When Asher first joined continued, the company didn’t have an HR system at all.
“We kept employee data in spreadsheets, Google Docs, and paper files. As a completely remote company, storing data in paper files just doesn’t work. Not having a system to store performance review, I9s, employee agreements, and tax documents was definitely a major pain point for us.”
Soon after Asher started, continued implemented a cloud-based solution.
“That HR solution did the job, but had a very clunky interface. You can always tell if a system is not user-friendly when you repeatedly have to train people on how to use it. With that solution, I felt like I had to explain everything to employees several times.
The system’s goals and performance review modules also didn’t fit our culture. Before I joined continued, I was in charge of designing and managing a much larger company’s performance management program, so performance reviews and employee goals were my specialty. When I came to continued, the company was just starting to implement goals. However, the only way to set up goals in our HR solution was by having managers enter employees’ goals for them. That’s not how it should be—employees need to be able to input their own goals and align them with overall company goals. Specifically, we needed a solution that would enable us to identify and measure cascading goals, and provide transparency across the company as to what everyone was focused on.
On top of that, we wanted an HR solution that seamlessly pulled goals into performance reviews. I looked at several different performance review systems, and almost none of them were truly customizable. One even claimed that, based on their research, performance reviews should only have 4 questions sotheir system wouldn’t let you include more than that. That just didn’t work for us, so we kept looking for a solution that would let us customize reviews from the ground up. That’s when we found Namely.”
