How Thoropass Retained 100% of Its Top Employees During “The Great Resignation” with Confirm

Bracing for the impact of 'The Great Resignation'

As news about mass resignations spread in 2021, Thoropass's executive team began to have concerns about their workforce. As a growing business, losing mission critical employees would spell disaster for its growth efforts, not to mention culture.

Faced with a looming crisis, the executive team turned to its VP of People & Operations, Joe Bast, to develop a retention strategy.

“We looked for a solution that could help us identify key talent which would allow us to focus retention efforts on people who are mission-critical to the Business.”  – Joe Bast, VP People & Operations, Thoropass

For Bast, one thing was clear: To implement a strategy that retained the company’s mission critical employees, he first needed to identify them. The best way to do this, as it turned out, was to leverage performance reviews. 

However, today’s performance review technology doesn’t give HR leaders instant visibility into who’s truly making the most impact in a company. In addition, manager reviews and 360s do a poor job of capturing the full picture of an employee's contribution.

However, today’s performance review technology doesn’t give HR leaders instant visibility into who’s truly making the most impact in a company. In addition, manager reviews and 360s do a poor job of capturing the full picture of an employee's contribution.

Bast needed a solution that would actually surface Thoropass’s true “10x-ers”, quickly.

Leveraging organizational network analysis data to create an effective retention strategy

While searching for a way to easily identify the top performers at Thoropass, Bast discovered Confirm.

Confirm is an all-in-one performance management platform that provides the tools that HR leaders need to build effective teams and retain key talent, such as:

• Built in promotions and PIPs;
• OKRs and goal management; and 
• Performance reviews.

But the platform isn’t just a suite of performance tools. 

• Confirm is a unique platform that uses a science called organizational network analysis (ONA) that shows who’s making an outstanding impact and who may need attention or support. This helps HR leaders and managers make promotion, PIP, and retention decisions based on data.

“Prior to using Confirm, we didn’t have good data and accurate measurement on who is best connected, who are people going to for advice and who needs help. Organization network analysis (ONA) is an absolute breakthrough with performance management; it is exceptionally insightful.”  – Joe Bast, VP People & Operations, Thoropass

It’s the data within Confirm’s platform that was the major selling point for Bast. It was exactly what he needed to set his retention strategy in motion.

In just one performance cycle with Confirm, Bast knew precisely who the most influential employees were based on the feedback of the whole Thoropass team, not just managers or a select group of leaders. A stark contrast to performance review tools today.

Bast’s retention plan involved meeting with each employee in stay interviews. During these interviews, Thoropass's founders would meet with each employee to get their input on the business, brainstorm on how best to move the organization forward, and discuss the future of the business.

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Retaining 100% of mission critical employees 

During a period when most companies were losing 30-40% of their workforces, Thoropass had less than 10% turnover. In addition, they retained 100% of their list of top performers.  

To put Thoropass's retention accomplishment into perspective, Gallup estimates that replacing a top performer in the US costs 1.5 to 2 times their annual salary. This includes hidden costs such as recruiting and training.  

Assuming the average salary of a Thoropass employee is the national average for the tech industry, which is $81, 261 for non-technical roles according to ZipRecruiter, the cost of losing such an employee would be at least $121,891. Now imagine if this employee was a software engineer commanding an average salary of $141,313. The cost of losing this employee would increase to at least $211,969.

While these numbers are illustrative only, one thing is clear: For a growing company like Thoropass, losing top employees can become an existential risk, quickly. 

With the help of Confirm's ONA data, Bast saved Thoropass millions of dollars by retaining its top performers. All while the U.S. saw a historical number of resignations.

“By using Confirm, we now know who the influencers are, the high and low performers, who needs help, and what to do to keep the best.”  – Joe Bast, VP People & Operations, Thoropass

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