People Care

VSHN is developing more and more in the direction of self-organized teams. However, we’re finding that VSHN employees sometimes want someone to talk to who is independent of the team, especially when it comes to very personal issues. VSHN also needs to know how our employees are doing (for example, to measure our eNPS 2-year goal). Electronic surveys alone don’t cover all aspects and we risk overlooking some VSHNeers.

People Care is this escalation point and further responsible for obtaining the required metrics and feedback, in addition to providing the ability to track development plans for VSHNeers in a confidential manner.

Sub-domain of

People Operations

Accountable

Dawn Nitsche (People Operations)

Delegator

People Operations

Key Responsibilities

  • VSHNeers have a point of escalation according to the Conflict Resolution Process:

    • for personal issues or when they feel that they’re not heard, when an issue can’t be solved within the Team or other Accountable Circle.

    • if they’re disappointed with the (quality of) work or behavior of another VSHNeer, after a direct discussion with the person and their team hasn’t led to an improvement in the situation or isn’t possible for personal reasons.

  • People Care knows how individual VSHNeers are doing, directly or indirectly (for example through the Team Admin):

    • Are they happy with VSHN and their job?

    • What are their plans to develop and grow personally within VSHN?

    • What impediments do they face, which they can’t solve themselves.

    • Behavior with other VSHNeers, personally and professionally (customers and partners).

    • Understanding of and fitting our company values.

While People Care focuses on personal support for individual VSHNeers, Agile Coaching and Team Facilitator focuses on systemic coaching within and between teams.

Key Deliverables

  • eNPS metrics for the company.

  • Confidential development plans for VSHNeers who need help.

  • Final decision on firing VSHNeers are brought up with the Management without delay.

Employee Feedback

Gather feedback from VSHNeers on how they’re doing personally. This should be done in 2 ways:

  • A tool that asks for (anonymous) feedback from VSHNeers on a regular basis, calculating reports automatically (data driven).

  • At least yearly

    • feedback talk with every employee.

    • (attend) retro or a similar meeting to gather feedback from every team.

Personal Development

Together with the affected VSHNeer PeopleCare develops a personal development plan, if there is the need for it. Goals of such a development plan could be:

  • Personal Coaching as requested by the VSHNeer.

  • Setting goals of personal development as requested by the VSHNeer.

  • Setting expectations for the VSHNeer on what needs to change when in order for them to stay with VSHN.

    • Necessary change in personal behavior, quality of work, or building of missing skills to meet the requirements of the job for which the person was hired.

  • Defining deadlines and decision points including defined consequences:

    • What happens if the planned personal development isn’t on track or a defined goal hasn’t been reached? For example: Ordered education, suspension of salary increase or ultimately contract termination.

Dependencies

Support for People Care
  • Others actively help with development plans, feedback talks, etc. as invited by People Care.

  • A group of mediators support People Care (mediate between fronts).

People Care
  • helps people to find their solutions. Ultimately solving the personal challenges is done by the affected VSHNeers, for exampling when changing a team.

  • doesn’t give psychological support, but can externally organize it depending on the situation.

  • works with Corp IT regarding tooling and to gather feedback automatically.

Constraints

  • The Management is informed about planned consequences in Personal Development and has to consent to them.

  • Anonymous data about VSHNeer happiness (for example eNPS) is periodically presented and accessible by everyone.

  • Feedback and other personal information collected in the scope of People Care is kept confidential by default. Shared with management on a case-by-case basis only if needed (business relevant).

  • People Care mediates between fronts with a neutral position "as the company" (according to our Beliefs, Values and our VIP-157 - VSHNary Manifesto Proposal Forming ).

  • Peer 1-on-1 reflection / review meetings are complementary to the above, not a replacement.

Key Challenges

  • Avoid People Care becoming a "complaint box," a way to drop problems, hoping that someone fixes it - which isn’t VSHNary.

Evaluation Criteria

  • People Care is used by VSHNeers.

  • VSHN has the data we need to check where we’re in terms of VSHNeer happiness.


This domain is tracked and reviewed as VIP-113