Annual Employee Calibration Process

Problem:

Every year, Wayfair conducts its annual employee performance review process, which determines how each employee will be rewarded via raises, incentives, and/or promotions. To ensure that the process is fair and consistent, every team must go through a calibration process that compares draft employee ratings against shared rubrics and standardized evidence frameworks before final ratings are submitted.

Wayfair’s calibration system was highly manual, primarily captured in non-standard tools such as email, spreadsheets, and Slack; with facilitation processes and standards that varied from session to session. Collectively, hundreds of hours were invested in this essential process but couldn’t be tracked or validated effectively to ensure the right employee’s were getting rewarding appropriately, leading to employee dissatisfaction and higher-than-average attrition.

My Role

Lead UX Designer

My Responsibilities

Discovery research to uncover inefficiencies, pain points, and process and data gaps

Future-state process design to optimize for multi-role, realtime collaboration, and streamline cumbersome, non-standard processes

Visual and interaction design to enhance employee experience, reduce time-on-task, ensure equity

Team

Alex Monks, Senior Product Manager