Personal development through setting challenging goals and continuous feedback

How we help our employees grow and develop

At Bizzomate we don’t only focus on helping our customers grow. We continuously want to stimulate our employees to become a better version of themselves. Therefore personal growth and development have been a specific focus area for us over the last two years. In order to support this, we invested in processes and in tools like TruQu. With this tool, our people can manage their own development and along the way, support their colleagues in their growth journey.  Prior to our transition to a new appraisal system our managers conducted appraisal conversations twice a year. During these conversations, new development goals were set. These were mostly snapshots, jotted down in a word document, which were eventually uploaded in an online tool. In the previous set up, the feedback was often subjective, as managers were not interacting with people on a daily basis. We experimented with 360° feedback as well, but none of it was employee-centred and easy to work with.

We wanted a centralised environment that shows employees an overview of their development and the ways in which they had grown. At Bizzomate everyone is responsible for their own personal growth and we want to provide them with the tools to do this in a structured and user-friendly way. Therefore we selected a new tool TruQu, that facilitates all these different aspects. The people are now in control and growth is a team effort. 

Spontaneous feedback

TruQu makes it easy to receive and provide feedback and creates a clear overview of the individual’s personal development. It’s even possible to give each other spontaneous feedback, without a request. Furthermore, the tool also enables setting goals and working towards certain objectives.  

We now work with performance cycles that entail a quarterly ‘sprint switch conversation’. You can look at the development of employees in the same way as the development of an application. In this case, a sprint takes three months. During this quarter also known as your running sprint, you refine your goals and actively work on them. The closer in time you get to a new sprint, or towards the end of the quarter, the more specific your goals become for the next quarter and the more important it becomes to collect feedback on your running sprint.

Prior to these ‘sprint switch conversations’ employees prepare a reflection report. In these reports, employees look back on the past quarter and look ahead to the upcoming sprint. These reports are connected to the goals that were set and the feedback that was collected. Due to these reflection reports, employees are forced to regularly reflect on their personal growth and development and like agile software development, you can quickly make changes if needed. 

Feedback from colleagues and from clients

Giving feedback has become business as usual. Also, external feedback from clients about working with Bizzomate employees is included. A tool like TruQu can’t and won’t ever replace face-to-face conversations, but it’s a valuable addition. We see a lot of colleagues use the system to give feedback and meet up afterwards to discuss this further. I’m happy to see that they are actively involved, take control and get more insight into their growth and development. And just like the growth of our employees, the development of our appraisal system doesn’t stop here. It’s a continuous process and a growth path for us as an organization to guide our employees to the next level.