Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER July 11, 2016 NEWS 7 are not doing things well, said Mackenzie. "As practitioners, as individu- als, I don't think any of us feel that way. We're all doing our best, we're working hard, we de- liver great results. So it was really about recognizing 'Let's challenge that assumption and acknowledge that we have great people who do great work,'" she said. e new system e first and most fundamental part of the experience is a tool Deloitte calls "check-ins," said Mackenzie. "There's no technology in- volved whatsoever — many of our great leaders are already doing this naturally. And this is essen- tially where you have team leaders meet with their team members, those individuals for whom they have responsibility, to meet on a weekly or at most bi-weekly basis. And the focus of those conversa- tion is essentially 'How are you doing, what do you need from me as a leader and how are things go- ing?'" she said. "It's about a conversation — it's not about rigorous documen- tation. As a team member, you don't go anywhere and type what you did in your check-in… it's about ensuring that conversa- tions are happening at that level of frequency." Goal-setting used to take place on an annual basis, and it was revisited once a year while peo- ple were assessed against it, she said. But organizational roles are changing dynamically. "e fact that we only do this once a year… is ridiculous. So check-ins are about 'What are your goals for this week?' It's very future-focused," said Mackenzie. "It's about creating opportunity for team leaders to give people rel- evant feedback." With this level of connection, team leaders are able to trouble- shoot or course-correct before issues go way out of control, said Mackenzie. Also, from a feedback perspective, it's a lot easier to give someone feedback when he's been off course for a couple of days than when he's been off course for six months or a year. "Some of those things that we hesitate to deal with in p e r fo r m a n ce m a n a g e m e nt around issues or difficult feedback are actually being offset by the fact that you're talking about this regularly and with this degree of clarity. So it's a hugely important, fundamental part of the experience that probably doesn't sound overly revolutionary to you, but really is acting as a game-changer for us already," she said. e second key piece of the new system is each employee has a ca- reer coach, said Mackenzie. Team leaders are constantly changing and there are a lot of moving pieces within the organi- zation, so they need one central person who is going to bring the whole story together for the indi- vidual team member, she said. So everyone has an individual, desig- nated career coach. "at is that one static person who is your go-to person, who can help you with overall, long- term planning, goal-setting from a career perspective… have very specific conversations to help them be successful in their day-to-day roles, but also act as a resource in terms of overall guidance and leadership," she said. A third key piece is the concept of "pulse" surveys. "This allows team leaders to initiate a survey within the team," said Mackenzie. "Team leaders can initiate these surveys at any time within the team, the only re- striction is that you need a team of three or more. "Team leaders can do this for example at the beginning of a project, mid-way through a proj- ect, and at the end of a project." e pulse surveys are inten- tionally positioned as non evalu- ative tools. ey are tools for the team leader to facilitate conver- sations with the team members about the kind of environment they want to be a part of. It re- quires the team members to take ownership of the results, said Mackenzie. If, for example, someone an- swers "neither agree nor dis- agree," she needs to own that feedback with context in the debrief. Team members are all collec- tively creating the assessment, she said, "so you have a shared ownership of what kind of team you want to be part of." Deloitte will also use a perfor- mance snapshot to replace what it would have done before as a performance evaluation. It's a four-question survey that really reposition what's being asked of team leaders, said Mackenzie. "Previously, we were asking people to rate other people based on skills and behaviours. When- ever you ask someone to rate someone else's behaviour, your actual results are determined by your own biases," she said. "e ratings that we're giving people are so fundamentally flawed by this effect." Deloitte wanted to remove that from the equation, so it changed the focus to what the person ac- tually does, not whether he was good at x or good at y. "What we now have are in- sights… that are really focused on the individual." Leaders 'check in' on weekly or bi-weekly basis DELLOITE < pg. 2 "It's about team leaders giving people relevant feedback."

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