Performance Management

Acorn PLMS enables your organisation to establish, monitor, and achieve goals at every level—from individual contributor objectives to organisation-wide key results. By combining self-assessment capabilities, learning-based goal tracking, and role-based visibility, you can create a cohesive performance management system that aligns individual effort with strategic outcomes.

Individual Goal Tracking

Your team members can leverage the Capabilities feature to set and track personal goals through self-assessments. This feature allows users to:

• View their current proficiency levels against defined competencies and learning objectives
• Access their complete assessment history to monitor progress over time
• Conduct self-assessments to regularly evaluate their own performance and identify areas for development

Through self-assessments, employees gain visibility into their own performance trajectory, enabling them to take ownership of their professional development and align their efforts with organisational priorities.

Learning-Based Goal Achievement

You can embed goal-setting directly into your learning workflows. Acorn enables goal-setting through completion criteria within courses, allowing users to track their progress as they work through learning content. This approach ties professional development directly to measurable objectives.

Administrators benefit from comprehensive reporting capabilities on user progress, making it possible to:

• Monitor achievement of specific learning objectives across teams and departments
• Identify skill gaps and development needs at scale
• Track completion rates and time-to-proficiency for critical training programmes

This integration ensures that learning investments translate into demonstrated progress toward defined goals.

Organisational & OKR Management

For organisation-wide goal tracking and OKR (Objectives and Key Results) management, Acorn PLMS uses Momentum to aggregate and visualise goal data. With Momentum, you can:

• Collect user data through forms designed to capture goal-related information, strategic initiatives, and key results
• Make goal data accessible on dashboards so leadership, managers, and relevant stakeholders can view progress at a glance
• Consolidate multiple data sources to create a unified view of how teams and departments are performing against organisational objectives

This centralised approach ensures transparency and enables data-driven conversations about strategic alignment and performance.

Role-Based Visibility & Manager Oversight

Acorn PLMS provides granular control over who can see what goal-related information. Visibility is managed through role-based access controls in Momentum, allowing your organisation to balance transparency with privacy:

• HR users may have visibility into employee goals, manager comments, and performance data across the organisation
• Employees can view and update the data they entered, maintaining ownership over their own goal records
• Managers can see and comment on the goals and progress of their direct reports, enabling meaningful one-on-one conversations and coaching

This role-based approach ensures that each user sees the information relevant to their responsibilities while protecting sensitive performance data.

Manager Comments & Goal Cascading

Managers play a critical role in goal management within Acorn PLMS. They can:

• Review goals set by their direct reports
• Provide comments and feedback to help align individual objectives with team and organisational priorities
• Guide goal cascading by ensuring that lower-level goals support higher-level strategic objectives

This two-way dialogue between managers and employees creates accountability, clarifies expectations, and helps cascade organisational strategy down through all levels of the business.

Best Practices for Goal Management

To maximise the effectiveness of goal setting and tracking in Acorn PLMS:

Align goals across levels. Use manager comments and feedback during the goal-setting process to ensure individual goals support team objectives, which in turn support organisational OKRs. This alignment creates clarity and purpose.

Regular progress reviews. Leverage the assessment history and progress reporting features to conduct regular check-ins. Use data-backed insights to identify obstacles and adjust goals as business priorities evolve.

Combine self-assessment with learning. Encourage employees to complete self-assessments regularly and pair them with targeted learning courses. This combination drives both self-awareness and skill development.

Use dashboards for transparency. Make goal progress visible through Momentum dashboards. Transparency builds accountability and helps teams understand how their work contributes to broader organisational success.

Customise visibility by role. Configure role-based access so that each user group—HR, managers, employees—sees the information they need to succeed, without information overload.

Implementation Considerations

When implementing goal management in Acorn PLMS, consider:

• Define clear competencies and proficiency levels that align with your organisation's values and strategic direction
• Create goal-setting forms in Momentum that capture the information most relevant to your business
• Establish a goal cycle (quarterly, annual, or rolling) that fits your organisational rhythm
• Train managers on how to provide constructive feedback and coach their teams toward goal achievement
• Review and refine your goal management processes regularly to ensure they remain aligned with business needs

Summary

Acorn PLMS provides a flexible, integrated platform for goal setting and tracking at every level of your organisation. By combining individual self-assessments, learning-based objectives, and organisation-wide OKR management—all unified through role-based visibility and manager oversight—you create a performance management system that drives alignment, accountability, and continuous development.

