Corporate Renaissance Group is now Quisitive. Visit Quisitive.com.

Brunk Industries Stamps-Out a Long Term Employee Performance Management Strategy with CRG emPerform

Customer
Brunk Industries

Products/Services
emPerform

Industry
Manufacturing

Location
Lake Geneva, WI

Overview

Brunk Industries, a leader in the stamping industry, invested in CRG emPerform to help expand their performance management efforts, track compliance, and better engage and develop a growing workforce of millennials. Since starting with emPerform in 2014, Brunk Industries has been able to:

  • Reduce HR’s dependence on IT for the maintenance and expansion of software
  • Track the status of employee performance and compliance training
  • Monitor the growth and potential of its workforce
  • Continue to expand their performance management efforts with mid-year check-ins and ongoing goal management
  • Integrate data directly from their Microsoft Dynamics™ AX ERP system

A Leader in Metal Forming

Brunk Industries – passion, quality, and customer satisfaction set the bar. Founded in 1960, Brunk Industries is a leading contract manufacturer of micro-precision medical component stampings, assemblies, and class-critical implantable devices. Based in Lake Geneva, WI, Brunk Industries’ staff of over 270 takes pride in producing products that save lives and help patients return to a full, healthier existence.

The Situation

The challenge: reduce HR’s dependence on IT, attract and retain a growing workforce of millennials, track compliance and training, and implement a long-term performance management strategy

HR was relying on a home-grown performance management system needing IT support

Prior to using emPerform, Brunk Industries relied on a home-grown appraisal system for performance management. The system was not robust enough to support the company’s changing performance management processes and configuring the system consistently required IT involvement. As a result, paper reviews were also being used, making the entire process inconsistent and an administrative burden for HR. “All development and enhancements needed to be performed by our internal IT staff, which already had plenty on their plate,” said Joe Seredick, Human Resources Manager at Brunk Industries. “We didn’t want to use our own IT team for changes or enhancements and so we knew we needed another standalone software suite that would meet our needs and support our performance management processes and objectives.”

Changing Workforce Climate

Brunk Industries was preparing for a shift in their organization’s workforce. With the growing number of millennials returning to manufacturing and older employees preparing for retirement, the company needed a system that would help set and monitor performance and training goals in order to develop, and retain talent. Brunk Industries also needed a better way to track compliance to ensure its workforce is able to uphold the company’s short and long term objectives and commitment to superior quality and exceptional customer care. “Our industry is being revitalized,” continued Joe. “More and more younger adults are finding their way back into manufacturing. Our challenge is getting these new hires up to speed and developed at the level of quality needed as the older workforce population prepared for retirement.”

Need for On-Premise Installation

Brunk Industries’ technical infrastructure is designed for on-premise deployment of business software and systems. As such, Brunk Industries needed to find a solution that could meet its functional as well as technical needs.

The Search for a New Performance Management Solution

In 2014, Brunk Industries’ IT Manager, Bob Kendall, attended the Microsoft Convergence Conference where he was able to meet with the Corporate Renaissance Group and emPerform teams.

Being a user of Microsoft Dynamics AX and a part of the Dynamics community for many years, they were aware of Corporate Renaissance Group (CRGroup) and the company’s commitment to quality software development and products that tie into Dynamics.  Bob knew that the HR team needed a flexible and technically compatible product to solve their performance management challenges and emPerform was a great fit.

Brunk Industries selected and implemented emPerform shortly thereafter.

The Results

Time savings for HR & IT, robust status reporting, effective goal management, and helpful client support

Since the implementation, all of Brunk Industries’ employees are using CRG emPerform for goal setting, status tracking, annual and mid-year appraisals and compliance tracking. As a result, Brunk Industries has realized many quantifiable benefits:

Reduced Dependence on IT

With the help of emPerform’s support team, Brunk Industries was able to set up and effectively launch their performance management system and forms without involvement from IT beyond the on-premise installation of the software. Brunk Industries’ HR team was trained to manage and maintain emPerform independently. Now when Brunk Industries makes enhancements to their review process to continue expanding their performance management efforts, HR has the ability to make changes immediately without waiting for IT or vendor assistance.

