The engineering team at HappyCo are tasked with the on-going development and up-keep of the HappyCo platform, which gives property managers an easy way to inspect, manage and monitor properties in real-time. They have seen some significant growth over the last few years, with over 3.5M inspections to date on their platform, and attracting big players such as Airbnb as customers.
Isaac Mann, Director of Engineering, leads a diverse, dynamic and globally distributed team of engineers at HappyCo. Behind the scenes, he has an impressive passion and drives for his team to succeed. The missing piece was having the right people performance metrics to support his team and help them improve.
"My job is to make my people more able to do their jobs better."
Isaac would measure two very topical and popular people themes relating to the workplace:
Happiness, which is reality - expectations
Satisfaction, which is impact + personal growth + remunerations + workLIFE balance.
Both of these formulas were born from both his internal drive and to try and answer the questions every manager has on their mind:
How do we help people succeed in their role?
What causes people to leave?
Both questions are excellent knowledge to have, but as Isaac learnt, it was only knowledge. He needed to transfer and apply this to the practical, busy, unrelenting and evolving world of reality to put that knowledge to the test, and translate it into results.
Finding the solution
As Isaac looked for possible solutions, including exploring Everperform, he knew he needed to get real-time data to put to the test. There were three fundamental principles any potential solution needed to uphold.
Be proactive, provide clarity and maintain personal relationships with team members.
Use an evidence-based approach to management.
Use a framework and product that made the above easy.
Crafting a solution to answer the questions
To get started, Isaac worked with Everperform to craft suitable evidence-based measurements to understand if his team were satisfied and happy, well ahead of any surprises. Then an automated schedule of pulses to capture the data were set up for each team member to provide short, sharp feedback regularly. Immediately the time spent collecting performance and engagement metrics for each person reduced, which was done manually and somewhat on-going before.
"We had a 33% increase in our team's view that we are working on the most important tasks. This is a lead indicator to both satisfaction and happiness."
Data collected from these pulses turned into insights that fueled Isaac's conversations with each team member. The automation of collecting performance data meant Isaac had more time to spend with each person, to coach them and nurture growth.
Maintaining productivity and engagement
Now with Everperform, all performance data is centralised for Isaac and his team. Team members can continuously reflect on their performance, and give feedback to others, promoting transparency and open-minded culture.
"In the same time period, we had an 86% increase in our key Team KPI; productivity."
Isaac, and the HappyCo team, now have one place to drive conversations. It's easier to know what the right questions to ask are, and see if people are improving or need help; driven by the data.