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Case Study

Argest - world-class HR without an HR department

This is the first part of a 2-part case study on Argest, one of Sonar6’s first Quick Start customers. We’ll be revisiting the team in the new year after they’ve done their first company-wide review round to see how it went.

With fewer than 20 staff, Argest doesn’t have an HR department or even a coordinator. Instead HR issues are handled by GM Bruce Hay-Chapman, who deals with recruitment and performance, and the company’s accountant, who deals with legal and procedural issues. Although no formal systems were in place prior to Sonar6, the informal system had served the company well for over 20 years.

Says Bruce, “Our existing system wasn’t dysfunctional in any way, but we knew we could be doing things better. We did hold reviews: we’d go over performance and staff had the opportunity to request training, but our employee documentation was mostly a person’s name, salary and a brief job description. So while it was working for us, it was a bit lightweight.”

Environmental Factors

The team at Argest weren’t looking for a performance management system specifically, but the Sonar6 recommendation came out of a review of all of the company’s systems and processes. As Bruce explains, the tragic loss of Jim Irvine, the man who built the company, was the catalyst for some fundamental changes.

“It became obvious when we lost Jim's depth of knowledge and judgement that we needed to formalise our processes and make sure everything was recorded properly. We worked with consultant Paul Millin to review our business plans and internal systems and processes, and a lack of formal people processes was identified. We needed a system that would give our staff some sort of guidance, and give us more visibility into what was happening within the company.”

Requirements

When it came to constructing a wish-list for Argest’s new performance system, the requirements boiled down to a couple of main areas. The system needed to:

1. Give staff ‘visibility of purpose’ – to record detailed job descriptions, clear objectives, concrete role requirements, and provide a way to measure employees against these.
2. Allow Argest to align business strategy and individual employee goals in a meaningful way.

Handily, their consultant had already used what he thought would be the best system for the company’s needs. He demonstrated Sonar6 to Bruce and MD Chris Rowe, and they decided they didn’t need to consider other alternatives. However, Bruce was initially sceptical.

“I needed a little convincing that buying was the way to go. The price was certainly attractive, and we liked that we didn’t need to invest in extra technology to use it, but in the end we went with Sonar6 because it delivered nearly everything we were looking for in one package.”

The alternative for Argest would have been to develop a system internally. While the ‘do it yourself’ philosophy isn’t unknown to the team, it would have required someone to take ownership and essentially build people processes from the ground up – from the underlying philosophy to the forms used in reviews.

“Sonar6 made it easier on us; it simplifies the process and provides the content. It did what we wanted to do, so ultimately we didn’t need to build something ourselves.”

Sonar6 Solution

Argest is using Sonar6 Quick Start, and was one of the first companies to set up completely online. For this reason there’s been no tailoring of the system to Argest’s specific needs, but they’re finding it ticks most of the company’s boxes. And while still learning his way around the tools, Bruce has managed to use it in some creative ways – proving just how flexible the Quick Start system can be.

“At the moment I’m building job descriptions by combining competencies from the Bendelta Competency Library with the development guidelines. It would be easier if it was automated of course, but the content’s there, so it makes sense to use it.”

So far Argest hasn’t needed help from the Sonar6 Customer Support team, but Bruce has contributed some valuable feedback and feature suggestions back to Sonar6 as a result of his experiences with the system. As Sonar6 Head of Experience Mike Carden explains, this is extremely beneficial from a development point of view.

“We love getting feedback from customers and understanding the ways they’re using Sonar6 in their businesses. Our goal at Sonar6 is to democratise performance management; to take systems and processes used by HR departments in our large clients and give smaller customers access to the same tools and techniques. Of course we have done tens of thousands of hours of research and development to build a best-practice system, but we get to the next level by integrating feedback from customers actually using the tools.”

The next step for Bruce will be rolling Sonar6 out to the rest of the company. Most of the training around Sonar6 will be staff members getting in and ‘having a play’ with the features before sitting down with their manager and agreeing on roles and competencies. Then, reviewing!

Summary

Sonar6 is being introduced into Argest as part of a larger project: improving systems company-wide. They’re not looking for specific productivity gains or cost savings to tie to Sonar6 specifically, but still expect to see tangible performance improvements as a result.

“On the employee level, it’s really about engagement. For us, success will be people getting value out of these reviews. We’ll see that they clearly understand what’s required of them in their role, they’ll work to achieve it, they’ll enjoy being part of Argest, and so discretionary effort will increase.

“On a company level, we’re looking forward to a stronger link between goals and strategy: better alignment between our roles and the company direction.”

Argest will also use Sonar6 to support succession decisions, by giving the process some formality and recording the information in a more transparent and permanent way. Bruce acknowledges that while the system provides useful tools for talent identification, they’re not critical for Argest.

“We’re a small company. There’s no mystery - we know everyone who works here, we know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and it’s easy for us to acknowledge or help those who need it. We’ll still make relationship-based decisions, but they’ll be documented in a more systematic way.

“We see Sonar6 as a tool to support our internal processes: taking what we do well and helping us to do it better – without needing an HR department to get us there.”