Performance Evaluation: How Vinta Assesses Our Team's Performance

Patrícia Magri
December 5, 2023

Performance evaluation is a crucial tool for companies seeking evolution and growth. Understanding how a company like Vinta assesses its employees is essential to ensure you are selecting the best professionals to drive your business's growth.

Imagining the business landscape without a performance evaluation is akin to navigating uncharted waters without a compass. Through this process, we capture a clear picture of each team member's performance, providing valuable guidance that shapes collective success. For those building a development team, understanding how a company addresses this aspect is vital for creating a cohesive culture aligned with business objectives.

Each company adopts a unique approach to evaluation, tailoring it to the specific needs of the business. Some focus strictly on numbers, delivery pace, and tangible results. Others, like Vinta, go beyond, considering not only what is delivered but also how those deliveries are achieved.

In this blog post, we'll delve into Vinta's method for measuring employee performance. Keep reading to discover how we ensure only the best talents drive your projects!

How Performance Evaluation Works at Vinta Software

At Vinta Software, performance evaluation is a biannual process of great value. During this period, we reflect on our actions, attitudes, and results, seeking ways to contribute more effectively to the business and preserve our culture and work environment.

We value the perspective of all collaborating individuals. During the evaluation, everyone actively participates, whether in leadership roles, as direct peers or as colleagues from other teams who collaborated in the previous months. Contributing to the evaluation of peers, and supporting their professional development, is an integral part of our culture of collaboration and feedback.

The evaluation process is structured around two axes: behavior, assessed through our cultural pillars, and results, evaluated by individual deliveries during the period. The cultural pillars guide daily practices, regardless of the role, connecting our actions to the essence of being Vinta.

The results axis addresses what was achieved, evaluating individual deliveries aligned with the objectives set at the beginning of the period. We highly value individual deliveries, fundamental to sustaining the team's and the business's results and providing continuous value to clients.

We use a rating scale from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates performance below expectations and 5 indicates exceptional performance. The final classification results in Below Expectations, Consistent Performance, High Performance, or Outstanding Performance.

Leadership is assessed based on self-assessment, leader assessment, and, importantly, the team's average assessment. For individual contributors, we consider self-assessment and leadership assessment, aiming for convergence to validate effective work.

This approach provides a holistic view of performance, promoting career development and ensuring each team member aligns with Vinta Software's standards of excellence.

How Individual Performance Evaluation Contributes to Collective Results

At Vinta, we believe that individual evaluation plays a crucial role in achieving exceptional collective results. The more aligned people are with expectations regarding "how" and "what" is expected of them, the closer they get to their maximum potential. This ensures the creation of projects with high synergy, where individual goals converge toward shared objectives, resulting in confident and high-performing teams.

For us, high performance is intrinsically linked to remarkable results that add value to our clients' businesses. By keeping our clients satisfied and growing, we ensure our own evolution. This direct correlation drives constant improvement within our teams.

This quest for exceptional results is guided by a work environment characterized by high collaboration, effective communication, shared commitment, adaptability to changing scenarios, constant feedback, and trust. These elements strengthen our ability to achieve collective objectives, creating a virtuous cycle of high performance and continuous growth.

Maintaining Performance Daily: Pre and Post-Evaluation

Before the formal evaluation, we emphasize the importance of constant feedback in the Vinta environment. We believe short feedback cycles provide opportunities to adjust behaviors and enhance skills swiftly. The biannual evaluation is seen as formalizing discussions already held in previous months, avoiding surprises and enabling continuous improvements.

After the evaluation, we conclude the process with a formal conversation between the leader and the team member, jointly reviewing the evaluation. During this interaction, we highlight both perspectives, emphasizing the mentioned aspects and collaboratively defining areas to work on going forward.

Positive aspects are not only recognized but also encouraged, serving as anchors for the development of both leadership and the evaluated team member. Improvement points are addressed constructively, debated, and directed towards specific actions in the following months.

We allow room for differences and similarities, encouraging discussions of perceptions beyond evidence. This approach allows us to identify opportunities for attention or visibility in the future.

After this conversation, the evaluated team member prioritizes the areas to work on and develops their Individual Development Plan, defining actions to be implemented in the coming months. This integrated and collaborative approach ensures that performance maintenance is a continuous journey of improvement and professional growth.

Individual Development Plan (IDP) in Practice

The IDP at Vinta is more than just a plan; it's the clear path to achieving specific goals, supported by tools that facilitate the journey. These goals are outlined based on the biannual evaluation, providing a robust framework for professional growth.

We offer a range of learning and development practices to support this journey. From mentorship programs to financial subsidies for courses, training, and lectures, we promote knowledge-sharing environments and sessions with C-level executives.

Day-to-day work is also vital, driving and maintaining performance through open dialogues, frank conversations between leadership and team members, transparency, and alignment with our clients.

Despite the biannual evaluation, performance monitoring is constant. We conduct regular alignments, feedback sessions, and follow-ups on IDPs throughout the year. The crucial role of the Business Partner direct the convergence between internal practices, performance expectations, and the company's culture, reinforcing good management practices and mediating any misalignments.

It's important to note that the Business Partner's role complements but does not replace the leadership's responsibility in developing their teams. Each stage feeds into the next, creating a cycle of continuous improvement that positively impacts careers, the work environment, and the company's results.

If you're interested in learning more about how we build teams at Vinta and maintain an exceptional performance standard, check out our next post.