Performance overhaul
Year
2024
Summary
Overhauled Personio’s Performance suite for 1,400+ mid-market customers across Europe. Led the shift from a data-recording tool into a system that mirrors how HR Managers actually run performance processes — end-to-end, cyclically, across every role in the org.
Role & Scope
1 | The mental model
Performance management isn't a linear process with a clear start and end — it's cyclical. No experience in the market reflects that.
2 | The architecture
Performance serves four fundamentally different actors: ICs, Managers, Org Leaders, and HR Managers, each with a different scope of responsibility and a different set of needs.
3 | The experience
Four disconnected features converged into a single unified experience.
For the first time, configuring the process and participating lived in clearly separate spaces
HR Managers set the rules; everyone else plays by them
For the first time, configuring the process and participating lived in clearly separate spaces
4 | How we got there
Before any design decisions, we ran 17 moderated card sorting sessions with non-customer HR Managers across the UK, Germany, and wider Europe.
The goal wasn't to validate assumptions, but to understand how HR Managers naturally plan, sequence, and connect performance activities in real life.
5 | What the overhaul unlocked
The scope-based architecture didn't stay in Performance. It became a platform-wide pattern adopted across 10 product areas at Personio.
What started as a solution to a product-specific problem became the way Personio thinks about role-based design at scale.
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