Significant Time Savings for HR

Brunk Industries has realized significant time savings for their HR team. HR no longer has to distribute, gather, sort, and locate paper documents as everything is centralized and trackable in emPerform. emPerform has simplified goal creating and editing for managers, minimizing HR’s time spent on pre-assigning goals to employees. “With a bit of training we have empowered our managers to be self-sufficient in terms of entering their own goals,” said Joe. With the company’s new focus on documenting and discussing performance throughout the year, Brunk Industries also expects to see fewer employee relation issues for the HR team to address.

Robust Reporting Capabilities to Track Status and Compliance

By using emPerform’s reporting and dashboard capabilities, HR is able to track compliance and determine which employees have yet to complete certain stages of the performance process and monitor the status of employee goals. “The reporting essentially helps me pinpoint the issues as opposed to scouring paper forms trying to determine who’s late.”, said Joe. And with emPerform’s ad-hoc reporting functionality, HR can easily configure each report to help them collect the data necessary for decision making. Brunk Industries continues to expand their usage of emPerform reporting by creating and scheduling completion reports and goal progress reports.

Effective Goal Management

With the help of emPerform’s robust and flexible goal management functionality, managers are now able to cascade their goals downward to many employees. Brunk Industries strives to meet and exceed customer expectations by ensuring employees understand why their goals are important. Effective business goal setting through emPerform helps managers convey and track progress against those objectives and it motivates employees to work hard at completing the objectives on time. In addition to tracking business goals, Brunk Industries has included a new goal section for continuous self-improvement and employee development. This has allowed them to properly develop and engage employees, especially new millennials entering the workforce. Moving forward, Brunk Industries plans to fully transition to a more open and ongoing goal setting and monitoring process where goal milestones are tracked and employees are provided with more frequent coaching and acknowledgement.

Easy Integration to Microsoft Dynamics™ AX ERP system

All core employee data is automatically updated in emPerform a few times a year through an integration with Brunk Industries’ Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP system.

Helpful Client Support from emPerform

With the help of emPerform’s dedicated implementation business, and technical support team, Brunk Industries was able to effectively implement, launch, and manage emPerform. “We have been very pleased with the level of support offered to us by emPerform over the years,” continued Joe.  “The support personnel are great to work with because of their knowledge and ability to pass that knowledge on to us.”

“Being able to tie performance directly into succession and merit decisions brings everything together full circle and helps employees and managers see how their development and efforts contribute to both individual and company success.”  Joe Seredick, Human Resource Manager – Brunk Industries

 

The Future of emPerform at Brunk

Looking ahead to dynamic goal management, succession planning, and compensation merit decision making.

Brunk Industries plans to build and expand their use of emPerform by introducing more dynamic and ongoing goal management. “Starting this year, we will be keeping goals open all year, with the ability to update the completion status of goals as well as add goals as the business climate changes,” said Joe.

Brunk Industries also plans to build out their performance management efforts by using other modules included in emPerform, including emPerform’s surveys, Compensation Manager, and Nine-Box Talent Matrix for succession planning and talent identification. By relying on emPerform for collecting and using vital survey, succession, and performance data, Brunk Industries can streamline its performance management and employee development initiatives in order to ensure they grow the talent-base needed to meet client objectives in the short and long term. “Being able to tie performance directly into succession and merit decisions will bring everything together full circle and will help employees and managers see how their development and efforts contribute to both individual and company success,” said Joe.

Get started with CRG emPerform for easy-to-use, affordable, & effective employee performance management

You might also like to explore…

Ecore International Streamlines Employee Performance Management and Compensation Planning with CRG emPerform

“Not only have we saved time, but also better ways to measure performance across the organization. emPerform allows our employees to track progress and input comments throughout the year.”

Federation of Canadian Municipalities Automate Employee Performance Management with CRG emPerform

“emPerform is working really well for FCM and its employees. We are excited about using the additional features like 360° multi-rater reviews & online surveys that come included.”