Kayzen

Meet Kayzen

Kayzen is a Berlin-based programmatic advertising company with more than 90 employees, helping mobile marketing teams run programmatic advertising in-house. Feedback and recognition run through the year at Kayzen: colleagues review each other through 360-degree feedback, every work anniversary is celebrated at the biweekly all-hands, and growth is tied to the company’s own career framework. With managers leading large teams and a management team overseeing whole organizations, Paulina Augustin, Kayzen’s People Operations Manager, and her team need a clear view of where every team stands.

A performance process tied to every hire date

Kayzen doesn’t run one company-wide review cycle per year. Each employee’s review is tied to their hiring date, so the performance process runs all year, with 360-degree feedback from peers, and there are yearly reflection meetings between team leads and direct reports to assess performance, referred to as Personal Assessment Reflection “PAR” meetings. Tying reviews to hiring dates means every employee is reviewed at the same point in their own time at Kayzen, instead of on a date set for the whole company. 

Kayzen’s earlier review setup relied on shared documents, email requests, and a lot of checking in manually. With no single review season, reviews started on different dates throughout the year, so at any given time several employees were at different stages of the process. Each review needed its own set of steps, and the People team managed every one of them manually.

For the 360-degree feedback, employees nominated the peers they wanted to hear from, and those peers were asked for their input by email. Each employee’s Personal Assessment Reflection document was kept in a shared drive, and the People team scheduled the Personal Assessment Reflection meeting between the employee and their team lead. Once a review was underway, the team followed up with peers to check whether their feedback had come in, and with employees and team leads to confirm the review meeting had taken place.

“Before Leapsome, our Personal Assessment Reflection (PAR) documents lived in Google Drive. For our 360-degree feedback, peers were asked for input by email, and as the People team, we had no clear view of whether that feedback was actually given. We scheduled the PAR meetings between employees and their team leads, but we often didn’t know if they took place. It meant a lot of manual follow-up and a process that wasn’t transparent.”

When Kayzen looked for a new performance platform, reviews tied to each hire date were a hard requirement. Many of the platforms it evaluated could only offer workarounds. Leapsome automations handled hire-date reviews out of the box, and with them came Leapsome AI, which works across one connected layer of people data covering the entire employee lifecycle.

One view of every review, from team leads to leadership

Kayzen’s Personal Assessment Reflection documents, peer feedback, and reflection meetings are now all in Leapsome. AI dashboards show Paulina’s team, Kayzen’s managers, and its management team which feedback has been given and which reflection meetings have taken place. The People team builds its own custom views on that review data, such as an overview of who was nominated as a peer and which reviews are complete. Managers use the same dashboards to check on their own teams, and the management team uses them across their whole organization.

Balanced peer reviews, better reporting, no missed anniversaries

In Kayzen’s 360-degree process, employees nominate the peers who review them. Some employees were nominated much more often than others, which left them writing six to eight peer reviews in a single cycle. Kayzen built a dashboard that tracks nomination frequency across the organization, so the team can redistribute the load before a cycle closes. A second layer tracks who declines peer reviews and why, so a People Operations employee can follow up directly instead of finding the gaps after the cycle ends.

Kayzen also celebrates every work anniversary at the biweekly all-hands meeting. Finding that week’s anniversaries used to mean scrolling through Slack or Personio, and it was easy to miss someone. A Leapsome report now lists upcoming anniversaries automatically.

The team also builds the people reports it needs directly in Leapsome, instead of relying on manual exports and spreadsheets. The team is now building a quarterly dashboard for every people manager. It will show who on the team has had a review and whether it’s complete, how many reviews happened in the quarter, whether people use Leapsome for personal development goals, how many peer reviewers have been nominated, how often people give and receive praise and instant feedback, and which pay raises and promotions happened. Managers will go into each quarterly conversation with that picture already in front of them, without waiting for People & Culture to pull a report.

More detail in every manager’s feedback

Managers at Kayzen with many direct reports write a lot of feedback. The AI writing support in Leapsome prompts them to expand their points, add an example, or be more specific.

“The AI writing support has also changed how managers write feedback, especially those with many direct reports. It helps them expand their points and prompts them to add an example or be more specific. That helps us keep feedback quality consistent.”

The People team also uses the HR Help Desk agent for questions about setting up and configuring Leapsome, which previously meant opening a support ticket and waiting for a reply.

“We use the HR Help Desk, and it’s very useful. It answers many of our questions directly, especially the “why can’t I change this” or “how do I set this up” kind. For simpler questions, we don’t have to wait for a support ticket. We can sort things out right away.”

From hire-date reviews to career goals

Kayzen’s next step is to connect reviews to goals that employees set and track in Leapsome. The company’s career framework is already in Leapsome, so the aim is for every employee to see how their goals relate to their development, whether that means growing in their current role or working toward a promotion.

“Performance is our top priority with Leapsome. Next, we want to turn reviews into concrete goals that we set and track in Leapsome, which the team has wanted for a long time. Since our career framework is also in Leapsome, we hope everyone at Kayzen will know exactly what it takes to reach their development goals, whether that’s growing in a part of their role or going for a promotion. Leapsome supports our process, makes it easier for managers, and helps us make sure everyone in the company gets the same treatment.”

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