How Lattice Helped Agero Modernize its Performance Management

Challenges at Agero

At the heart of Agero, a provider of software-enabled driver safety services and technology, is a people-first mindset and a shared commitment to helping others. That commitment is alive and well within the Talent Development team, a branch of the larger People team, whose goal is to offer employees the infrastructure, tools, resources, and support needed to grow and develop their careers.

“At Agero, we are transforming an industry, and we want our people to be a part of that,” says Kim Remley, VP of Talent Development. “Our goal is to make it easier for our people to excel in their jobs and to grow.” Steve Pratt, Director of Learning & Development, adds, “We enable our employees by providing exceptional learning experiences and developing capable managers who know how to develop their employees.”

The company has spent the past few years innovating its solution to provide a more transparent, configurable, vertically-integrated and user-friendly platform that better serves its customers. That move prompted Agero to look across the organization for opportunities to modernize, streamline, and provide a better user experience to its internal employees. Overhauling the talent management strategy became a top priority, and that meant changing current processes and adopting new tools for the organization.

Agero is always looking to provide its associates and managers with modern systems that are easy to use and that provide powerful data analytics about its people on the back end. “We wanted to create an experience that was integrated into the flow of the day-to-day work, so employees and managers were engaging in performance management activities and getting real value from them,” shares Steve. Agero began searching for a solution that would support a formal performance management process, but also allow the organization to evolve its approach to career development.

Choosing Lattice over other providers

After reviewing dozens of systems for user experience, technical capability, client support, and price, Lattice’s platform checked off all the right boxes. “We chose Lattice because it was highly configurable and gave us the ability to easily customize it to fit our needs,” says Steve. “We liked the simple and modern user interface and the peace of mind of having helpful resources, like Lattice University, and a responsive CSM.”

Lattice also offered the right combination of features, including, performance reviews, calibration, development and career planning (specifically the Grow career tracks), 360-degree feedback, and goal management. Additionally, the dashboards, enterprise-level reporting, and integration with other key People systems were deciding factors as well.

“The Grow module was a big selling point for us in order to support our career development strategy. We were also excited about the Slack integration and how it would enable us to integrate talent management into the daily flow of work,” says Kim.

Lastly, the company was looking for a partner that would go beyond the sales pitch, help them onboard, and then grow with them. “We went through an extensive market scan and RFP process and evaluated dozens of providers on a number of dimensions,” says Steve, adding that Lattice’s online support and extensive knowledge library were differentiators.

Using Lattice at Agero

Agero has rebranded its approach to talent management, and now refers to the overall process as Grow. Perform. Succeed (GPS). GPS provides employees with a way to explore career aspirations and envision different possible routes to get there, navigating their ongoing development and career growth at Agero. The company started with a soft launch, turning on different features one by one to get people comfortable with the new user interface. Now, roughly 700 people across the enterprise are using Lattice, including the entire corporate community, which houses functions like marketing, client services, engineering, product management, HR/People, and IT. The supervisors and other leaders within the contact center community also use it.

Agero conducts a mid-year review that starts in July and a year-end review in January. The organization does require every employee to have a rating at both reviews, and 360-reviews — which require self-evaluations — are required for promotions and remain strongly encouraged for everyone else. While not mandated now, the organization actively encourages the use of continuous feedback and regular one-on-ones between managers and employees.

Agero is also actively using Grow and has established Career Tracks to set clear expectations for the majority of their roles. More than 80% of Lattice users at Agero have career tracks in place and the team has added competencies for each of the job titles, enabling employees and managers to define paths within and across job functions. “Doing so gives a high degree of transparency across the enterprise into what success looks like for each area and role,” says Kim. Ultimately, Kim says they are moving away from “check the box” chats, instead coaching managers to have deeper, more strategic conversations that help employees move their careers forward.

Impact of Lattice

So far the Agero team has been impressed with the results, which include an amazing 98% review completion rate and a high rate of 1:1 feature usage.

That success is in part because of organization-wide collaboration and support among senior leaders and other stakeholders in the organization. The Agero team has worked with leaders across the company to define a consistent enterprise framework that covers the knowledge, skills, productivity, and outcomes needed for roles. Strong collaboration across the entire HR team ensured buy-in and growing usage rates. Plus, the Manager Development Series program — which teaches management skills, also includes best practices for using Lattice to provide feedback, hold effective 1:1s, and have meaningful coaching and career conversations. Those efforts have all helped to drive adoption.

From an administration standpoint, the Agero team says Lattice has been easy to implement and configure as major benefits. But more rewarding to Agero is providing a tool people are actually using to develop their careers and to support others in their career development, and they credit the intuitive, straightforward interface for high usage rates.

As for goals going forward, Agero is taking steps to:

• Roll out more Grow capabilities and customize individual development planning
• Encourage more ongoing, frequent feedback around performance and goals, and both believe the Slack integration will be vital to moving the needle
  Leverage the IDP and career visioning exercise and customize those to support the evolving career development strategy
• Maintain a strong partnership with the HRBP team as they are key to the overall success of Lattice usage.

Agero is committed to creating a culture of learning and growth, where our associates thrive. Our career development strategy is a core pillar of that work. I am grateful for the efforts of the entire People team, and leaders at all levels of the Agero organization, for bringing that vision to life. Lattice’s capabilities have been a core enabler for us, and we view them as true partners.

– Emma Barnes-Brown, CPO

Key results at Agero

• With organization-wide collaboration and support among senior leaders and other stakeholders in the organization, Agero was able to use Lattice to achieve a 98% review completion rate.
• Agero is off to a strong start with its Lattice Grow implementation with 80% of Lattice users with career tracks in place.
• Lattice is a key solution in driving the 50-year-old Agero’s commitment to modernize and innovate across the organization.