®

The Solution — “HEAR”The HR team and COH leadership felt so strongly

about addressing the complexity problem and

manager-employee relationship problem, they created

a multi-faceted talent management program called

“HEAR” — Houston Employee Assessment and

Review. The acronym HEAR was purposeful in its

focus on “hearing” and “communicating.” At the

highest level, the HEAR goals focus on the employee-

manager partnership, on-the-job success, and

employee engagement and development.

Case Study

Change is no longer

rapid, it’s dizzying... and

we wanted to find a way

to get out in front of it.

Noel Pinnock, HEAR Liaison

Industry: Government

Employees: 22,000

Saba Solutions:

Learning@Work Performance@Work Collaboration

Usually, corporations are the trendsetters for new business initiatives and technology solutions, and governments are followers. But in this case, a municipal government — The City of Houston — is leading the way with a progressive, holistic approach to Talent Management.

City of Houston’s holistic

talent management

components driving key

organizational goals.

Two years ago, The City of Houston (“COH”)

developed one of the most advanced, integrated, best

communicated talent management systems initiatives

in the industry. In fact, the City of Houston was one

of the first government agencies to develop a broad-

based talent management program, for its 22,000

employees, using one of the most advanced talent

management systems in the country.

The ChallengesThe challenge City of Houston faced was a complex

array of talent-related processes across 22 diverse

city departments, combined with

inconsistent, often ineffective,

communication between managers

and their team members. In addition,

COH was experiencing an accelerating

wave of retirements in the middle

management ranks, with as much as

30% of the staff in certain departments

reaching retirement age next year. All-

in-all, it’s “dizzying” change, for sure.

City of Houston

Case Study > City of Houston

2

• Culture (people-centered, quality-of-life driven, service-

focused, offering recognition and appreciation)

• People (work plans aligned with goals and objectives,

coaching, gap analysis, feedback loop)

• Process (Consistent, valid, reliable, flexible,

accountable)

• System (Saba’s Learning, Performance and

Collaboration applications)

At the City of Houston, every person knows how their

goals map directly to the mayor’s five pillars of success

for the city (shown in the graphic above, with the central

pillar being “Quality of Life” for residents). To reinforce

that, COH wanted to create a bottom-up approach

to communications. They felt they needed to get all

the issues on the table so they could proactively solve

them and reach an even higher level of success. Their

philosophy is, “There’s no issue we can’t solve together.

We just need to know what they are.”

Saba’s Talent Management Suite

The City of Houston chose Saba because of its deep

foundation in learning (“the bridge to change” for COH)

integrated tightly with performance, development plans

and collaboration — all key elements in powering the

HEAR program. And because it was engaging and

intuitive to use for its 22,000 employees, the learning

curve was very flat and the adoption curve was very

steep. Plus, the Saba platform’s flexibility allowed COH

to easily configure the system to meet its exact needs.

The mission of HEAR is to “provide a balanced

approach to performance management that supports

a culture of high performance by developing and

celebrating employee accomplishments and service,

and contributions to the residents of the City of

Houston.” The goals of the program are to (1) improve

employee performance and management efficiency,

and (2) create a positive city culture.

With the help of Saba’s Talent Management Suite, the

City of Houston developed a sophisticated, integrated

talent management program that incorporated:

Policy and process meet

application. Several challenges…

one solution.

Dr. Modeane Walker

Sr. Staff Analyst

Case Study > City of Houston

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Saba delivers a cloud-based Intelligent Talent Management™ solution used by leading organizations worldwide to hire, develop, engage, and inspire their people. Intelligent Talent Management uses machine learning to offer proactive, personalized recommendations on candidates, connections, and content to help your employees and organization lead and succeed.

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®

Specifically, following the HEAR principles, employee

performance has increased by approximately 10%

(measured by an increased number of “4’s” and “5’s”

on performance reviews relative to the previous year).

As a result, service quality to residents has increased

by an estimated 5%. The HEAR team is expecting

similar or greater performance and quality gains in the

next 12 months.

The impact of the City of Houston’s HEAR program

was so profound that the City of Los Angeles asked

the COH to help them launch LA HEAR and conduct

“train-the-trainers” sessions to roll it out.

In fact, the City of Los Angeles has coined their

hybrid model “CLEAR” — the City of LA Employee

Assessment and Review — citing the need to ensure

employees are CLEAR on how they measure success.

The Results to DatePowered by Saba, the City of Houston’s HEAR

program is seeing value in five key areas:

• More engaged city employees who understand

where they fit in the mission of the city

• More productive employees as a result of clearer

goals and better communications with their managers

• Better quality of service provided to city residents

• Increased revenue (taxes and fees) and decreased

people costs (reduced turnover) — netting a

280% ROI

• A more positive city culture

We felt it was important to

fully empower our workforce by

showing them what ‘success’

looks like for each employee.

Noel Pinnock

HEAR Liaison