Project Industry: HR

evally header photo

Evally

Improvement of employee evaluation and recruitment processes with an internal application.

ABOUT PROJECT

evally logo
Using Evally makes employee development and recruitment easier and faster. The application provides many opportunities for better team administration.

OUR WORK

Frontend

Backend

QA

UX & UI

Discovery Phase

PURPOSE OF THE TOOL

Facilitate Railwaymen to conduct an employee evaluation process and develop a tool to support company recruitment.

THE CHALLENGE

Develop a technology solution that meets our evaluation and recruitment needs.

1. PROCESS

Evally was developed as a result of Railwaymen’s internal initiative to improve the employee evaluations and recruitment process. The application was designed to meet the administrative needs of monitoring employee development and their emerging needs. The tool also influences the recruitment process by gathering information about the company’s recruitment activities. People responsible for hiring new employees have at their disposal detailed profiles of candidates or a summary of particular stages of the process. Thanks to Evally, hiring can be conducted in a shorter time, without losing the quality of recruitment.

Szymon, Senior Ruby on Rails Developer ​

“Open-source projects are a great opportunity to gain knowledge and broaden your horizons! In the Evally case I have a chance to familiarize myself with Vue.js – this more and more popular JavaScript framework. In a short time we at Railwaymen have launched a simple web application which has two key areas of usage: 1) a tool for team leaders to evaluate and track the skills of team members, 2) a tool for our HR Team to collect data from candidate’s applications, evaluate them and manage the whole recruitment. It wasn’t a big effort but now is a huge advantage of feedback for our team.”

2. EVALUATION MODULE

evally dashboard

DASHBOARD

After logging into the application, the dashboard appears. It contains drafts of employee evaluations and a reminder of upcoming reviews with employees. This section contains a full list of employees, which can be filtered based on position, team affiliation or person who will be responsible for the evaluation.

By selecting one of the employee profiles it is possible to check the results of previous interviews, date of employment, contract number, dates of upcoming review and the employee’s development path so far. This view is only available to the person giving the evaluation. Each employee can obtain an individual link that includes their evaluation from their most recent evaluation.

evally ratings feature

Ratings

During the review, each employee is rated on their skills on a three-point scale. This type of measurement helps e.g. in selecting the right people for new projects, where one of the criteria is experience in a specific field. These ratings are updated with each review meeting. Employees are also verified for soft skills using yes/no designations. The final form of evaluation is the text evaluation, where any thoughts on the evaluation are written down by the evaluator.

TEMPLATES

Evally makes it easy to create templates to support employee evaluations. This saves time throughout the process and automation of data. The created templates can be modified at any time as desired. The ability to co-create content with designated coworkers is also a convenience. All you have to do is tag the appropriate person to receive an email notification with an invitation to edit.

3. TECHNOLOGIES & INTEGRATIONS

ruby on rails framework
redis storage
vuetify
vuejs

4. HR OPERATIONS

recruitment funnel

RECRUITMENT FUNNEL

This functionality allows individual candidates to be grouped based on the stage of recruitment they are at. Access to this tool is granted to persons responsible for recruitment (including Product Managers of particular teams to which recruitment is carried out). Each user who meets the requirements to have access to the funnel must first be assigned to it. By conveniently moving candidates on the timeline, you can plan the dates of subsequent stages, feedback emails and estimate the exact recruitment time for a specific position.

You can change your recruitment status on your candidate profile. The available statuses include:

evally templates

TEMPLATES

Evally has a Templates tab where users can prepare templates for recruitment interviews or evaluations. When preparing such a document, the user selects the destination where the file should be placed (evaluation or recruitment). In addition to all rating options, each editor can prepare questions and answer options which only the admin will have access to.

In the case of recruitment templates, you can place (pre-created) templates on a given candidate account for a given recruitment stage. There can be several of them, and each of them has the possibility of development.

E-MAIL TEMPLATES

One of Evally’s features is to streamline email communication. It delivers application messages from candidates to the inbox and segregates them properly. The email integration also applies to the recruitment process. Email templates are prepared, which candidates receive as a response back. This way, recruiting professionals can focus solely on each applicant’s feedback. This option works for outgoing messages. As for incoming messages, they are not saved in Evally (only fyi). The tool also enables HR Specialists to create email drafts for each stage of the recruitment process. In this way, feedback is given quickly and reaches every candidate applying for a position. Content creation is supported by autosave, which ensures that even when leaving the application the results of previous work will not be deleted.
evally notifications

NOTIFICATIONS

Each user board has the option to add comments and tag users. Once tagged, the called person receives a special email notification. In this way, the entire recruitment process can run smoothly without fear of missing out on key issues. You can change your recruitment status on your candidate profile. The available statuses include:
project statistics

STATISTICS

The tool generates extensive recruitment statistics. This makes it easy to analyze the number of applications for each position. Collected data can be compiled periodically without using tools such as Microsoft Excel. HR Specialists can generate monthly/yearly reports based on the collected statistics. In this way, it is possible to create average data related to the candidates’ expected salary, years of experience and even their skills.

