Quarterly Review Cycle Handbook

Every quarter, we spend some time to see how we as a company are performing, what are the things working for us and what are not. What processes are useful and what are wasting our energy? We also do a performance review among ourselves to see whether we are delivering what we promised to our customers, team members, and to ourselves. This quarterly review is a time when we pause, reflect on our work, see where we are going, and reorient ourselves.

Duration: Our quarterly review generally lasts for 3 weeks and is divided into two parts. The first part is 2 weeks long, where we collect feedback, data, and reports company-wide from all teams. Most of our team members are working on various quarterly review tasks at this time. These tasks or activities are listed in section below. The second part, which is one week long, is when our leadership team does a review of all the numbers and decides what needs to be done next. For example, for a quarterly (Jan-Feb-Mar), we will start our quarterly review cycle in the second half of March and will end it in the first week of April; in other words, it will conclude in roughly three weeks.

Our quarterly review cycle generally involves the following activities:

1. Quarterly Review Calendar: The HR team kick starts the quarterly review cycle by publishing a review calendar for the given quarter. This calendar generally lists which activity will be done and when during the 3-week review cycle.
2. Employee engagement surveys: These surveys are supposed to be filled out by each team member. Since the HR team cannot talk to every team member in a 1:1 meeting due to time constraints, these surveys are the shortest way for team members to convey their thoughts to the HR team. The HR team does the analysis of these surveys to gauge the pulse of team members in the company. If the collective score of this survey is poor, it sends a strong signal to the management team to resolve the issue that team members are facing. Given the survey scores, the HR team also selects a few team members to talk to in detail to understand the issue further. Therefore, we kindly ask team members to complete this survey and share their insights with management to enhance Crownstack’s work environment.
3. KPI score by team members: Our team leads are asked to update the KPI score of their team members. Each team member has a KPI assigned to them, which is based on our E.L.A.S.T.I.C culture values. This KPI score tells everyone how a particular team member is performing.
4. KPI self-score: Team members are asked to self-rate themselves on KPIs assigned to them. Since they have access to the KPI score, which they self-rated, as well as the KPI score rated by their team leads, it gives them a clear understanding of where they think they stand and where their peers think they stand.
5. Anonymous Feedback for Team Leaders: Team members are asked to give anonymous feedback to their team leaders. A team leader is human too, and they need a feedback loop to help them improve their leadership skills. Therefore, this anonymous feedback mechanism helps them become a better leader. Also, this always gives opportunity to team members to inform management if they are not happy with their team leaders or if they want to convey their thoughts to management without revealing their identity.
6. Open Suggestion Box Survey: This survey is managed by the HR team and is nothing but a simple form asking employees to suggest things that they would like to see improved or have in place in Crownstack. As the name suggests, it is an open suggestion box survey; therefore, team members can cover any topic they want, which helps them in delivering the best work.
7. Anonymous Feedback Survey: This is also an anonymous survey type that provides the opportunity to all employees to provide feedback to any department, senior, or coworker in the organisation. The purpose is to collect 360-degree feedback and improve on all aspects. Unlike the Anonymous Feedback for team Leaders, where team members give feedback to their team leads only, in this survey, they can give anonymous feedback to anyone, including department heads, CXOs, or any other person of interest. Additionally, unlike the Open Suggestion Box survey, the identity of the person is kept hidden.
8. #COMET Learning Goals: We have various #COMET upskilling programs at Crownstack to manage the talent of team members, and #COMET Quarterly Learning Goals is one of them. Every quarter we publish the upskilling guidelines for our workforce, which tell them in which direction we are going and in which skills team members need to update themselves. Team members set their learning goals, as well as reflect on their last quarterly learning goals. In addition to this, all our other #COMET programs, i.e., GAM, MEDAL programme, and SHE-WILL programme, are also covered in the quarterly review cycle.
9. Reward & Recognition Program: Our rewards and recognition program also runs with a quarterly review cycle. Where team members who have been doing good work are selected and appreciated. We also ask team members to submit nominations to select excellent performers.
10. Performance Review meetings: In addition to people who are performing well, our review process also identifies people who are not performing well as per the expectation. The HR team sets up a meeting with them to see how we can help them improve and prepare them for success.
11. Appraisal: Our appraisals are done annually and each quarter, with a review cycle; we engage all those people in the appraisal cycle who have completed another year with us in the ongoing quarter. Team members whose appraisals are due are informed at the beginning of the review cycle by the HR team, and their appraisals are discussed and settled within the review cycle’s duration.
12. Maintenance Checklists: Every department maintains a quarterly maintenance checklist, which helps us keep our systems running and our processes fresh. All stakeholders are supposed to run their maintenance checklist during this review cycle.
13. All Hands Meet: Our quarterly performance review and feedback ends with a quarterly all-hands meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to give updates to everyone in the organisation about what other departments are doing and headed for. This meeting also recognises individual performers and best-performing squads and teams through our R&R and congratulates employees on their work anniversaries. This meeting also welcomes new team members who have joined within the past 3-4 months. The meeting also informs team members what action management is taking on their surveys and suggestions that they have filled.

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