Momentum & Development Velocity Momentum & Development Velocity

What is Momentum?

Momentum is Acorn PLMS's advanced workflow builder designed to automate and centralize your organization's most critical performance management and learning processes. Rather than managing performance activities through disconnected systems, Momentum streamlines form submissions, approval workflows, and multi-step processes into a unified platform.

Momentum powers end-to-end automation for goal setting, performance reviews, 360-degree feedback, check-ins, development assistance requests, training attendance applications, pulse surveys, engagement surveys, and promotion nominations. By centralizing these workflows, your organization gains visibility, consistency, and efficiency across all performance and learning initiatives.

Core Capabilities of Momentum

Customizable Workflow Creation

You can build tailored workflows that reflect your organization's unique processes and governance requirements. Momentum's dynamic workflow builder allows you to design multi-step approval processes, sign-off mechanisms, and complex routing logic without requiring custom development.

Approval Mechanisms and Sign-Off Processes

Momentum enables you to establish structured approval paths with defined checkpoints. Your organization can create supervisor sign-offs, manager endorsements, and multi-level reviews that ensure rigour and compliance. This is particularly valuable for certification workflows where learners must be formally signed off at defined milestones—such as On-the-Job (OTJ) assessments and observation checklists for production and frontline workforces.

Time-Based Triggers and Escalations

You can configure workflows to automatically escalate tasks when approval deadlines are missed, ensuring performance activities progress on schedule. Time triggers help your organization maintain momentum and prevent bottlenecks in critical processes like performance reviews or certification sign-offs.

Delegations and Flexible Routing

When managers are unavailable or workloads must be redistributed, you can set up delegations and alternative approval paths within Momentum workflows. This flexibility ensures your organization's processes continue uninterrupted.

Performance Management Applications

Goal Setting and Collaborative Planning

Both employees and managers can initiate goal setting through Momentum workflows. This collaborative approach encourages ownership of development while allowing managers to align individual goals with organizational priorities. Your goal-setting process becomes transparent, documented, and trackable within a single system.

Performance Reviews and Evaluations

Momentum streamlines the submission and approval of performance evaluations. You can design review workflows that include manager assessments, peer input, and self-evaluations, all routed through configurable approval chains to ensure consistency and quality.

360-Degree Feedback

You can use Momentum to create structured feedback collection processes. Through the workflow builder, you can enable team assessment buttons that allow individuals to request feedback from selected colleagues via forms, or allow colleagues to proactively send feedback at any time. This creates a comprehensive view of employee performance and development areas.

Check-Ins and Pulse Surveys

Regular check-ins and pulse surveys keep your organization connected to employee engagement and progress. Momentum supports both pulse surveys and engagement surveys as standard features, enabling you to gather frequent insights and respond to emerging issues quickly.

Promotion Nominations

When succession planning and internal mobility are priorities, Momentum enables standardized promotion nomination workflows. You can create forms, define approval hierarchies, and document the nomination process to ensure fair, consistent evaluation of candidates.

Development Velocity Tracking

Momentum supports development velocity tracking by automating the entire learning and performance cycle. Development Plans within Acorn use role and interest-based capabilities to suggest personalized training. When combined with Momentum workflows, your organization can:

• Assign performance-based training based on capability gaps identified through performance reviews
• Track completion of development activities against individual goals and organizational competency frameworks
• Route training requests and approvals through defined workflows
• Monitor progress toward skill development over defined periods

This integrated approach ensures that learning directly addresses performance needs and organizational strategy.

Certification and Compliance Workflows

For organizations with production and frontline workforces, Momentum supports certification workflows that include structured, multi-step approval processes. On-the-Job (OTJ) assessments and observation checklists can be embedded within Momentum workflows, providing rigorous competency checks with mandatory supervisor sign-offs at defined milestones. This approach maintains operational safety standards, ensures compliance, and creates documented evidence of workforce competency.

