Leading outsourced operations and maintenance solutions experts, SNC-Lavalin Profac, selected Halogen Software’s talent management solution to support its pay-for-performance philosophy, increase employee retention and plan for succession. The firm’s new automated system enables it to:
- Improve retention of highly skilled talent in a competitive market;
- Boost employee engagement and track the progress of on-going appraisals;
- Build bench strength by using talent-pool based succession planning; and
- Consistently and easily deliver best-practice talent management around the globe.
Boosting Employee Engagement, Development and Retention
SNC-Lavalin Profac is part of the SNC-Lavalin Group, one of the leading engineering and construction groups in the world. Founded in 1911, SNC-Lavalin has been active internationally for 50 years, working on global projects that span 100 countries, and every continent. The SNC-Lavalin companies employ 2500 people in offices across Canada and in over 35 other countries around the world.
New Mandate for Focusing on Talent Drives Change in Employee Performance Management
The leadership and HR teams at SNC-Lavalin Profac understand the important link between ongoing performance feedback and employee retention in the operations and maintenance industries. Since the ability to attract and retain talent was becoming a rising issue in their field, the executive team wanted HR to put metrics in place that would track the effectiveness of talent management processes and support the firm’s engagement and retention efforts.
As part of its talent management focus, the organization also sought to leverage career and development opportunities, and wanted to build up its bench strength as it continued to grow. To reach these goals, executives agreed that it was essential to implement a comprehensive talent management program to assist in identifying top performers throughout the organization.
While these talent management objectives were very important, the HR team quickly recognized how difficult they would be to achieve without an automated system in place. At the time, SNC-Lavalin Profac was managing its talent management processes using Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and paper. The organization had struggled to engage employees, despite HR making changes such as shortening and simplifying forms. Even these efforts met with low engagement levels and frustration over inconsistency and ongoing change.
"We wanted an on-line talent management system for many reasons," says Kim Ellis, Director of Human Resources for SNC-Lavalin Profac. "Yes, it would eliminate much of the administrative burden, but the real value would be helping us drive employee engagement in the process, and implementing a talent-pool based succession program."
In Search of Flexibility, Simplicity and Control
Ellis and SNC-Lavalin Profac’s VP of HR, Esther Zdolec, began assessing their options. During the course of their research they spoke with several organizations that were already using on-line talent management solutions and were referred to Halogen Software. As part of their due diligence, they closely examined the offerings of four different vendors, including SuccessFactors. SNC-Lavalin Profac found the SuccessFactors solution to be overly complicated, and discovered that to meet their needs it would require expensive customization. After assessing Halogen’s offering, they appreciated eAppraisal’s simplicity, usability and flexibility, and found Halogen eSuccession to be the ideal complement, given the best-practices it embodied by linking performance management to talent-pool based succession planning.
"Only Halogen was able to let us quickly and easily put our own touches on the performance management system," said Ellis. "With the other solutions, if the appraisal form wasn’t what you wanted, you had to pay the vendor to make changes. We liked that with Halogen we could go in and keep the things that were working for us in our existing manual process."
Proven Ability to Engage Employees
SNC-Lavalin Profac currently has all of its 2500 full-time, permanent employees involved in its talent management processes. The firm decided to implement the Halogen modules in phases, starting with eAppraisal.
"I am glad we decided to phase the system in step-by-step starting with eAppraisal," said Ellis. "The employee appraisal process was a natural place to start for us as it was the most widely used. We have slowly integrated more modules as our organization was ready for more."
The evaluation process itself begins with employees completing a self-evaluation. Where previously, this task was often not completed, the self-evaluation is now, truly, the important first step in the collaborative performance management process. It was also a way to introduce all employees to the new system without overwhelming them, and ensure their engagement.
The new performance management system also uses automated email notifications to remind employees to make performance journal notes throughout the year, and to let employees know when to get started on their yearly appraisal process. "We send out an email in September that announces when the process will be opening and lets employees know that they will be receiving an email invitation," explains Ellis. "It’s a much more transparent process and as a result we have much greater participation. We have more than doubled the participation we had prior to implementing Halogen."
Supporting a Pay-for-Performance Philosophy and Effective Succession Planning
SNC-Lavalin Profac also understands the importance of identifying, developing and rewarding top performers. Fundamental to the firm's pay-for-performance philosophy is the ability to accurately assess employee performance. Accurate, consistent, company-wide performance appraisals drive compensation, development and succession planning programs, and are viewed by the firm as a key to employee retention.
"We are looking at retention as one of the key performance indicators directly connected to the success of the Halogen deployment. With Halogen eAppraisal, e360 Multirater, and now eSuccession in place, we have actually driven down our turnover rate by two percent this last year," says Ellis. "In the past, I don’t think people understood the links between all of our processes and how they worked together, but having the Halogen systems helps make these links very clear."
As part of its succession planning program, the company established talent review boards, to ensure that top performers were properly identified and developed. The talent review boards highlight the career aspirations of top performers and help to elevate their profiles.
Using eSuccession, SNC-Lavalin Profac has divided its business into three main job streams: operations, project management, and other, including corporate and shared services. Each of these was then broken down into three talent pools, individual contributor, manager and senior leadership. Critical competencies were identified that would apply to all talent pools, as well as others that would apply uniquely to specific pools.
"Using eSuccession has enabled the company to calibrate the evaluations of employees using competencies that align to organizational values," says Ellis, "rather than simply relying on past performance and technical skills. This ensures that team members who are promoted are better positioned for success in the organization compared to methods used in the past."
Transparent and Integrated Talent Management Processes Keep Employees Engaged and Reveal Emerging Talent
The new Halogen system has met all of the firm’s expectations, including having employees and executives take on additional voluntary steps that result in more complete evaluations. For example over the past year the HR department has had more requests than ever to have multirater assessments done. In fact, the entire senior management team is using the e360 Multirater module. "This is a great indication that employees and executives are going beyond just using the basic tool and are starting to take advantage of all the features available through the enterprise-class solution," said Ellis. "Clearly they see the value of getting 360 degree feedback and they are now promoting this practice throughout the organization."
The automated appraisal and succession-planning tools have also given SNC-Lavalin Profac a greater understanding of the depth and the breadth of its talent pool and have helped uncover hidden talent by ensuring all employees are captured in the review process.
"The use of these tools enables the organization to use clear, consistent competencies to evaluate employees," states Ellis. "This levels the playing field to ensure that employees are positioned for success and not promoted simply on the basis of technical competence."
Ellis also stresses the importance of the solution in helping achieve SNC-Lavalin Profac’s talent management goals. "The Halogen suite has helped us drive engagement, increase retention, and recognize our talent." said Ellis. "But beyond the technical excellence of the Halogen system, it has enabled us to inject more humanity into the process and has made it easier and more efficient to handle our talent management processes and focus on our most important assets."
