EasyReviews.com: free performance review software

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. Today we’re talking with Jim Matheson, who’s the Director of Web Operations here at SuccessFactors, and we’re going to be talking with Jim about a freeware product that SuccessFactors recently released.

Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim

Thanks for having me, Steve.

Steve

I guess I should say, “Welcome back to the show”, because for those of you that have been following People Performance Radio for a long time, the two or three of you out there, Jim and I used to do more co-hosting, but now Jim’s moved on to other things, and one of them is this Easy Review product. So Jim, what is Easy Review?

Jim

Well, it’s actually, Easy Reviews with an ‘s’, and if people want to check it out, they can go to easyreviews.com, and it’ll drop you right into that section of the SuccessFactors website. What Easy Reviews is, it’s a version of SuccessFactors tools specifically for reviews, it’s a freeware, anybody can sign up, and it’s targeted towards individual managers with teams of up to ten people that just need to get their annual reviews done in a quick and easy manner.

Steve

So what does it allow a manager to do? – so I’m a manager, I have a team of five people, I’ve got to do reviews, I’ve got Easy Review, what does it allow me to do?

Jim

Well, what happens is you log in to Easy Reviews, and once you’re in there, you can quickly set up your team of employees, basic information, what their name is, their email address, and we also ask if they’re male or female, and the key reason for that is, once you jump in and you start doing the reviews, inside this system we actually have two things that are interesting: one is the Skill Set Library, which has over 50 skills (we call them skills, they’re actually competencies), and in there, depending upon what job role somebody’s in, there’s some basic skills set up, and then we also have the Writing Assistant, and that’s where the, if the person is male or female, comes into play, so that’s basically it.

Steve

Can you tell me, so one is it allows you to pick competencies and do ratings on this, which is useful, if you don’t have competency modules; the second thing you said, this Writing Assistant – what actually does the Writing Assistant do? I work for SuccessFactors, so I know what it does, but if you, for those people that haven’t used SuccessFactors, what actually does the Writing Assistant do?

Jim

Well, for a lot of people when it comes time to do reviews for their team, they have a case of the blank page syndrome, where they don’t really know where to get started, and what this allows you to do is pick a competency, and then go right in there and you can start with a baseline in terms of where this person rated on a scale of one through three, between positive and negative, and it’ll give you a basic outline, and from there you can change the tone slightly, and it’ll give you a starting paragraph for that competency based upon how you would rate them on a scale, and then from there you can go in and it’s just much easier to go in, make changes to it, and really customize it and make it personal, but it gives you that starting place.

Steve

So Jim, really what you’re describing is, that’s really one of the core parts of Success Factor systems, this ability to pick competencies, rate people on them and get this really rich text to give behaviourally this feedback on them as a core part of the SuccessFactors’ solution that was built around, isn’t that correct?

Jim

Yeah, definitely, it was definitely a core piece in the beginning, but also from the beginning, our system was built upon, from a company-wide solution, so really allowing to have that visibility across that organization and up and down, so that’s actually not a piece that’s available in Easy Reviews, so folks, if they’re out there, they give Easy Reviews a try, and they really like the system, they’ll kind of get used to SuccessFactors, and then hopefully they can start to graduate into more of a company-wide solution like Professional Audition.

Steve

So is that why SuccessFactors made the decision to give away this part for free, this one section, to basically say, this is probably the part of the system that’s used the most by individual managers, I would imagine, and now we’re just giving that away for free – what was the driver behind that? It seems kind of, very Web 2.0, to give stuff away for free, that’s for sure.

Jim

Yeah definitely, I think looking at it, objectively-speaking, there are a lot of folks, over 4.5 million people, are using SuccessFactors on a regular basis, but there’s this huge amount of other people that aren’t using them, and there’s a lot of companies that don’t have a company-wide system in place for performance reviews, or they’re using something just like Word documents or spreadsheets, and there’s always managers out there that are a little bit more forward-thinking, and/or want a little bit extra help, and want to look at a software solution, even if it’s not tied into the rest of the company, and folks like that really historically haven’t had much of an opportunity to take a look at SuccessFactors, so it really gives us the opportunity to get SuccessFactors in the hands of some of these individual managers.

Steve

Interesting, I know it’s just recently been released – have you seen people using it, has it picked up? What sort of reaction have you gotten from the market so far?

Jim

So far, the reaction has been positive, it was actually released officially on 27th, which was this Monday, so we don’t have a ton of feedback yet, but it sounds like the market’s pretty excited about it, and there’s a little bit of buzz going, so we’re looking forward to seeing how people are using it, and what their interest level is.

Steve

Wow, so I guess you’ll mention again when I’m done where this is located, so basically what SuccessFactors has done here is saying, we’re going to take this core part of a solution which is the part where the managers are able to evaluate their employees and give them effective feedback, and just make this available to individual managers, and this is done out of the belief, it almost feels to me a little bit like the belief that, if managers say they could be better at feedback, they’ll get more hunger for more integrated talent management solutions in general, but until you get over this one critical ability to give good feedback and good performance ratings, it’s kind of hard to move to the next step, so it’s really just, we’ll make this as easy for people as possible, and then we think they’ll get more interested in a more integrated SuccessFactors solution?

Jim

Yeah definitely, without a doubt, I mean as you know, and through all these great podcasts you’ve done over the last six or nine months, with all of these thought leaders, talent management is so much more than an annual performance review, and I think that we’ve mostly been talking to executives and folks in the HR space, but really it’s the front line managers who are doing, are executing most of this talent management, and I think just making it as easy as possible for them to get those annual performance reviews out of the way, and done quickly and easily, but also done well, and being able to give good feedback to their employees, I think it gives a great baseline to start from, to sort of move forward and focus on all of these other areas of talent management that’s really going to make or break a company.

Steve

Yeah, I think so, I think too it’s interesting that, the one thing that managers struggle so much for is just giving good feedback and good dialog, so making this tool really easily available, I think there’s a lot of employees out there who wonder if there’s some subtle way that employees can anonymously send this tool to their managers come performance review time, sort of like, “You know? – how about you use this Easy Reviews tool this time?” You should have an alias email, an anonymous email button so that employees can send it to their managers.

Jim

Definitely, well of course, as you can imagine, we do have a “Tell a friend” section, and if you’re out there and you give Easy Reviews a try, or if you’re already a SuccessFactors customer, and you have colleagues or friends that need help with performance reviews, definitely tell them about Easy Reviews, we’re hoping to spread the word, and get the product out there and in people’s hands.

Steve

That’s cool, I like this, I’d like to make it available and better feedback leads to better performance which leads to a better world for all of us, so improving the planet through talent management, so Jim, can you just say again, where is this located, the Easy Reviews – how do people go access it?

Jim

The easiest way to get there is just to go to easyreviews.com, and it’ll drop you right in there, there’s a quick sign up form, you just have to enter a few fields and pick out a password, and you’re pretty much in from there. We also have a video tour that’s about four or five minutes long that basically will give you everything you know to get up and running in the system.

Steve

Well, that sounds really cool, Jim, and thank you so much for appearing on People Performance Radio. To the listening audience, hey, go check it out, it’s free, it’s a cool tool, absolutely check out Easy Reviews, and thank you again for appearing on People Performance Radio, Jim, talk to you again soon.

Jim

Thanks Steve.

Speaker

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