Flink

The Challenge

Flink had experienced a hyper-growth phase, scaling the company from a small startup to a large organization within months and hiring many new people in a short space of time. The team was managing their daily HR operations, such as performance reviews and employee surveys, on various HR platforms and spreadsheets. Although this was working well, they saw an opportunity to push the boundaries to further boost efficiency. 

Additionally, the team was looking for a more cohesive way to glean insights via analytics. The team believed it would be beneficial to have a unified view of data all in one platform that could support them in facilitating and driving the relevant HR processes and supporting the employee lifecycle through a rapid stage of company growth.

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The Solution

When evaluating various solutions, the team was impressed by how user-friendly and intuitive the Leapsome platform was. They also liked that it’s a comprehensive platform covering many different processes all in one place. Certain features, such as the Surveys module, which allows for interactive comments and detailed analytics, caught their attention early.
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"What I find helpful is that analytics are included in each module. This helps our team make the right decisions and know where our focus and priority areas should be.”

— Grace Rattanadit, People Team Lead

By seamlessly integrating with systems such as SAP and Okta, Flink further accelerated its implementation process. With an ambitious timeline of just six weeks, Flink achieved one of the fastest implementation milestones for a company of its size.

Flink adopted a phased approach to rolling out Leapsome, successfully deploying the Meetings, Instant Feedback, and Reviews modules in the first months before integrating Surveys, Goals, and the Competency Framework later. This strategic rollout ensured a smooth adoption without overwhelming the organization with new features to learn in a short space of time. 

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The Result

In just over a year and a half and through the HR team’s initiatives and dedication, Flink has achieved impressive results. They regularly use five key Leapsome modules to optimize meetings, feedback, goals, reviews, surveys, and career frameworks. They have significantly improved people enablement across the whole organization. 

Despite rapidly growing and spreading across multiple countries, they have reliable employee processes, fully enabled managers, and a structured, fair, and consistent review process. ‍

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Enhanced feedback culture & clear review process 

The team has now rolled out regular 360° review cycles across the whole company, promoting a culture of continuous feedback. Leapsome has supported the team in seamlessly tying past feedback and goals into each performance cycle, which helps reduce biases and makes the reviews fairer.

The team has also extended the performance review range, including ‘upward feedback,’ where direct reports assess their managers. This is especially important in supporting managers to be better mentors and coaches by giving them constructive feedback and improvement areas.
 

“Our main goal with the reviews was to foster a continuous feedback culture and ensure that the different inputs were linked in a structured way. Having this intuitive, user-friendly platform and being able to refer to the feedback received helps employees understand where to go next in their careers at Flink.”

— Theresa Bothe, Head of Organisational & People Development 

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Actionable survey insights

The visibility and detailed drill-down capabilities of the analytics and filtering features have supported Flink in targeting and examining specific teams for more precise feedback, enabling solutions that individually target the needs of subteams. 

The team has also been able to improve surveys by using the survey comments function to drive direct interaction and clarification with survey respondents. This has led to a broader employee acceptance of engagement surveys, and managers frequently utilize these surveys, too. 

The ability to benchmark against the performance of other fast-growing companies in a GDPR-compliant manner is a great way to expand on the internal company scoring for survey questions and categories and to put the scoring into a broader market perspective. 

In addition, Flink has found the survey setup process to be fairly simple, with the extensive library of prebuilt best-practice questions making it user-friendly and adaptable for running ad hoc surveys to gather quick feedback.

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Streamlined meetings

The team at Flink has implemented a streamlined Meetings system whereby participants can document and track actions from various discussions, improving overall meeting efficiency. Having all this information in one place has been espeically beneficial for managers with many different direct reports. 
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“As a manager, it’s really helpful because you can link all the regular meetings you have in one platform, from 1:1s to team meetings. It means that you have everything documented in one place and  also helps me not forget to prepare for the meetings, always follow up, and share regular feedback.”

— Theresa Bothe, Head of Organisational & People Development 

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Clear, actionable goals 

The team also launched the Goals module and shared company-wide OKRs that were visible to everyone. This means that everyone across the organization clearly understands what the company focuses on and how their roles and teams fit into this wider picture. 

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Fair and transparent competency frameworks

Flink has developed a clear competency matrix, aiding employees in understanding the skills required for their current roles and what they need to improve for future growth. This has provided clarity and understanding of available career paths, allowing employees to see their potential growth trajectories, including horizontal development options. 

The competency matrix helps employees understand the expectations, skills, and competencies required at their current career level and what they need to work on to advance to the next level. This framework includes core competencies expected from all employees and team-specific functional skills. 
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“I think one useful thing is that you can also categorize the type of skills. So you have, for instance, leadership skills, functional skills, and the basic skills that are required.”

— Grace Rattanadit, People Team Lead

The framework is also integrated with Instant Feedback comments, enabling employees to see how their feedback aligns with specific competencies or skills. This holistic approach helps employees align their personal development with the company’s direction and goals, creating a structured and transparent career development environment.
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“For managers, it’s nice to have this framework when they have development talks with their direct reports, and they can use this tool and say, here are the expectations. It’s all standardized.”

— Grace Rattanadit, People Team Lead

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What’s next for Flink and Leapsome

Flink continues exploring and adopting new Leapsome features, keeping in close contact with their account manager for any updates or changes to the platform. 

They are committed to further enhancing employee experience and organizational efficiency in the coming year.

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Conclusion

Flink’s journey exemplifies how a committed and savvy People team can transform organizational processes and how an intelligent platform can support this. By centralizing and streamlining various HR functions, Flink has significantly enhanced the employee experience, improved manager performance, and streamlined operational efficiency.