Crossengage is Making Progression More Transparent and Structured

"Transparency and quality feedback are crucial for us. Zavvy has been instrumental in providing a standardized feedback process that fosters development and growth."
- Silvana Blank, Director People & Culture

The Challenge: Lack of standardized feedback and career progression processes

CrossEngage, a Hamburg and Berlin-based software company, has developed a product that analyzes customer data for predictions about customer behavior. Operating in the CRM Marketing environment, the company employs around 50 people and has been growing rapidly.

Director People & Culture Silvana joined the company nearly a year ago. Among the first things she prioritized was speaking to employees.

Two issues rapidly became clear:

Scattered feedback

Feedback had somehow taken place, but rather sporadically and inconsistently. There was simply no standardized process for it.

The result:

People didn't understand

• how they were perceived,
• how to proceed,
• and how to improve.
  

This led to people feeling under-appreciated and unclear about their performance and expectations.

Unclear roles

From an employee perspective, it was hard to understand what was expected to take the next step, e.g. to move from mid-level to a senior role.

While the team at Crossengage had tried to solve this via huge excel spreadsheets full of competencies, retros, and other formats, the consistency just wasn't there. And with it, clarity for everyone wasn't.

Now, what if Silvana had simply ignored these?

Silvana:

"Without proper development opportunities, your best people will feel unappreciated and leave. And from a business perspective, people stay below their potential and performance suffers." 

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The Solution: A standardized, transparent development process for all

Value-based Career Frameworks lay the foundation for growth

The first step was to define career levels and roles based on company values. 

This way, people know what is expected from them and how to grow.

The paths are visible for everyone in one central location (Zavvy) and at any time. No more scattered spreadsheets. No more unclarity about progression.

But also, competencies lay the foundation for...

A consistent, regular feedback process 

Crossengage runs feedback 4 times a year:

• 1 yearly main cycle
• 3 smaller check-ins (mini feedback cycles)
  

Who gives feedback?

The process follows the 360° approach:

• Self evaluation
• "Downward" evaluations from managers to employees
• Peer evaluations
• "Upward" evaluations from employees to their managers

What questions do they ask?

The yearly cycle starts broadly and then goes more in-depth into competency-related questions.

It contains items such as:

• How well do you feel in your role
• What do you need?
• Competency-based assessments
• How well people live a value

...on a scale of 1-6.

The other cycles are shortened versions to avoid overwhelm.

On working with the Zavvy team

"Working with the Zavvy team is really great, as our contact people are always available, getting back to us within minutes. You really feel seen."

"I was positively surprised that we'd work together this closely. We are proactively getting suggestions and benchmarks. It's not just a tool, but also a consultant for great HR work."

"The same goes for the tool, where we can actively influence the roadmap."

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The Results: Transparent and structured development without the manual work

Transparent people development

• 80% of employees rated feedback as "very helpful" for their personal & professional development
• 80% of employees found the structure "very helpful" to prepare for their discussion.

Less manual work

Also, the team at Crossengage saved about 2 hours per employee and feedback cycle.

As Zavvy is connected to our HRIS BambooHR, launching a feedback cycle is just a matter of pressing a button. And this includes automated reminders to all stakeholders.

"If I had to do this manually, I'd have to create an Excel sheet for everyone, make sure it's filled, and analyze it. That would take 2 hours for every single employee in every cycle."