Program in the top right of the page.
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In the details pane that opens, enter a unique name for the program and (optionally) a description. Then click Continue.
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To add or edit Waves, Assessments, or 360 Feedback to the Employee Program, see Configuring Goals, Configuring Assessments, and Configuring 360 Feedback reviews.
Configuring Cycles
Click Settings and select Cycles in the top right corner of the Employee programs details page to view and configure cycles.
The cycles that are listed appear in the Cycle dropdown during the Wave, Assessment, and 360 Feedback creation process. Hover over a cycle and click the edit icon to the right of the cycle name to edit cycle details. Click Add Cycle to create a new cycle with a unique cycle name and start and end dates. Then click Done.
Importing and exporting options
Click View history in the top right corner of the Employee programs details page to view import history.
Click the options menu to upload or export relationship files or export employee hierarchy files. See Employee relationships for details on how relationships work in Employee Programs.
See Manual Imports for additional details on both uploading/exporting files and viewing upload history.
