Church Culture

How to Roll Out Develop.Me

Now that we’ve covered laying the groundwork for implementing Develop.Me, think next about how to set up and administer it to your staff. Since each organization is different, here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to tailor the experience to meet your needs and optimize its effectiveness.

Structure your reporting relationships.

As you begin setting up your organization in Develop.Me, think about how your reporting structure works. Each team member can have one leader, or you can add another leader called a "Dotted Line Leader" who acts as a strong influencer. The “Dotted Line Leader” role allows more than one leader to track an individual’s (and team’s) activity and progress.

Define your Departments, Locations, and Team Leaders.

In Develop.Me, goals are tied to a team member's team and location designation. Make sure each team member is assigned to a team.

Input your employee data.

Whether you use an Excel spreadsheet, individual employee files, or a third-party or HR system to pull reports, Develop.Me has two ways to input data: manually or through the import template. The import template is especially helpful if you have a lot of employees to enter.

Assign a Develop.Me administrator.

If you have an HR coordinator, he or she is probably the best candidate to be your Develop.Me administrator. You can, however, have multiple administrators and may decide to set up an administrator for each department.

Choose an update schedule.

As with data in any organization, your information in Develop.Me should be kept as up to date as possible. Updating weekly or monthly is ideal.

Design a rollout plan for Develop.Me.

For most, the best approach is to introduce Develop.Me at the beginning of a review year so the team can add the next year’s goals and learn the system. For example, if you implement Develop.Me in January 2015 (with reviews to be conducted in January 2016), your 2015 year might look like this:

  1. Introduce Develop.Me to your staff and reinforce your organization’s value of performance and development. A video or other presentation from a key leader would be helpful.
  2. Encourage team members to set up their accounts and add their pictures to their profile.
  3. Set a timeline for adding goals for the year and having conversations with leaders.
  4. Spend the year periodically training your staff on features of Develop.Me, such as goal commenting or the Notes and Documents feature.
  5. Continually encourage focus on goals and interaction within Develop.Me.
  6. In November 2015, start educating on what the 2016 review process will look like.
  7. In January 2016, start the review process.

What we've learned:

Creating a staff-wide culture of development is a big endeavor that requires planning and organization. Think through how Develop.Me can best serve your team before rolling it out, and visit Develop.Me for help and tips on setting it up.

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