One of the benefits of enterprise 2.0 is increased accountability that comes from the increased transparency and access to information enterprise 2.0 provides. We have seen this in many areas, such as project management, and it usually results in increased productivity. The same can be said for Human Resources and its sub-disciplines such as Talent Management. This is part of the benefits offered by Halogen, a Talent Management system provider offering both on-demand and behind the firewall options. In addition to increased accountability and transparency, two of Halogen’s other goals are ease of use and ease of implementation. As far as implementation goes, their objective is to eliminate the massive consulting service expenses that many traditional HR systems require.

Last week I spoke with Donna Ronayne, Dawn MacKay and Sean Conrad of Halogen. Stared in 2001, they are located in the beautiful city of Ottawa that I had the pleasure of visiting once. Halogen has a comprehensive suite of Employee Performance and Talent Management solutions including appraisal, 360 feedback, succession, compensation, and coming soon, a learning management system. Their platform has been well received, with 22 consecutive quarters of record growth and over 1,000 customers including Avis, MSNBC, and the NCAA. They provide the options of on-premises and SaaS delivery, as well as a rental or purchase payment plans.

Sean described the system as very flexible and highly configurable, rather than customizable, in that clients can easily make changes through selecting options rather than having to change code – or having to go back to the vendor for help. Clients can also control the interface and branding. Screens can be made to look like the paper forms that a customer currently uses or the components can be rearranged and new content added. Existing content from any major HRIS system can easily be imported. Rapid deployment is also a hallmark. In one example, a client with 20,000 employees took 45 days to implement the system. In another case, a client with 900 employees had implemented Halogen eAppraisal and processed all their employees through the system within 30 days.

Sean walked me through a bit of the system. I especially liked the transparency and reporting capabilities. They offer web-based dashboards that provide insight into the overall status of each aspect of talent management, as well as a drill down capability whenever more detail is required. Enterprise 2.0 has brought increased transparency to many aspects of business. The Halogen reports and dashboards provide the ability to view from a top-down perspective whether each process is running properly, according to the standards and parameters the company has implemented at the outset. You can look at a number of areas including that status of any appraisal process underway, the status of goal achievement (personal and corporate), as well as company wide workforce performance results and trends. Security and access control is provided given the sensitive nature of the content.

Reports include:

Process Status Reports that let HR and management see the exact status of all appraisals and where people are in the review process in any level of detail. This view provides visibility into the process, facilitates consistency, and holds the responsible people accountable. Process status items include who is completing steps on time, who’s not, and how the company as a whole is progressing. HR can also drill down and check that appraisals are being completed competently, fairly, and accurately. This visibility in turn promotes confidence in the process.

Goal Status Reports let each employee know what is expected of them, as individual goals are linked to departmental and corporate objectives and all employees get a line of sight view of how they contribute to the organization. This dashboard enables HR and management to know how many resources are working on each goal and allows them to determine whether progress is being made at the individual, group, department, or organization level.

Competency Scores allow HR and management to quickly see whether the company is building strength in specific core or leadership skills, determine the organization’s top competencies, see what the trend is across the organization - or by department or group, and more.

Score Distribution reports enable management to understand who their top performers are. They can spot trends in performance appraisal scores by comparing corporate and group scores year over year. Management and HR can also drill down to know exactly who the top performers are, as well as those needing attention, and which areas they need to improve in.

Here is an example of a Halogen dashboard with rolled up process status, score distributions, competency scores, and goal status reports.

I think this capability and visibility go a long way to helping HR become part of the enterprise 2.0 vision of the transparent organization. The Halogen people also provided a few examples of the eAppraisal system in action.

The Zoological Society of San Diego introduced enhanced performance management and goal setting to better attract and retain management talent as it made some new strategic directions, including a pay for performance system. After selecting Halogen eAppraisal, they included employees from across the organization to define competencies and objectives. This is certainly a best practice in any work-related system. Now their employees have a clear understanding of their goals and how these goals connect to organizational goals. This implementation has resulted in increased motivation, morale, and accountability. They can track the progress of appraisals and achieved 100% completion, up from a 50% completion rate with old paper-based system. Employees can track their performance and how it relates to the new pay for performance system.

In 2004, Lee Enterprises had 6700 employees, 44 daily newsrooms, 200 weekly and specialty publications, in 19 states and a patchwork of employee appraisal processes. This was a major problem. Their continued rapid growth through acquisitions also made it critical to integrate corporate cultures. Halogen eAppraisal now provides Lee Enterprises with a way to foster employee manager discussions, ensure corporate values and employee goals are aligned. Lee Enterprises now has a commitment to provide at least one annual review for its more than 11,000 employees. Each employee completes a self-appraisal as part of an annual performance review, rating themselves on the same competencies that their managers use for evaluation. Based on a combination of the employee self-appraisal and the manager’s evaluation, a development plan is created for each full-time employee. Regional vice-presidents and HR managers can now do comparative reporting, by looking at a specific region and analyzing its performance compared with other regions.

These stories sound like the benefits of transparency from other enterprise 2.0 systems such as project management tools (e.g., XM Radio and QuickBase: Changing Organization Behavior through Enterprise 2.0). Halogen provides more context to their tools and views at their Employee Performance and Talent Management Blog.