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Communications Plan How to Roll Out Cornerstone Growth Edition

Contents

Create a Communications Plan ............................................................................................................... 2

Four Fundamental Needs..................................................................................................................... 2

Growth Edition Email Management ..................................................................................................... 2

Welcome Email ................................................................................................................................ 3

How to Build an Effective Communications Plan .................................................................................... 3

Identify Each Group ............................................................................................................................. 3

Timing your Communications .............................................................................................................. 4

Purpose of the Testing and Optimizing (Recommended) .................................................................. 4

Plan the Messages and Product Training .............................................................................................. 4

Upload Employees into the System .................................................................................................. 4

Product Training for Managers......................................................................................................... 4

Product Training for Employees ....................................................................................................... 8

Product Training for Learning Module (for Managers and Employees) ........................................... 10

Encourage Feedback .......................................................................................................................... 12

Additional Support and Ways to Connect ............................................................................................. 12

Growth Edition Success Center ...................................................................................................... 12

Client Engagement Events ............................................................................................................. 12

Growth Edition Support ................................................................................................................. 12

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Rollout Strategy for Cornerstone Growth Edition

Communications Plan

Your communications plan is integral to the success of any new initiative. As you prepare to rollout

Growth Edition, conducting a well-planned communications strategy and preparing good training can

significantly improve the adoption of Growth Edition across your organization. To instill confidence and

foster raving fans, you’ll want the central focus and goal to be that your users have a positive experience

right away.

Create a Communications Plan With setup and implementation underway, you’ll want to have a communications plan and provide

good training. Before rolling out Growth Edition, you’ll also want to explain to your executives,

managers, and employees how it will help make their jobs easier and empower them to reach

organizational and career development objectives. Having an answer to “what’s in it for me?” and being

able to explain why the new technology is an improvement will help encourage early and rapid adoption

of the system. Users will likely have questions: How will these new initiatives impact us? What changes

will we see in the coming months? How will these processes support us achieving our goals?

Having a good communications plan will ensure no one is taken by surprise when using the new system

becomes mandatory. By the time you roll out Growth Edition, everyone in your organization will already

understand and anticipate the benefits of using Growth Edition.

Four Fundamental Needs Have you reflected on any other recent rollouts? There are four fundamental needs to think about when

rolling out any new company initiative:

1) Knowledge: What people need to know

2) Skills: What people need to do

3) Structure: What people need to be accountable

4) Motivation: What people need to believe

We’ll provide you with information and knowledge, so after reading this resource, you’ll be prepared to

discuss any of these four needs. For easy-to-digest information, email templates, and tips about how to

prepare for and implement a new company initiative, check out Change Management.

Before we talk about how to build out your communications plan, we’ll first touch on Email

Management.

Growth Edition Email Management The Email Management section allows administrators to enable email notifications, which provides

admins with the ability to turn system-generated emails on/off. By default, all emails are turned off.

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Click on the settings icon in the upper right corner of your screen to view and modify email settings.

Welcome Email If you turn on the Welcome Email feature, then every time a new user is added into the system, they’ll

automatically receive an email with a link to set their password. After creating it, they will be able to log

in to Growth Edition and see the main dashboard, including the following widgets: My Self-Reviews,

Browse Training, and My Learning. Note that if you’ve created a review cycle in the Scheduling section

and locked the Self-Assessment phase, the user will only be able to view the self-assessment as read-

only.

How to Build an Effective Communications Plan We’ll cover the following four points and provide tips, including product training guidance, for building

an effective communications plan:

1) Identifying each group impacted by your organization’s adoption of Growth Edition.

2) Deciding when to start communicating with each group.

3) Planning the messages you will send each group, as well as any relevant product training.

4) Making sure to encourage feedback throughout the rollout process.

Identify Each Group You’ll want to identify each group impacted by your organization’s adoption of Growth Edition. These

may include:

Executives

Direct employee supervisors (managers)

Employees

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HR team (depending on size of team and/or distributed locations)

Members of the IT team

Union leadership

External vendors and/or partners

The core - and largest - user groups you’ll need to consider in your communications plan will be your

managers and employees.

