Two feedback interviews with employees hired in each department became an obligatory part of the onboarding process in Advox Studio last year. We talked to Patrycja Łasinska, Team Leader in our HR Department, about how it happened and what effects it had, as well as about activities related to creating competence profiles for developer positions and others. We invite you to read the first interview on our blog!
Joanna Kaleta: Where did the idea for regular feedback conversations with employees come from? Was it an internal need demonstrated by people employed in our company or more simply a desire to implement a modern approach to human resources management?
Patrycja Łasinska: When I joined the company almost 1.5 years ago, such conversations were already taking place, but they were not cyclical or systematic. Rather, they were used ad hoc in the moment when we wanted to appreciate a particular employee or when there was a need to talk about our cooperation because "something" was not right. Until a few years ago, developers had an annual feedback conversation, which covered the topics of pay raises, promotions, or approach to programming. It was also a kind of a summary of the growth of a particular employee, finding out what projects he works on, and what he would like to work on.
Joanna: So, a classic conversation about what's been going on all year and what can be done in the future to make it better - from both sides.
Patrycja: Exactly. In contrast, we noticed last year that a feedback conversation during onboarding could speed up an employee's onboarding. The sooner we were able to learn how to work together, provide the knowledge to carry out tasks on our own - in particular, the sooner we were able to provide information about both the things that were going well and those that needed improvement, or to verify that sometimes mistakes or errors were not our fault (because we did not provide some information) - the better support we provided during the first three months of a new person in the company.
Joanna: In the most important period.
Patrycja: Not so much the most important, but definitely difficult. Entering a new environment, integration with the team, getting to know other work standards - all these elements cause a lot of stress, and they have to come together for the onboarding process to run as it should.
Joanna: And it ended with the person simply wanting to stay with the company.
Patrycja: Of course, this is what we care about, which is why last year we worked very hard on the onboarding process itself - especially with regard to less experienced people: those with strong programming basics, but without expertise in a specific technology. At that time we were aiming to expand Magento teams - we were recruiting developers with knowledge of PHP, but without Magento in their CVs. Well conducted onboarding and feedback conversations allowed us to quickly learn how to work together and provide them with the knowledge that allowed them to carry out tasks on their own. In this way, we accelerated the process of development to the position of Junior Magento Developer during the implementation period lasting on average from 3 to 6 months.
Joanna: What are the first feedback conversations like during the probationary period at Advox?
Patrycja: There were and still are 2, this number is completely sufficient. The only thing that has changed is the timing - in the beginning 1 interview was held after week 4, now it is held after week 5 (during week 6), the other during week 9. We have noticed that extending this period provides us with better results from the interviews.
Joanna: Did employee evaluations also exist before?
Patrycja: When I came to Advox, the very plan to take a more systemic approach to the appraisal process was just germinating. You could say that it was in the process of consultation - in our company we try to consult every big change with different groups : Team Leaders, Project Managers, individual teams.
Joanna: Are you past the first of these types of systemic feedback conversations?
Patrycja: Yes, we were able to conduct them at the turn of the year. They became an introduction to building competence profiles. We started with frontend and backend developers, as well as testers, and after the first interviews there are also PMs and UX/UI Designers. We still have DevOps department and soft departments - Marketing and Sales. This year we would definitely like to close the first series of interviews and start reviewing them.
Joanna: Did feedback conversations appeal to employees?
Patrycja: We received really good feedback, although not always positive. However, we keep saying that any negative feedback makes each subsequent conversation, each subsequent collection of information about the employee more effective. And we do see it - last year we asked very broad questions about "who am I" and what place in the structure I currently occupy (with a request to justify it), which allowed us to create lists of competences which (in the opinion of our employees) should be present at a particular skill level and in the Junior/Mid/Senior structure.
Joanna: Only hard or also soft skills?
Patrycja: And those, and those. At the very beginning of the candidate's career we evaluate primarily the soft skills, we pay great attention to them during the recruitment process. In IT it is very important, for example, whether someone can quickly find the needed information without the knowledge of a particular tool. This is the reality of work in this industry - regardless of what level you are at, because technology is changing and developing so dynamically. No matter how many years of experience you have and that you hold a senior position, when a new version of technology appears you will still have to search for the information you need on your own.
Joanna: What were the next steps in creating the competency profiles, after the first feedback conversations?
Patrycja: We started with developers due to the fact that this is the largest group of our employees. Together with Tech Leaders of particular technologies - in our case Frontend, Symfony, Magento, Python - we started thinking about how to build a competence profile. We gathered all the information we got from our employees, analyzed the material we received, added our comments and that's how the initial developer competence profile was created.
Joanna: And a comprehensive list of competencies?
Patrycja: Yes - a list of competencies along with behaviors that an employee must exhibit to demonstrate that they possess that competency.
Joanna: What is the next step?
