Unveiling Hidden Stars: How Confirm Transformed Premier Research's Performance and Talent Management

Today, staying ahead means doing more with less. That in mind, Premier Research, a clinical research company, wanted to improve how they evaluate performance and manage their talent.

The Challenge: Enabling Performance Transformation

Premier Research has ambitious goals. They wanted to fuel growth by evolving their people & performance practice to enable employees’ service-oriented skill development. To get there, they recognized the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of their talent pool and improving their performance management processes.

The challenge: How could Premier Research identify and support their top performers while strengthening a culture centered around service excellence? As Stefan Schnydrig, Premier Research's Chief People Officer, aptly puts it:

"We didn't have a good picture of who the real top talent is in our organization. I was looking for something non-traditional."

The Challenge: Enabling Performance Transformation

To tackle these challenges, Premier Research implemented Confirm. Confirm is not your typical performance management tool; it's a robust platform centered around the science of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to reveal those hidden stars and areas of concern within an organization.

The four ONA-based questions posed by Confirm to all employees were:

- “Who do you go to for help and advice (and for what)?”

- “Who energizes or motivates you (and why)?”

- “Choose up to 3 people who made an outstanding impact (and why).”

- “Who needs additional support or attention (and why)?”

This new approach enabled Premier Research to identify hidden quiet contributors, influencers, and people of concern, identifying 90% more critical feedback through ONA than Peer 360’s.  

Revealing the Hidden Stars

Confirm made a big impact. It found 2.5 times more top performers and four times more low performers than before. Now, Premier Research has a deeper, more accurate understanding of their talent, helping them focus on developing their people better.  

"Gold Stars" were a crucial metric for identifying top contributors. ONA revealed that a mere 13% of employees (i.e. top 'Gold Star' recipients) were responsible for generating a remarkable 50% of positive outcomes, while another 6% (i.e. top ‘Heads Up’ recipients) were behind 50% of the concerns.  

This information enabled Premier Research to make smarter decisions about talent development, keeping employees, and planning for the future.  

A Positive Employee Experience

Confirm's impact went beyond the data and numbers. Premier Research's employees had a lot to say about their experience with the new performance assessment process. 95% of Premier Research employees reported having a positive experience. One employee even commented:

"This was the easiest and most efficient way I have provided evaluations and feedback in my 25+ years in the industry."

Fairer, Data-Driven Views of Performance

Confirm not only provided a faster perf process but also ushered in fairer, data-driven assessments of performance. As mentioned, it unveiled 250% more top performers and identified 400% more bottom performers than previously known. This granular understanding allowed Premier Research to make more data-driven decisions about their talent.

"Premier Research's bold vision for improving talent management perfectly aligned with Confirm's strengths. Together, we not only achieved a remarkable 100% participation rate in their performance cycle, but also unveiled data to identify their true “10x-ers”, illustrating how HR innovation, and HR innovators like Premier Research, can redefine talent management."  
– Zubin Davar, Confirm's Vice President of Customer Success

Saving with "Top Performers"

Perhaps one of the most compelling findings was the cost-effectiveness of Confirm. Premier Research identified that the cost of saving just one top performer covered the entire investment in Confirm. In other words, the return on investment was material and realizable.

In the pursuit of improving talent management and performance assessment, Premier Research didn't just transform; they revolutionized their approach.

Confirm helps me support our organization with a holistic view of performance and [the] different dimensions of it. I would tell my colleagues in other organizations to be curious and open to the fact that you can use much more data around talent, and this is going to help you make the right decisions.
– Stefan Schnydrig, Premier Research's Chief People Officer

Premier Research reminds us that there are often shining stars just waiting to be discovered, and with the right approach to performance management, they can lead the company to success.