Kearney & Company Soars with WingSpan:
Fosters Professionalism, Supports the Best Talent
www.kearneyco.com
HEADQUARTERS Alexandria, VA
EMPLOYEES 450 and growing
“We are a professional services firm in a competitive market, and we must hire the
very best talent. Our consistent, equitable appraisal process through WingSpan gives
candidates confidence that Kearney is the right choice for them.”
“We have garnered accolades from more than half a dozen regional and national
organizations that identify Kearney as a “Virginia Fantastic 50 Business,” a “Best for Vets
Employer,” and a “Top 100 Accounting Firm.” We attribute these awards, in part, to our
superb performance review process, and WingSpan has a significant hand in that.”
WINGSPAN RESULTS
More than 92% of performance
reviews are completed on time.
Employees are highly engaged
with the company, as a result of a
more frequent review process.
Employees are better connected
to their supervisors, even
when working off-site, through
WingSpan’s Web-based solution for
mobile workforces.
“Best Place to Work”
Kearney is recognized as the
by Accounting Today, Washington Business Journal, and Virginia Business publications.
©2013 SilkRoad, inc. // silkroad.com
“After WingSpan implementation, employee
satisfaction increased: More than 90 percent
of employees say they are satisfied with the
review process and believe WingSpan is a
valuable work tool.”
BACKGROUND
As a CPA firm established in 1985, Kearney & Company
(Kearney) was founded upon strong ethical ideals,
standards, and processes. Headquartered in Alexandria,
Virginia, the company exclusively serves the Federal
Government.
Six years ago, Kearney & Company had less than 100
employees, a number which has swelled to 450 and
growing today. Many of the company’s employees
work on client sites, anywhere in the US, and sometimes
even abroad.
performance or goals from previous years, employees
struggled to find relevancy in their evaluations from year
to year.
KEARNEY & COMPANY’S SOLUTION
Kearney & Company began its search for a solution that
could provide a consistent and organized review process
throughout the company, as well as assistance in setting
goals for employees. After looking at several solutions,
the company selected SilkRoad’s WingSpan.
“We looked at solutions that ranged from simple to more
complex, including some that were probably better suited
for much larger organizations than ours,” said Ogburn.
“When it came down to it, WingSpan was the perfect fit
for our company. In the final weeks of making decisions it
was glaringly obvious that WingSpan was for us. It was a
very easy decision.”
THE CHALLENGE
The company currently has 450 employees, but finds
itself growing so rapidly that the number changes weekly.
With such rapid growth, the company found its needs and
demands changing quickly when it came to performance
reviews. Kearney evolved from being able to handle all
of its performance reviews via e-mail and spreadsheets,
to finding themselves overwhelmed with the process as it
became inconsistent and disorganized.
“We realized our growth was going to continue, and we
needed to find a product that would meet our needs
related to company-wide performance review processes,
and that would continue to expand and grow as the
organization continues to get larger,” said Erin Ogburn,
Director of Human Resources, Kearney & Company.
Kearney required a system that could handle all types
of movement, while allowing them the flexibility to
review a variety of positions and areas of the business.
As an added challenge, many of Kearney & Company’s
employees work at client locations and travel regularly
across the United States, so the company needed a webbased solution that could be accessed anywhere.
Kearney & Company had previously tried to launch a
goal-setting initiative within the company without an
integrated system and found it to be extremely difficult.
Employees had also mentioned they were dissatisfied
that they could not easily reflect back on their review
process from the previous year, or set and track goals
for the upcoming year. Without being able to reference
CHALLENGES
Establish a consistent and organized
performance review process to support
a fast-growing, fast-paced professional
services organization.
Identify an automated, Web-based
performance management system that
would give mobile, remotely located
employees access anywhere at any time.
Institute employee goal tracking and
more frequent reviews at six months,
a year, and after client engagements.
SOLUTION
WingSpan supports Kearney & Company’s
culture of excellence, fostering professionalism
in the workforce and exceeding the expectations
of managers and employees alike.
“WingSpan is very simple to use, and people
catch on within minutes. It’s extremely easy to
understand and navigate within the system. We
have never had a complaint,” said Ogburn.
HOW THEY USE IT
At Kearney & Company, every employee uses WingSpan and must login to the system within their first six months at the
company. The system is used in multiple ways:
1.
Every employee has a
six-month review process,
which is conducted in
WingSpan. The employee
completes a form that the
supervisor then reviews.
That form is then used as a
discussion point during the
review session. Employees
also set three goals for
use during the remainder
of their first year of
employment with Kearney.
2.
Employees also use
WingSpan regularly as a
post-engagement review
tool after completing an
engagement with a client.
The company’s employees
change engagements
frequently, and Kearney
& Company wants to
ensure team members
are receiving feedback
on a regular basis. They
have a basic and short
performance review
form that follows the end
of each engagement,
completed in WingSpan,
allowing employees to
rate themselves. Their
supervisor or manager
reviews the form and
provides comments, after
which the two then meet
and discuss the review.
