Creating a Data and Value-Driven Organization with DEPT

While it’s not often that the head of legal also oversees human resources, the double-duty makes sense for Julie Honor, DEPT’s General Counsel. As a change-management-consultant-turned-lawyer, Julie leans heavily on her past experience to help her lead. She says, “I use my change management background a ton in our HR work to ensure that people are mindful of the impact of a change and to help people navigate through change in a way that's successful for everyone involved.” In her current role, Julie works to reduce business risks while proactively building a better workplace for 3Q/DEPT’s 450+ employees. 

Julie and her two-person HR team oversee performance management and partner closely with 3Q’s seven-person People Team. Greg Erickson is a member of that People Team, and is responsible for administering the company’s employee engagement surveys, analyzing employee feedback, and putting together action plans to advance the business, making him and Julie two key players in selecting and administering any new HR technology for the company.

When the DEPT HR and People Teams were getting by with a number of HR point solutions for their performance management, employee recognition, and survey needs, they wanted a way to consolidate their people data and simplify the number of systems their employees had to use. With more than 450 employees dispersed across a wide geographical range, the DEPT HR and People Teams needed a people management solution that would empower both groups to seamlessly work together to make meaningful people-first changes.

Lattice stood out to both the HR and People Teams early on, since it offered all the functionality they were looking for and more. Lattice checked all the boxes for Julie, who was interested in improving performance reviews, calibrations, and goals. “We chose Lattice because it did performance management really, really well and had all the other people functions we were looking for. It felt like the perfect fit for us,” she shares. “There are also so many little surprises that have blown us away and showed us just how great Lattice is, like the company overview page that lists all our new hires, workaversaries, and the org chart, as well as a fantastic help center.”

For Greg and the People Team, platform usability was top of mind. They were immediately won over by Lattice’s sleek design and easy-to-use interface, which guaranteed employee adoption would be a breeze. “I remember comparing Lattice and another vendor and thinking how it would be so much easier to tell an employee how to use Lattice,” recalls Greg. “At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how great the product is; it matters whether or not your employees actually use it. That's what swayed our decision to choose Lattice.”

Using Lattice at DEPT

DEPT’s HR and People Teams took an intentionally phased approach when rolling out Lattice to their employees. The team gave each employee a review questionnaire to complete upon login so they could get a feel for the platform, as well as explore Goals, 1:1s, and Feedback on their own time. “We wanted our employees to start poking around and discover that they're getting increased transparency and visibility into what we're doing as an organization just by clicking a few buttons. That helped us build buy-in for the platform and show our employees Lattice is a pretty cool tool,” explains Julie.

Even without a formal feature rollout, Julie and her team were delighted by how many DEPT employees found and adopted Lattice’s 1:1s tool on their own. The promising organic adoption rate pushed the team to have all managers of entry-level employees and new hires use the tool. This not only migrated employee-manager meetings out of Google Sheets and into Lattice, but it also gave Julie and her team the ability to track meeting frequency and control the questions managers ask during one-on-ones. 

One of the People Team’s main initiatives – and an employee favorite – is its employee recognition program, Cheers for Peers. The program encourages 3Q/DEPT employees to publicly celebrate when a teammate embodies one of the company’s four core values. Each nominee then also has a chance to win a monthly, quarterly, and annual prize or monetary bonus. 

The team’s previous recognition solution was clunky and confusing for employees to use, so Greg and his colleagues were excited to make the switch to Lattice. “This program has exploded since we first introduced it. We’ve seen a lot of engagement since giving a shoutout is so easy and only takes a couple of seconds,” states Greg. “You can praise a colleague in any Slack channel, in an email with the email add-on, or right in the Lattice platform.” 

Impact of Lattice

With newfound visibility into one-on-one frequency and what managers discuss with their direct reports in these conversations, the DEPT team has been able to improve both employee engagement and manager accountability. “Before Lattice, we found that if a manager only meets with their employee once a month, there is a 75% chance their direct report is dissatisfied,” explains Greg. “We worked those findings into our manager training program to ensure everyone understood that one-on-ones are essential, but Lattice helped tee us up to successfully hold managers accountable.” 

Additionally, the switch from Google Docs to Lattice gives the DEPT team more insight into the content and quality of these manager-employee conversations. Not to mention, it gives Julie solid data to reference should any employee relations risks arise. “Being able to see which managers are having and engaging in one-on-ones gives us the visibility we’ve never had before. Now, if a performance issue pops up, we're able to say, ‘You haven't been having one-on-ones. Tell us what's going on here,’ and understand if there is a management training issue we need to solve before we say it's an employee problem,” she shares.

Since implementing Lattice, the company’s employee recognition program has experienced explosive growth. “It's so easy for our teammates to share their love and appreciation when a teammate lives up to our values. Every time we announced who won and how much they won at an All-Hands meeting, we see a huge increase in the number of cheers coming in,” says Greg. The program allows employees at all levels of the organization to be recognized for their hard work and give their colleagues a shoutout for going above and beyond. And aside from seeing an increase in adoption of Lattice’s Praise feature, the team has also noticed its employees have become more mindful of the company values. Now, employees incorporate company values in everything from their daily language in team meetings to peer feedback to performance reviews.

Having DEPT’s values incorporated throughout Lattice has saved Julie and Greg’s teams the headache of manually tracking values mentioned in the previous cheers-for-peers program. “Before, people were manually writing in our values in their performance review feedback, so typos made it so hard for us to sort and organize responses. Administratively, Lattice has helped save us a lot of work on the backend, since employees just select a value they’re sharing feedback around and we can easily sort by it,” states Julie.

And that’s not the only administrative burden Lattice has spared the DEPT team from; Julie just recently started using Lattice Calibration to eliminate risk and ensure fairness throughout the performance review process. “Lattice’s calibration process is amazing,” she raves. “The conversations that I've had with our managers and leaders have been some of the most engaging and honest conversations I've ever had about performance and making sure that we're really understanding and accurately talking to our team members about how they're doing and where we see them going.” 

Takeaways

• The company’s HR and People Teams have newfound visibility into the frequency and quality of employee one-on-ones thanks to Lattice’s 1:1s tool
• DEPT’s Cheers for Peers recognition program has experienced explosive growth fueled by Lattice Praise and its Slack integration
• Lattice helped the company increase awareness of company values and incorporate them into every stage of the employee lifecycle
• Lattice’s easy-to-use design and reminder notifications helped the company reach record engagement survey participation rates