Performance Management Reset at Scale
Rebuilt trust, coverage, and quality in performance management for a 15,000-person European financial services organization through bespoke learning nuggets, manager enablement, and audit-led reinforcement – raising goal completion to 97% and year-end review completion to 95% over two years.
Client: European financial services organization with 15,000 employees, including 2,800 people managers.
Challenge: Trust in performance management was low, with employee survey scores in this area at around 60%. In practice, that meant many employees did not see the process as clear, useful, or fair. Adoption was also inconsistent: fewer than 70% of employees had goals in place, and fewer than 60% received a year-end review. The organization needed a scalable approach that would improve both completion and quality, while giving leadership clear visibility into progress and accountability.
What we did:
Coucal’s consultant, with full buy-in from top management:
Worked with the organization to identify the critical moments that mattered in the performance cycle
Designed and deployed four bespoke learning nuggets for line managers based on those moments – not as generic performance management training, but as support tailored to the organization’s own goal-setting approach, policies, processes, and timeline.
Assigned these learning nuggets to managers at the relevant points in the performance cycle so the support was timely and practical. The learning focused not just on completing process steps, but on helping managers run stronger check-ins, build trust through more authentic line management, and translate business priorities into meaningful, outcome-focused goals for employees.
Reinforced the rollout with manager-facing toolkits, including tips and tricks, checklists, examples, and rubrics for assessing goal quality and review quality, as well as live virtual sessions to support large-scale behavior change.
Introduced an audit and reporting mechanism to sustain consistency across functions. This tracked whether employees had goals, whether year-end reviews had been completed, and whether both goals and reviews met the expected quality standard. Baseline quality and completion data were reported transparently to the CEO and executive leadership team to maintain accountability.
Outcomes:
Later employee survey feedback showed a clear qualitative improvement in trust in performance management, with employees responding positively to the stronger feedback culture and greater clarity and transparency in the process.
Goal quality improved from 63% to 82% (+19 points)
Review quality improved from 52% to 73% (+21 points)
The share of employees with goals increased from under 70% to 97% over two years
Completed year-end reviews increased from under 60% to 95% over two years
Employees and managers shared 18,000 pieces of written feedback in one year, indicating a stronger feedback culture
Capability built:
A tailored set of performance management learning nuggets aligned to key moments in the performance cycle
Practical manager toolkits, including checklists, rubrics, and examples of strong outcome-based goals and reviews
An audit and measurement approach with executive reporting for sustained accountability
A manager enablement model combining virtual sessions and reinforcement to embed consistent habits at scale