CHRONEXT

CHRONEXT is a Swiss company and retailer of luxury watches. The company has over 85 employees with offices in Zug, Switzerland, and Cologne, Germany, as well as further international Lounge locations.

The Challenge

The P&C team at CHRONEXT was struggling heavily with an outdated performance management process. The lack of automation and poor efficiency of the process affected everyone: from the HR department, who had to set up manual processes and administer reviews to managers, who spent a lot of time supervising and organizing the reviews. 

After recognizing that HR and managers had lost countless hours that the team could have spent on more productive tasks, the need for a more comprehensive solution became undeniable — especially as the organization was growing and the negative impact of poor performance management processes would only compound. 

In addition to the losses in time and productivity, their process did not allow for comparing competencies across reviews or on a broader scale. It was impossible to identify high and low performers, which meant there was also no way to reward people that performed well and no way to address issues that led to low performance. CHRONEXT did not have one comprehensive tool in place to measure and drive employee engagement, such as surveys, or to create company-wide strategic alignment through goal-tracking.

The Solution

The People and Culture team set out to find a 360°-feedback tool to solve the problem with their performance management process. They were hoping to find a tool that offered additional modules, including engagement surveys and goal-tracking, to assist and relieve their daily workload, and a platform to set up processes and gain insights for internal learning.

The team decided on Leapsome after a comprehensive analysis of their requirements, including:

• Option for 360° reviews
• Review and survey analytics
• Integration with their HRIS and other communication software
• Performance Reviews with the option to customize skill, level, and competencies
• All-in-one solution offering goal-tracking and survey management on top of reviews
  
  

Leonie Stratbücker, Team Lead for People & Organization at CHRONEXT and her team interviewed four providers with the same set of questions — designed to ensure a concrete understanding of which objectives each solution met. After demoing the solutions and careful evaluation, the company concluded Leapsome was the best software to accommodate their needs.
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“We chose Leapsome because it ticked our internal requirements and offered an interesting outlook for further development in their roadmap. 

Also, the user experience and feedback from our team convinced us that Leapsome would be the right choice for us — and would enable us to work more efficiently thanks to the review automation and integrations into our HRIS and main communication software.”

The team began with a rollout of Reviews; they ensured that leadership and teams received training on the new tool and process and set up internal documentation as a resource for follow-ups and new joiners. After successfully implementing reviews, they also began setting up the survey and goal-tracking tools within Leapsome.

Leonie mentioned a critical aspect for companies wanting to get the most out of Leapsome for building an engaged and highly productive team: a continuous commitment to learning about topics, such as feedback, goal-setting, and professional development.
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“Performance Management for us is an ongoing process — especially learning to give and receive feedback the right way. 

We’re happy to have a solid and comprehensive tool like Leapsome helping us highlight the importance of performance management. The tool provides us with a comprehensive overview of performance and behavior and consistently helps us develop and improve our individual performance and hence, the company’s overall performance.”

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Leonie emphasizes how this approach enables the team to understand Leapsome as a system, as well as the underlying process and ideas behind it. Aside from documenting some of the technical functionalities of Leapsome, they also documented the insights of their feedback and communication training. 

The Result

Upon completing their first review cycles with Leapsome, CHRONEXT started noticing more and more benefits — including the tool’s efficiency, scalability, and flexibility for customization, which enabled them to adjust it to all company requirements.

The entire team at CHRONEXT has gained a better understanding of the review cycle. Performance reviews are usually held in March and September — an enormous improvement to the previous setup that required manual effort to keep track of everyone's reviews. This allows goal-setting and promotions to be conducted in line with — and be informed by — performance reviews.

Improved engagement and team development

The team now has the means to send out identical surveys in automated intervals, effectively measuring the impact of their initiatives over time. In addition to their own strategies, they welcome the intelligent recommendations and action items Leapsome delivers based on survey results. The P&C team has recently noticed an increase in their eNPS score between two surveys, proving that Leapsome helps uncover impact drivers for engagement and actively assists in discovering the best way to address areas in need of improvement.

Leonie and her colleagues observed similar successes using Leapsome’s performance reviews. By comparing past review cycles, CHRONEXT noticed the positive impact the new process has on team development and performance.

What’s next for CHRONEXT’s use of Leapsome?

Leonie shared she would like to focus on leveraging the capabilities of the Surveys and Reviews modules even more. She and the team also see opportunities in expanding to Leapsome’s Learning module to facilitate onboarding and employee development.