Patrycja: Adding these competencies and behaviors to the questions that employees, their leaders, PMs, and team members answer. The first of the assessors is the employee himself. The second - his team leader who assesses for both technical and soft skills. The third - the whole team and all Project Managers, who analyze only soft skills. This is a time-consuming process, but such assessment will be conducted only once - as it would not make sense to examine all the soft and hard competencies collected by us every six months.
Joanna: Do you mean that the basis will always be the same, but the profile itself will be expanded to include new technologies, for example?
Patrycja: Yes, but also the fact that an awful lot of time is spent doing these surveys, especially on technical competencies. At the end of the day, it's a review by both the employee and the Tech Leader about six months of doing hundreds of tasks that need to be reviewed and analyzed.
Joanna: Well yes, there is an employee involved, a Tech Leader, team members and still a PM, and everyone has to evaluate everyone.
Patrycja: Because of this fact we started to look for a solution that would allow both the employee and the Tech Leader to spend less time on data collection. I can't reveal anything more about competency mapping, because we are still in the development phase of this solution. I can only point out that the process would run automatically and allow for data analysis in the moment we need it - for example when the Head of Project Manager delegates projects to a given team. Thanks to the system he will know exactly that in this team there are necessary competences for this project.
Joanna: For an employee, will this system also be useful?
Patrycja: As much as possible - he will have a preview of which tasks he performs most often and which he does not perform at all, or perhaps would like to. There will be no need for abstract conclusions from surveys, but constant, daily work on a living organism. This solution seems to make the most sense to us.
Joanna: Are you relying only on internal data or have you also used external data?
Patrycja: Rather, only from internal data. Of course, the division into positions in our company is adjusted to the market situation - similarly, competence profiles created on the basis of our conclusions from conversations with employees were also analyzed with regard to market realities. We wanted the system to be unified so that no one - neither senior nor new employee - felt disadvantaged.
Joanna: Can you expand on that thought?
Patrycja: There's an established belief that the first indicator of experience and seniority is years of experience in the job market, but that doesn't always hold true. We can have a candidate who has been working with a given technology for 10 years, but doesn't develop outside of work, doesn't know the latest technological innovations, doesn't invest in himself - and in our daily work this is a must have. Such a person will fare worse compared to some mids or juniors. This is why establishing a profile at the three classic levels is such a challenge.
Joanna: Especially since each company is different in this regard and may have varying requirements for a given level.
Patrycja: Exactly. It would be nice if it worked the same everywhere, but we don't live in a perfect world.
Joanna: Competency mapping is also supposed to help with raises, promotions, setting development paths, etc.?
Patrycja: It certainly helps to diversify positions (seniority differentiation) - the competence profile allows us to indicate to the employee on what basis he or she did or did not get a promotion or a raise. It also helps to determine the goal of further development, the achievement of which will ensure better performance at work.
Joanna: And how does Advox try to support employee development?
Patrycja: The most important thing is that we are not closing ourselves off to technology. We have evidence for that: 5 years ago Symfony came to us, and 2 years ago Python. Implementing new technologies allows us not to stagnate and to diversify the projects we create. A few years ago, our Tech Lead Front Development decided, taking into account customer needs and market signals, that we were going into React, and then - that we were going to do PWA, which is now a buzzword. Significantly, all the frontend developers who had previously only worked in Js. on the Magento platform had to learn React. Angular also appeared - it too had to be learned. The space for development is very wide.
Joanna: Can an employee also come to you with the initiative that they want to move to another team?
Patrycja: As much as possible, these situations do happen. We had a Magento developer who moved to the Symfony team because he wanted to develop in Symfony. There's a person on the Symfony team who wanted to work in Laravel - we tried to create a space for that. There's even a person who is completely changing departments, moving from Project Management to Sales. A few people have also moved from tester to PM.
Joanna: Do you think that competence mapping is a way to attract candidates to the company, to keep them for longer? We know very well that there is a shortage of employees on the IT market and there is a lot of competition, and companies try to stand out as much as possible.
Patrycja: I think what can keep an employee in a company for a long time is just talking about the direction they want to grow in. If we didn't talk to one developer who didn't want to do Magento anymore, but wanted to develop in another technology, we wouldn't have that employee or the whole Python team right now. So it's definitely a way to reduce the risk of someone leaving.
Joanna: Sometimes if you don't ask, that person won't tell you on their own.
Patrycja: Yes, being aware of the space for conversation is very important. What's more, the more we have the opportunity to give ownership over the changes that are happening in the organization (in terms of issues that affect each of us), the better employees feel. People are afraid of change and you need to prepare them for it properly - for example, by giving influence. It is easier to accept change and its necessity when you have an influence on it, without being thrown into the deep end. We care for such approach to employees in our company.
Joanna: Thank you so much for an interesting conversation.
Patrycja: Thank you.