Iwona, EB&HR Manager

“I appreciate the two modules of this tool and its impact on the quality of evaluations and recruitment processes in the company. As a Human Resources Specialist at Railwaymen, I can’t imagine my job without Evally. With this software, all recruitment efforts are simple and intuitive.“

FINAL PRODUCT

evally header photo

RESULTS & FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Evally is a tool that will work well in many business environments. It’s a web application that integrates features responsible for the process of employee evaluation and recruitment of candidates. While Evally currently supports the Railwaymen team in their day-to-day work, it has the potential to make an appearance in other areas. HR and EB processes in Railwaymen run more smoothly with this solution.

Testimonial:

We have struggled with a good reviewing and evaluation system for years. Having the process built, we could not find a good tool on the market to fulfill our expectations. Therefore, we decided to build our own.


I am using Evally on a daily basis to provide employees evaluation as well as recruitment process. For both purposes it works just great!

 

Łukasz Młynek,

Co-Founder & CEO

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Teamle

Web app solution to manage 1:1 employment satisfaction survey sessions between employees and HR

WEB APP

ABOUT PROJECT

teamle logo

Discovery Phase Workshops of a web app solution to manage 1:1 employment satisfaction survey sessions between employees and HR and its further development.

With the help of the Discovery Phase Workshops, it was possible to set out basic guidelines for the development of an employee relations application.

OUR WORK

Discovery Phase

Frontend

Backend

QA

UX & UI

PURPOSE OF THE DISCOVERY PHASE

Identify potential and select appropriate tools to create an application for organizing one-on-one meetings at Railwaymen.

THE CHALLENGE

Developing an application for managing the employee evaluation process with a focus on Railwaymen's needs.

1. PROCESS

The idea to create the Teamle app came from organizing periodic one-on-one meetings with employees to get feedback on their work at Railwaymen. This process is one of the duties carried out by the company’s HR & EB departments and requires considerable logistical skills to carry out properly. In an effort to systematize the gathering of information on employee satisfaction, the idea of developing a tool to support the implementation of these activities was put forward by one of Railwaymen’s employees. The team has tested several external tools, but none of them met all of the expectations and requirements of their process.

Using Teamle, interviewers would have the ability to take note of any problems occurring in the organization and appropriately delegate solving them. To streamline the process, we wanted to implement various types of notifications that would notify participants of an upcoming meeting date. A useful feature from the perspective of HR and EB departments is an analytics system responsible for generating statistics and reports. Railwaymen have a high employee retention rate, so it was also crucial to have quick and full access to the employees’ work history, KPI’s and their expectations communicated over the years.

However, before we started developing Teamle, we wanted to check the potential of the tool, compare it with other available solutions on the market and select appropriate features. For this purpose, we decided to conduct a Discovery Phase of the project.

Szymon, Senior Ruby on Rails Developer

“The Discovery Phase helped us better define the project. Each stage of the process provided us with useful insights from which we can work on the application’s functionalities. It’s also a valuable resource in the context of developing Teamle’s MVP. We determined the priority features we would like to include in the MVP version, and prepared a backlog to work on in further stages of the project.”

2. DISCOVERY PHASE

We conducted the Discovery Phase process based on the standard steps we follow for a project. It included collecting data, defining user personas and their customer journeys from all perspectives: CEO, COO, HR Manager, Product Manager and employee, reprocessing the needs based on the selected tools, and pulling the flow of the entire application. In addition, to streamline the work on each of the Discovery Phase stages, we organized weekly meetings which allowed the entire team to stay up-to-date with the implementation of the application.

Sylwia, UX/UI Designer Team Lead ​

A great value of Discovery Phase was to conduct interviews and surveys with those involved in the process so far. We were keen to learn about the different approaches, needs and expectations of the participants. The HR/EB team helped identify a research group to analyze the process of 1:1 meetings of people from different sized teams, departments, people involved and people coordinating the process, as well as c-level expectations of the results.

 

This allowed us to learn about the different approaches to these discussions, both process and personnel. We learned how the methods of conducting the meetings vary, what difficulties and expectations the people involved have, and what information and values they expect from the process. Based on the research, we were able to better understand our personas, identify the most valuable functions, but also to optimize our communication processes and propose tools to support the organization of meetings.