Timing your Communications You’ll want to thoughtfully decide when to start communicating with each group. As the administrator,

before you roll out Growth Edition, it is important to be familiar with the product’s features and

functionality. We encourage all brand new users to examine the tool carefully and suggest using an

alternate email address (such as a personal one) so you can go in as different users to get the full

experience. If you have another colleague or stakeholder who is open to exploring the tool with you,

you can use their email address as well.

Purpose of the Testing and Optimizing (Recommended) The purpose is for you to examine the Content Templates and try different Role, Goal, and Competency

scenarios. This way, you will become more familiar with the system and be able to create relevant

content before rolling out Growth Edition to your organization. During this time, you can create a test

person, a non-live review round, and perform Goal Setting and Team Reviews to review content and

confirm the Goals and Competencies are a good fit for your organization.

All help documentation and instructions are available in the Help Center here.

After you’ve completed a non-live review round, you can continue setting up your system. Adding tags

(optional) and adding people are the final two steps to complete before you are ready to schedule and

go live with your first performance review.

Plan the Messages and Product Training You’ll need to plan the messages and relevant product training to send each group. With any new

initiative, you’ll need to provide good training; otherwise, users won’t adopt the software. Once logged

in, all users will have access to a dashboard specific to their user profile. The intuitive layout provides

greater visibility of the performance review activities.

You’ll want to allocate time to getting accustomed to Growth Edition and learning the new system so

you can provide customized training to your organization.

Upload Employees into the System As the administrator, when you’re ready, you’ll upload employee data into Growth Edition. If you want

users to get a system-generated email, you’ll go to the Settings page and click on Email to enable the

Welcome Email. If the email is turned on, all users added into the system will get a system-generated

email and can use the following login credentials to gain access to the system: ge.csod.com.

Product Training for Managers Growth Edition automates reviews and gives managers practical tips and guidance to develop their

employees and make smarter business decisions. We suggest you try to organize a manager training

session for your managers. Refer to the Manager Instructions for more detailed instructions and help.

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Managers can assign individual goals and track their team’s completion progress throughout the review

cycle. They have insights on the review data through analytics and reports.

Managers will be responsible for the following (product screenshots provided below):

Setting Goals for their Team

Managing 360 Feedback

Performing Manager Reviews

Performing Self-Reviews

Viewing 9-Box Talent Matrix Analytics (9-Box User Guide)

Viewing Reports

Setting Goals for their Team

Every employee will get default goals based on your selected Content Template. Navigate to the main

dashboard, locate the Team Goal Settings widget and click “Assign Goals.” The Team Goal Settings

widget displays “1/3” and the Assign Goals button is active. This is where managers can tailor the goals

to make them unique to each employee by editing, adding, or deleting sub-goals. Note that the ability

for employee goal setting is on the product roadmap.

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Managing 360 Feedback

360 Feedback enables managers to gain a comprehensive view of their employees, allowing for more

accurate reviews and meaningful development conversations. From the main dashboard, click the Team

360 Feedback widget. Click here for instructions. Note that Administrators have to turn on 360 Feedback

in the Scheduling section under Performance Review Settings

Performing Manager Reviews

Once your employee submits their self-assessment, you’ll begin the manager review. Navigate to the

main dashboard, locate the Team Reviews widget, and click “Complete Manager Reviews.” The Team

Reviews widget displays “0/3” and the Complete Manager Reviews button is active.

Performing Self-Reviews

Navigate to the main dashboard, locate the My Self-Reviews widget, and click “Complete Self Review”.

The performance review form will open and display the goals and competencies you’re rated on.

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You can expand the left sidebar to view and navigate to the various goals and competencies on your

performance review form.

Viewing 9-Box Talent Matrix

9-Box gives managers a 2-dimensional matrix view with performance and competency ratings on the

two axes.

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Viewing Reports

Navigate to the main dashboard, located the Reports widget where you can click to view the Employee

List and Scores or the Completion Progress Report.

