How Alignment of Performance and Engagement Enables Encompass to Scale

Challenges at Encompass

The Encompass team believes that the best decisions are made when you understand the complete picture. Just as this applies to their award-winning corporate digital identity (CDI) platform, so too does it speak to their people strategy. Their passionate People Team aims to equip every employee for success by maximising engagement, performance, and satisfaction. 

“Encompass is a scale-up business, and our people are on this journey with us,” says Sabrina Khan, Performance and Development Manager.

“Our people practices cannot be tick-box exercises. We want to ensure everyone is invested in the company's success, and we achieve this by investing in them,” Sabrina says.

As the company scaled, it required a more mature approach to people management. With a C-suite already fully invested in the potential of people-driven success, the People Team wanted to refine their performance technology stack and build more quality into their people practices.

“We were using lots of different tools to do lots of different things,” explains Sabrina. “We needed one people management hub that would bring everything together. But more importantly, we needed a tool that could augment our passion for what we do and be geared towards the character of our company.” 

Implementing Lattice

After reviewing several options, Encompass selected Lattice. “Lattice provided a way to overcome the challenges we faced as a business with siloed people practices and was configurable to our needs. It offers the right combination of features to move us from start-up to scale-up in a way that makes sense for us and our people,” says Sabrina.

When introducing any new technology, it’s essential to be mindful of change management. Encompass and Lattice worked together to deliver a staggered approach, phasing in each new feature in a transparent, collaborative, and guided way. 

“Lattice helped us manage change, handle any resistance, and move forward at a sensible pace to achieve consistency in our people practices. With Lattice's support and guidance, the open communication it fosters, and the reliable reporting needed to demonstrate proof of concept, we quickly secured buy-in at every level of the business,” adds Sabrina.

Using Lattice at Encompass

Before implementing Lattice, the team ran quarterly engagement surveys, which led to some survey fatigue. With Lattice Engagement, they now run two per year, complemented by shorter, more frequent Pulse Surveys. Encompass now has a real-time understanding of employee sentiment within the business.

Encompass has also been able to implement its first-ever 360-degree performance review strategy. With integrated performance and engagement analytics, they can now identify high performers and quickly determine which teams need additional support. This also made it easier for managers to fully understand how their teams’ high performers feel at any given time. 

The C-suite is 100% bought into what the People Team is doing and can see the results for themselves in terms of engagement, performance, and satisfaction.

Lattice’s performance calibration tool is helping Encompass to promote fairness. “A fair and consistent process is vital, especially in a nuanced business like ours, where lots of people are doing many different jobs and have different skill sets. Calibration ensures our people can trust the review process and feel empowered to engage fully,” says Sabrina.

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With a greater understanding of the business’ high performers, Encompass can effectively link performance and compensation. Using Lattice Compensation, managers can look at various criteria during the salary review process and have more meaningful conversations. “Managers feel empowered to make proposals for pay raises and bonuses. We’ve built that all-important point of trust between performance, compensation, and reward for the first time in our history,” Sabrina says.

Impact of Lattice at Encompass

Encompass is delighted with the results achieved so far, and it has spurred them on to see what else can be achieved now they have a holistic approach and consistency of people processes across the business. The C-suite is also 100% bought into what the People Team is doing and can see the results for themselves in terms of engagement, performance, and satisfaction.

We’ve gone from a reactive people team to a proactive and preventative one — there are no surprises anymore. No challenges, just opportunities to keep on driving high-performance,” concludes Sabrina. “This change is, in turn, driving even more possibility in the business. We love Lattice.

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Key Takeaways

• Encompass has successfully linked performance, engagement, and growth — all key to its success as a quickly scaling business.
• A phased implementation approach with Lattice support delivered a high level of adoption across the business.
• The People Team, managers, and the C-suite are now closely aligned thanks to demonstrable data-driven benefits and clear reporting.
• With improved engagement, higher performance, clear goals, and transparent growth opportunities, everyone in the business is focused on achieving the company’s strategic objectives as it scales.