Last week, Sonar6 was a featured vendor at SF New Tech where Jason gave a presentation on all things Sonar6 to a crowd of “VCs, journalists, hackers, techies, recruiters and CEOs”. We got some fantastic feedback, and really enjoyed hearing from the other presenters, Diddit, HearPlanet, tweet.me and Nileguide.

Unfortunately Jason didn’t get to to answer everyones questions, so we thought we’d give him the opportunity to cover some here!

1)      How would a company with no reviews in place be able to use Sonar6?

Sonar6 v3 gives companies who are new to performance reviews a really easy way to get started. Our Quick Start option steps you through the process, giving you access to a huge library of roles and competencies along with development suggestions and guidance for conducting your review conversations.

2)      What size companies does Sonar6 target?

Sonar6 is particularly suited to small-medium sized companies of up to 2,000 employees. Having said that, we do have a customer with over 400,000 employees!

3)      Some companies actually do performance management really well even though the process is done manually, what can Sonar6 offer them?

Sonar6 is all about supporting the performance conversation – not replacing it. In companies with existing review systems, Sonar6 can be used to collect the information so you can get to it quickly at review time. Because Sonar6 stores previous review outcomes, supporting evidence and personalised objectives, there’s no wasting time trying to get everything together before your one-on-one.

4)      How does Sonar6 handle 360 reviews?

Sonar6 has 360 reviews built in, so staff members can send email invites to anyone they’ve dealt with who may have important feedback – and it’s not limited to other employees. These results are then displayed on the review screen, alongside the manager’s review and the employee’s self assessment.

5)      Most performance reviews suck because they are just so uncomfortable… how does Sonar6 help the manager that just doesn’t like having these kinds of conversations?

Because Sonar6 allows you to capture a huge range of information from any number of sources, your performance conversations are going to be based on some really solid data. Sonar6 also provides a huge library of development activities, so the focus is no longer on telling employees how they’ve failed; it’s about discussion ways to improve, or to leverage existing skills in new ways. And it’s not about firing underperformers – using Sonar6’s analysis and reporting capabilities, you might even find a better fitting role that will allow them to shine.

6)      Who can access what?  Can employees see how their managers have rated their peers?

This is entirely up to your company. By default, employees can only see their reviews (including their self-assessments and their manager’s reviews) – but you can change this if it better suits your purposes. At a manager level, you can determine who has access to what information: whether they can see just their team, other manager’s teams, or the entire company. Nobody will have access to anything they’re not supposed to see!

7)      Have you thought of giving this away for free?

Actually, we’re doing this at present! The Sonar6 v3 beta is still free to try for 30 days. It has a full feature set and is being continually updated, so you can set up your entire company and get a good feel for how Sonar6 will work for you.