THB Turns Back on Annual Appraisals to Retain and Grow Talent

We talked to Ros­ali­no Walsh, Group Learn­ing and Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er at THB Group, about how the Lon­don based re-insur­ance bro­ker is refin­ing its learn­ing and devel­op­ment strat­e­gy to break down siloes and build a ​‘one-team’ cul­ture of col­lab­o­ra­tion, sup­port­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion across the business. 

Like many sec­tors, the insur­ance indus­try is fac­ing a huge trans­for­ma­tion. Jobs are being chal­lenged by tech­nol­o­gy, but at the same time, peo­ple and tal­ent are becom­ing more impor­tant than ever so a shake-up of cul­tur­al norms is in process. THB need­ed to make a cul­tur­al shift using learn­ing and devel­op­ment to empow­er employ­ees’ per­son­al devel­op­ment, while also address­ing gaps in man­age­ment skills, suc­ces­sion plan­ning, and qual­i­ty of stat­ed per­son­al objectives. 

Most impor­tant­ly, the com­pa­ny want­ed to move away from tra­di­tion­al ​‘tick box’ manda­to­ry train­ing required by reg­u­la­tors and its score card per­for­mance reviews, that weren’t that use­ful for the major­i­ty of the business.

We need­ed to make a cul­tur­al shift at THB and our learn­ing and devel­op­ment strat­e­gy was one of the ways we could help ensure our employ­ees were not just tech­ni­cal­ly com­pe­tent but also devel­oped the so-called soft skills need­ed to make that change.”

THB aspired to move away from tra­di­tion­al appraisals to ​“90-day coach­ing ses­sions”, but knew that most per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware only offered a tra­di­tion­al online annu­al appraisal approach. Clear Review’s tech­nol­o­gy was specif­i­cal­ly built to enable ongo­ing dia­logue and feed­back – deliv­ered with and extreme­ly sim­ple and ​‘clean’ user experience.

Accord­ing to Ros­ali­no, Clear Review was a great fit due to the sim­ple user expe­ri­ence and also because the sys­tem pro­vides clar­i­ty around both busi­ness and per­son­al devel­op­ment objec­tives. It’s help­ing THB to iden­ti­fy what its peo­ple are actu­al­ly doing in terms of per­son­al devel­op­ment, where they are going, and what their aspi­ra­tions are.

THB brand­ed the Clear Review per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem ​‘THB Talk Time.’ Talk Time has quick­ly become their cen­tral peo­ple man­age­ment plat­form used to sup­port every­thing from employ­ee onboard­ing and pro­ba­tion peri­od man­age­ment, learn­ing and devel­op­ment, employ­ee reviews and objec­tive set­ting. Suc­ces­sion plan­ning is cur­rent­ly being intro­duced via Clear Reviews Tal­ent Snap­shots func­tion­al­i­ty, this is now con­sid­er­ing entire teams ver­sus tra­di­tion­al key peo­ple approaches.

With grow­ing use of Talk-Time, THB is begin­ning to see real ben­e­fits, and it’s been ful­ly embraced with 1,200 devel­op­men­tal con­ver­sa­tions logged in the sys­tem. Buy in from senior peo­ple — includ­ing the Chief Exec­u­tive — has been pos­i­tive, and met­rics from the sys­tem are shared with the board every month. Sta­tis­tics are also pub­lished via the company’s HR News online mag­a­zine, where Ros­ali­no can use sys­tem gen­er­at­ed num­bers to con­grat­u­late depart­ments on var­i­ous achievements.

Ros­ali­no says:

Vis­i­bil­i­ty and data feel dif­fer­ent. The sys­tem has become an inte­gral part in cre­at­ing greater open­ness, trans­paren­cy and clar­i­ty around what peo­ple need to do. Indi­vid­u­als are being more demand­ing of their man­agers in a pos­i­tive way. Most peo­ple are now sit­ting down with their man­agers every three months and talk­ing about their devel­op­ment. We’re using it to recruit and retain tal­ent too. I had a senior per­son in our busi­ness who had been approached by anoth­er com­pa­ny ask­ing her to come and work for them. She said, ​‘I told them no because of the learn­ing and devel­op­ment I’m get­ting at THB. I’m not ready to go yet.’ That’s the holy grail.”