Product Training for Employees Growth Edition not only allows employees to easily access their goals and performance reviews, but also

empowers employees to engage in meaningful conversations with their manager. We suggest you try to

organize an employee training session for your end users (employees). Refer to the Employee

Instructions for more detailed instructions and help.

Employees can view the goals assigned to them by their managers, track and monitor completion

progress, browse for trainings, and update their universal profile.

Employees will be able to do the following (product screenshots provided below):

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View Goals

Perform Self-Reviews

Search for Colleagues in the System

View Goals

Employees can view their assigned goals by clicking the “My Goals” button; however, the goals are read-

only.

Perform Self-Reviews

Navigate to the main dashboard, locate the My Self-Reviews widget, and click “Complete Self Review”.

The performance review form will open displaying the goals and competencies you’re rated on.

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Search for Colleagues in the System

It’s easy to find your colleagues by typing their name in the Search bar. After selecting the employee,

you’ll be taken to their Universal Profile.

Product Training for Learning Module (for Managers and Employees) As the administrator, you’ll be responsible for initializing Growth Edition Learning. For instructions on

topics such as how to add courses to your users’ Library, review the Growth Edition Learning

Instructions. Let’s explore some of the core features of Learning that are relevant to your managers and

employees.

Managers and employees will be able to do the following (product screenshots provided below):

Register for a Course

Launch a Course

View their Transcript

Register for a Course

Navigate to the main dashboard, locate the Browse Training widget and click “Browse.” Register for a

course by clicking the “Register” button.

This will bring up a confirmation message asking you to confirm if you would like to register to this

course and add it to your transcript. Clicking confirm adds the course to your transcript immediately and

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presents you with a link to your transcript. Clicking on the ‘Go’ button will take the user through to the

User’s Active courses in the My Learning section, whereupon they may launch the course. You can also

navigate to your transcript by going back to the homepage and selecting “My Learning.”

Launch a Course

Clicking on the “launch” or “continue” icon either on the course card or the sidebar launches a course.

Please note, if you have a popup blocker installed, you may have to turn it off to access a course.

After a course has been started, the play button icon will change from “Launch” to “Continue”.

View their Transcript

Navigate to the main dashboard, locate the My Learning widget and click on the “View” button, which

takes you to your active transcript. If no courses are currently registered, a message will appear on this

page asking you to register for a course in the Library with a link to the Library. Once you register for a

course, it will show up in the ‘Active’ tab in your transcript.

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Encourage Feedback During rollout, and even beyond, it is important to encourage open and continuous feedback. Discuss

the benefits of the new procedure and to the company's success overall. Encourage your employees'

feedback and highlight quick wins. Get your most influential employees on board early in the process.

Your managers and employees will be performing functions online that may have otherwise been done

on paper. Monitor progress and get input from your early adopters who are using the software. Are

there any metrics that speak to its success?

Additional Support and Ways to Connect Growth Edition Success Center Leverage the Growth Edition Success Center (GESC) and stay committed to learning, understanding, and

maximizing the impact of your Growth Edition solution. Accessible to administrators and managers, the

client success center is a 24/7 resource and tool to help you see what’s new and to get product release

updates, webinars, roadmap, best practices and adoption resources. More info about the GESC here. If

you haven’t registered, you can sign up at geclients.csod.com.

Client Engagement Events

Growth Edition Office Hours Q&A

Office Hours allow you to connect with members of the Support, Product, and Client Success teams for

guidance on best practices, application, and process-related questions. Growth Edition product experts

join the session and are available to answer your questions. Check out upcoming Office Hours sessions

and recordings available here.

Growth Edition Admin 101 Training

Attend our interactive Admin 101 webinar to learn the essentials for configuring Growth Edition and ask

questions about system setup. Also, we introduce clients to the Growth Edition Success Center, our

release schedule, and client social engagement events. Check out upcoming Admin 101 Training sessions

available here.

Growth Edition Support Our Growth Edition Support Team is responsive and will provide help and support with any of your

technical product related questions. You can send an email to gesupport@csod.com.