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Arbitration Forums Implements Web-Based Employee Appraisal System
Summary
Arbitration Forums, a leading provider of arbitration services, selected a web-based employee performance appraisal system to help the company centralize the review process for their dispersed workforce. Halogen eAppraisal enables Arbitration Forums to:
- Reduce cycle times for employee appraisals;
- Manage the entire process in real-time via a centralized Web dashboard;
- Free up IT time by using a web-hosted approach that requires no in-house set up or management;
- Manage merit increase dollars more effectively; and
- Improve goal consistency between corporate and field employees.
Company Profile
Tampa-based Arbitration Forums has been a leading provider of arbitration services for over 60 years. The company's latest initiative, the E-Subro Hub, provides customers with a single web-based platform from which they can issue and respond to subrogation demands, as well as file and respond to arbitration cases.
Challenge
Arbitration Forums employs approximately 230 professionals, over 40 percent of whom work from their homes. With such a dispersed workforce, the company's paper-based employee appraisal process was laborious and drawn out. "Mailing performance appraisal paperwork from one state to another really delayed things getting done. We had to mail from the employee to the supervisor, then from the supervisor back to the employee, and then back down through the corporate offices," said Ken Butler, Director of Human Resources at Arbitration Forums. "The process was taking close to three months."
When the company announced a corporate strategy to move administrative processes online and transition towards a paperless environment, the HR team began looking for a web-based performance appraisal system. "We welcomed the strategy to transition to centralized, web-based processes, and we knew our employee performance management program could benefit from that approach," said Butler.
Solution
When reviewing available employee performance and talent management solutions, Butler's most important criteria in addition to the web-based approach was simplicity and ease of use. With IT resources tied up on other priorities, Butler knew that he would be setting up and rolling out the new appraisal system on his own. "When I looked at the Halogen solution, it was very straightforward and easy to understand," he said. "It was also offered as a hosted solution, which also appealed to us because we would not need to support any back-end infrastructure required to operate the program."
Halogen's software allows clients to eliminate the IT requirements normally associated when introducing software into an organization. Halogen offers a hosted solution where IT needs are taken care of so that HR can focus on employee programs.
Results
Butler has received immediate feedback upon rolling out Halogen's eAppraisal. "The cycles are much shorter now because everything is done centrally, online. It's also really helpful to me to be able to track the program because at any time, from anywhere, I can look at an appraisal and see how far along it is, or if it has anything missing - something I couldn't do before."
Arbitration Forums' employees are praising the system's simplicity and are finding eAppraisal's automated comments section particularly helpful. Because it limits how much employees and managers can write and provides guidelines to assist them, staff can focus on keeping comments concise and effective. The ability to create a data base of goals, and development activities or courses is also very useful. This data base can be used by the managers to ensure goal consistency from one manager's team to another.
Another valuable feature is the performance journal. "Being able to take notes of their ongoing progress in the online journal makes things much simpler for employees as they can just cut and paste items from the journal into their reviews when the time comes," said Butler. "This reduces the time it takes to complete a review and makes feedback much more specific."
Arbitration Forums' HR team is appreciative of the easy-to-use web-hosted approach to the new system. "Halogen's web-hosted system is saving us money in terms of IT time and resources dedicated to implementation and follow up. It was straightforward to implement and is much simpler to manage than I expected."
As Arbitration Forum continues to transfer more of its processes online, Halogen is helping the company come one step closer to its goal of being a centralized, paperless organization.
