Using Performance Management to Build a High-Performance Culture

Company Industry – Insurance

The Situation:

  • A 75 year old diversified financial services organization with a proven track record of success
  • A recent acquisition doubled the size of the organization to 11,000 employees
  • Suffered major losses after the acquisition due to lack of preparedness and poor financial health of the acquired company
  • Current net revenue was (989.2M) – the largest loss in the company’s history
  • Only about 30% of employees currently completed performance reviews on a regular basis
  • Complete change in leadership team

What We Did:

Built a sustainable performance-oriented culture by:

  • Redefining the company vision and desired culture
  • Explicitly articulating new behavioral expectations for leaders and all employees
  • Creating a new performance management process that included:
    • Aligning and cascading goals throughout the company to create a clear line of sight with measurable results
    • Holding managers and employees accountable for behavior and results
    • A strong developmental component to encourage a continuous improvement focus on performance
    • Creating an explicit linkage between pay and performance and educating everyone how it works
    • Providing training, tool kits, and job aids to assist managers

The Outcome:

  • The year following implementation the company had it’s best financial performance in over four years, 301.1M in net revenue
  • In the first year of implementation, 98% of employees had performance discussions with their managers.  In year two, 96% of employees had set goals for the year
  • 94% of employees reported that they understood how their pay was derived from their performance
  • 95% of the managers reported that they believe that the new process will help their work unit to achieve its goals