3.
Kearney & Company
also has a yearly
review process for all
employees in the spring.
All employees fill out an
initial self-assessment in
WingSpan, which allows
for both comments and
numerical performance
ratings. The company
has created 12 different
self evaluation forms to
suit different levels as
well as various areas of
the business. Employees
complete their selfevaluation forms and again
the supervisor or manager
reviews them and meets
with the employee to
discuss them. These forms
are then used to determine
compensation and title
changes. During this annual
review process, employees
also set goals to be
completed by the following
review period.
4.
In order to enhance the
current goal setting
process, Kearney has
added a mid-year goal
setting period in which
employees will utilize
WingSpan to revisit, update,
and discuss goals with a
manager or supervisor.
All reviews are added
to employee personnel
files and used in the next
annual review process to
track employees’ progress
over the previous year.
The company encourages
employees to note any
feedback from clients,
coworkers, supervisors,
and professional contacts
into their personal journal
in WingSpan to later
incorporate in their self
assessment form during the
annual review process.
“Many of our employees work off-site and at
times felt disconnected when it came to the
review process. We needed a web-based
solution that would help us to bridge that
gap and keep employees connected and
engaged in the process all year.”
GLOWING PERFORMANCE REVIEW FOR
WINGSPAN
After implementing WingSpan, the company found
itself saving significant hours of work by eliminating the
administration of reviews via email. As an added benefit,
WingSpan also made the review process consistent
across the company. WingSpan was credited with a
significant reduction in review process errors—most
employees now meet the overall annual review process
deadlines. Previous to WingSpan, a missed deadline may
have gone unnoticed or not been followed up for several
weeks. With WingSpan, the company now has a standard
process of workflow for performance reviews.
In addition, Kearney & Company can now create and
edit their own forms, allowing them to target forms to
different areas of the company and positions, while easily
adapting the system to company growth and change.
With this ability, they can make small changes and edits
on their forms easily to ensure each position can be
reviewed properly and consistently across the company.
This provides the flexibility to have different types of reviews.
“The company now has the flexibility to create many
different forms, and in an organization in which we have
different business units with different focuses as well as
employees at different levels, we do need the flexibility
to offer different types of forms,” said Ogburn. “The fact
that our system is web-based as well is really important to
us, because our employees are travelling often, may be on
the road, and are on client sites, so we need for them to
be able to access WingSpan wherever they are.”
“Many of our employees work off-site and at times felt
disconnected when it came to the review process. We
needed a web-based solution that would help us to
bridge that gap and keep employees connected and
engaged in the process all year.”
Using the web-based solution helped the company’s
employees feel more connected to the process and their
supervisor, even when their supervisor worked from
another site. Employees now know when they need to
complete their forms and when they will hear from their
supervisor. WingSpan removed the “disconnect in the
review process,” and moved Kearney & Company to a
focal (or common) review date.
Two of the major benefits the company has realized are
the consistent performance review process (six month
review, yearly review, and post-engagement review) and
the ability to store information. Employees can now login
to the system and review forms as well as their goals.
The system also has organized the information and allows
employees to be able to reference their review forms
whenever they want to.
QUICK STATS AT A GLANCE: EMPLOYEES ARE HIGHLY SATISFIED WITH WINGSPAN
In surveys of Kearney’s workforce:
More than 90% of respondents say
WingSpan is easy to use.
95% of respondents did not
experience any difficulties with
WingSpan during their annual
performance review process.
More than 80% of respondents
will use WingSpan as a valuable
tool to track performance-related
information and goals throughout
the year.
“Employees love it. They really appreciate consistency,
and with this system they are assured that once they
complete their form and hit submit, it will be sent to the
right people. They like that they know the timeline for the
process and that we follow it. WingSpan enables every
part of the annual performance review process to happen
on time, and that is really important,” added Ogburn.
“WingSpan has allowed us to have a goal-setting process
that we didn’t really have before, because we just didn’t
have the capability. Originally we tried to launch goal
setting without the system and it was really rough. Now
employees can reference, update, and change their goals,
and create notes in their journals for themselves.”
Social Talent Management
Erin has found that employees feel Kearney & Company
is more dedicated to the performance review process
and they are better informed about their performance
because of the consistency of WingSpan and the
programs put in place.
“People say ‘because of WingSpan and the
implementation of the program, we now feel more
self-assured about the result and the outcomes of our
performance review processes’.”
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As an added benefit, the system allowed Kearney to
finally set up a goal-setting process for their employees,
which employees can reference at any time. The
company went from not having goal setting for any
employees to now having the majority of employees using
WingSpan to track performance-related goals.
Kearney & Company administers annual surveys to
gauge satisfaction with the review process, and prior to
WingSpan the company received “a lot of complaints
during the review process,” with many employees noting
they were not happy with the current review experience.