THE FLOW OF THE DISCOVERY PHASE PROCESS

Creating Personas

Product Value Canvas

User journey

MoSCow

 

Creating Personas

Product Value Canvas

User journey

MoSCow

 

RESULTS & FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Teamle is a tool that will allow us to get smoother feedback on Railwaymen’s work from employees. With facilitated 1:1 meetings, the engaged initiators will be able to consult with individual employees on a convenient time to talk. What’s more, the next step is to prepare the application for commercial use in the SaaS model by other companies operating on the market and looking to improve their 1:1 meeting process. Nevertheless, the Discovery Phase process, based on a competitive analysis and individual feature assessment, has identified opportunities and risks that need to be considered before developing an MVP and, finally, launching a tool.
collecting data

COLLECTING DATA

The first step that began our preparations for the Discovery Phase was to gather as much information as possible about the potential tool. To do this, we contacted the HR and EB teams to conduct surveys about the conclusions of the appraisal meetings held and the employees’ thoughts on the process so far. Gained information was used to help us build the initial outline of the Teamle project.
teamle personas

DEFINING PERSONAS

During the persona design stage, we defined for ourselves the needs of individual employees in order to get a view of the evaluation process from different perspectives. We then gathered all overlapping opinions into one place and grouped the interviewees according to the categories we had established. With this division, we were able to detail the frustrations of each team that Teamle would address.
journey phases

JOURNEY PHASES

After separating the various personas, we moved on to the journey phases. We divided the evaluation into several stages and analyzed it based on factors such as tasks, context, gains, pains and emotions from the perspective of employees, team leads, the company owner and the RWM HR. This broad view allowed us to draw important conclusions that weren’t apparent before starting the Discovery Phase.
attractiveness chart

ATTRACTIVENESS AND DIFFICULTY OF IMPLEMENTING FEATURES

After collecting all the features into one place, we assigned them to different groups of personas, giving them different colors. We then made a chart, where we took into account the difficulty of implementing the features and the attractiveness from the user’s perspective. It is also worth mentioning that each feature was subjected to careful individual evaluation before being placed on the chart. Thanks to this, we got to know the features that we should implement into Teamle first as part of the MVP, as well as the features that may appear in later stages due to their degree of sophistication, importance and time consumption.

Marta, UX/UI Designer

“In my opinion, the Discovery Phase process was a very important point in the work on Teamle. By carefully analyzing the application’s audience and features, we were able to work together to develop the best solutions to be implemented in the near future. This process helped us to reliably assess the potential of the project and prepared us for the implementation phase.”

3. APP DEVELOPMENT

During the Discovery Phase we analyzed the capabilities, advantages, disadvantages, risks, opportunities of various technologies and proposed a technology stack that best meets the needs of potential software users. It is based on this information that we were able to select specific features that we believe could appeal to potential users of the application.
app layouts

PREPARATION OF APPLICATION LAYOUTS

Because of the initial stage of application development, we have decided to develop application layouts for adding a user and organizer accounts and inviting employees to individual meetings. More functionality visualizations will be added as the project develops. In the further stages of the app’s development we plan to include options for adding employees, determining the initiator of the meetings, scheduling them and collecting feedback.
google calendar

INTEGRATION WITH GOOGLE CALENDAR

In order to schedule meetings more easily given the availability of individual employees, we want to integrate the app with Google Calendar. This kind of integration will allow us to have all evaluative meetings under control and to send notifications about upcoming appointments.
time table logo

INTEGRATION WITH TIME TABLE

An equally important integration that we want to undertake in the implementation of Teamle into the company’s life is the connection of the application with the Time Table employee system. Employees will then be able to report a meeting in the system without the slightest problem and organizers will receive information about vacation dates when selecting a convenient term.

Iwona, EB&HR Manager ​

“The workshop was an inspiring way to define the real problems we face during the 1:1 process. As a result of the discovery session, we gathered a clear picture of how the tool should look and which functionalities will be crucial for the users. We collected and analyzed a lot of data to determine the purpose, potential and possible limitations of the project. I am glad I could be a part of the workshop team!”

4. TECHNOLOGIES & INTEGRATIONS

ruby on rails framework
vuejs

FINAL PRODUCT

teamle final application

CONCLUSIONS

Discovery Phase helped us define the required features of the application we were developing. By comparing our tool with solutions available on the market, we were able to identify both its strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, the Discovery Phase process proved indispensable in establishing the appropriate functionalities. We added additional functionality to the application that we had not assumed in the original design.

Thanks to the work we did in the Discovery Phase, we were able to identify the needs of the personas for whom Teamle is being developed. Also, based on the collected data, we identified functionalities that would meet their expectations. With the help of the Discovery Phase, we were able to prioritize the various functions of our application. Finally,we received an answer to the question of what Teamle’s MVP should look like.

RESULTS & FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Teamle is a tool that will allow us to get smoother feedback on Railwaymen’s work from employees. With facilitated 1:1 meetings, the engaged initiators will be able to consult with individual employees on a convenient time to talk. What’s more, the next step is to prepare the application for commercial use in the SaaS model by other companies operating on the market and looking to improve their 1:1 meeting process. Nevertheless, the Discovery Phase process, based on a competitive analysis and individual feature assessment, has identified opportunities and risks that need to be considered before developing an MVP and, finally, launching a tool.

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