How Audika digitized and standardized its review management with Elevo
Context
Audika is a French company founded in 1976 by the Tonnard brothers. With its strong family DNA, the company is experiencing rapid growth: the HR Department hires around 300 people every year.
Within Audika’s HR department, which counts around forty employees, Barbara Klein has been working as Training & Career Development Officer since 2021. She is notably in charge of managing interview campaigns in Elevo. She agreed to share with us the success story of the Elevo–Audika partnership.
Before Elevo: a sector-based approach to interview management
Audika is divided into five regions, each comprising several sectors. Each HR Manager is the dedicated HR contact for their region.
Before adopting Elevo in February 2021, interview management was highly segmented, and tracking evaluations was far from optimal. Running campaigns was a real challenge for the HR leadership, as everything was handled using Excel spreadsheets.
With such a tool, it was difficult for Barbara Klein and her colleagues to analyze data and, as a result, to structure and implement effective HR support for managers—whether for internal mobility and succession planning, or for defining promotions and salary increases.
“Handling a large volume of reviews on Excel is complicated!”
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
Why Audika chose Elevo?
All these logistical and strategic challenges led Audika’s HR Department to look for a specialized performance review management tool. In early 2021, Elevo was quickly selected as it met all of the company’s objectives.
Spotlight on the annual review at Audika
Under the leadership of the new HR Director, Sandrine Moulira, the rollout of Elevo enabled the introduction of new review types, such as the annual evaluation review. At Audika, it is called the “Annual Development Review” to highlight its focus on employee support and growth.
Quality reviews: a strategic priority for Audika
The Annual Development Review is far from the only discussion format hosted on Elevo.
In just 18 months, Audika has implemented a wide range of reviews, as Elevo makes it easy to run campaigns and create an effective framework for addressing management and team development needs:
1°) Structuring the employee journey through end-of-probation and exit interviews.
2°) Turning reviews into managerial tools to strengthen support, for example via the Annual Development Review.
3°) Supporting career progression with professional reviews and six-year career assessments.
“We want our teams to feel supported and engaged. Elevo helps us deliver on this ambition by setting up reviews that give employees a voice, ensure they are heard, and equip managers with the tools to support and develop their teams.”
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
Barbara Klein's HR tips for engaging managers in performance reviews
At Audika, the perception of performance reviews has evolved thanks to:
- Elevo, whose interface is intuitive and easy to use for all employees, whether tech-savvy or not.
- Targeted HR initiatives for managers, which Barbara Klein shared with us.
1st HR action: creating explanatory guides
”Whenever we launch a review on Elevo, we support our managers by providing a detailed guide for each type of review. We explain the purpose, outline any legal framework, and walk through the review template, clarifying expectations for each section.”
2nd HR action: hosting webinars
”Every year, we organize a webinar for managers to reinforce the purpose of each review. We go through the structure step-by-step, answer questions, and share best practices for preparing and conducting the reviews.”
3rd HR action: training sessions
“This year, we offered training on setting objectives, a key component of the Annual Development Review. The goal was to equip managers with the right tools to make reviews as high-quality and impactful as possible.”
“Today, thanks to Elevo and the HR Department’s dedicated support, reviews are increasingly seen as genuine managerial tools with real added value for our employee development and engagement strategy.”
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
The benefits of Elevo for Audika
A complete overview of review campaigns
Before Elevo, the siloed management of performance reviews made it difficult for the HR Department to gather all evaluations and centralize information in one place.
Now, thanks to Elevo, “we have a complete overview of all reviews across the company. We know exactly where each evaluation is,” explains the Training & Career Development Manager.
A differentiatied employee experience to boost retention
With Elevo, the HR Department has been able to launch new types of reviews, helping to offer every Audika employee the best possible experience throughout their journey.
As a result, Elevo enables Audika to strengthen talent retention, a critical challenge in the hearing healthcare sector.
With Elevo, we have introduced reviews at every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to exit. Elevo therefore sets the rhythm for the daily life and journey of everyone in the Audika team, helping to enhance the overall employee experience."
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
Providing managers with the right tools to support their teams
The increase in the number of reviews conducted on the platform also meets a key managerial goal: giving managers the right tools to effectively support their team members.
As Barbara Klein explains: “Elevo provides a framework for managers—they have their roadmap for the year, with all the reviews they need to conduct. They know exactly where they stand and have their own dashboard.”
Elevo also gives managers quick and easy access to employee history, saving time for both them and the HR Department:
“Managers like having year-over-year history. If an employee changes managers, the new manager has full access to the employee’s history in Elevo. This simplifies daily management. Before, they had to go through HR to retrieve past records. Today, everything is in Elevo, including the employee’s objectives.”
Creating reports to drive better HR decisions
At Audika, performance review templates include both open-ended and closed-ended questions. The latter make it easier for the HR Department to generate reports.
Take the annual development review as an example. At the start of the form, employees are asked: “How do you feel at Audika today?” From these responses, Audika obtains “a barometer of the overall sentiment within the company.” The HR Department then analyzes the answers to design targeted action plans.
“Elevo is a tool that allows us to track numerous HR indicators and produce reports. We use Elevo all year round.”
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
What's next?
In the coming months, Audika’s HR Department aims to further improve the quality of its reviews and refine its templates based on employee feedback.
“Elevo is a tool that evolves, and the Customer Success and Product teams are always attentive to our HR needs.”
- Barbara Klein, Training & Career Development Officer