Getting Started with Momentum

Momentum is available as an optional add-on to your Acorn PLMS instance. When enabled, you gain access to the workflow builder interface where you can:

1. Identify which performance or learning processes would benefit from workflow automation
2. Map the current state of those processes, including decision points, approvals, and timing requirements
3. Use the workflow builder to design your automated process
4. Configure time triggers, delegations, and escalations to match your organizational needs
5. Define who initiates workflows, who participates in approvals, and how notifications are sent
6. Test and refine your workflow before rolling out to users

Your organization's administrators and process owners will lead workflow design, though Acorn recommends involving end users to ensure workflows reflect real operational needs.

Future Capabilities

Acorn is exploring advanced performance and learning technologies as part of a future state roadmap. Capabilities AI will help organizations map and deliver more relevant, role-aligned learning for professional growth. These emerging tools will further enhance how Momentum workflows support development velocity and organizational performance.

Support and Customization

If your organization requires enhanced support or significant workflow customizations, Acorn offers optional services including a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM). Your Acorn account team can help you design Momentum workflows that align with your organization's strategy and operational reality.

Performance Reviews & Ratings Performance Reviews & Ratings

Acorn PLMS provides a flexible framework for conducting comprehensive performance evaluations that integrate 360-degree feedback, manager assessments, self-reviews, and peer input. This multi-dimensional approach ensures that performance ratings reflect a complete picture of employee contributions and development.

Overview of Performance Evaluation in Acorn

Performance management in Acorn PLMS centers on the Momentum Module, which allows you to design and execute evaluation workflows tailored to your organization's needs. Whether you're conducting annual reviews, mid-year check-ins, or ongoing feedback cycles, Acorn supports structured processes that collect input from multiple stakeholders and tie assessments directly to job-relevant competencies.

The system bridges learning and performance by enabling you to assign development activities based on evaluation outcomes, ensuring that performance insights translate into tangible learning opportunities.

Setting Up Customizable Rating Scales

When establishing your performance evaluation framework, you have full control over how ratings are defined and communicated. You can customize your rating scale and the wording used in capability definitions to align with your organization's terminology and performance philosophy.

Acorn supports two primary approaches for managing performance criteria:

Capability Sets with Proficiency Levels: You can import your core competencies into Acorn as a Capability Set, where they are assessed against pre-defined proficiency levels. This method is ideal if your organization uses standardized competency frameworks tied to specific roles. Managers and employees can evaluate proficiency in each competency, providing consistent, structured assessment.

Alternative Assessment Methods: If you require different output formats or evaluation structures, the Momentum Module offers flexibility to design custom evaluation workflows that align with your specific requirements.

Structuring Multi-Stage Review Workflows

You can design performance evaluation processes with multiple steps and timelines. For example, your organization might conduct mid-year evaluations to assess progress and adjust goals, followed by year-end summative reviews. Using the Momentum Module, you structure the evaluation process into logical steps that accommodate various evaluation periods.

This capability is particularly valuable for organizations with different employee populations. You can create separate workflows for different groups—such as one evaluation plan for attorneys and a different approach for other employees. Workflows can be applied to specific cohorts, ensuring that each group follows an evaluation process appropriate to their role and organizational context.

Collecting Feedback from Multiple Perspectives

Acorn enables true 360-degree feedback by allowing employees to request input from multiple sources during the review process. Within the Momentum Module, you can configure a step where employees send pre-configured feedback request forms to peers, supervisors, and even employees junior or senior to them.

This multi-source approach enriches the evaluation by capturing diverse perspectives on an employee's performance, collaboration, and impact. The structured feedback collection ensures consistency and relevance across all respondents.

Self-Assessments and Supervisor Evaluations

The competency module supports both self-assessments and supervisor evaluations, enabling employees to reflect on their own performance while managers provide external perspective. These assessments are tied to role-specific competencies, emphasizing proficiency levels that align with job requirements.

This systematic method ensures that learners consistently match the skill requirements for their positions. By comparing self-assessment against manager evaluation, you can identify areas of alignment, highlight development opportunities, and inform coaching conversations.

Aligning Performance with Organizational Values

You can import or create organizational values to be assessed as part of mid-year and year-end performance reviews. There are two methods depending on your scope:

Using the Capabilities Feature: Import all organizational values into a Capability Set where they can be assessed against pre-defined proficiency levels. Both managers and employees can complete these assessments, providing a shared understanding of how well performance aligns with organizational culture.

Using the Momentum Module: If you prefer alternative output formats or custom assessment structures, you can configure the Momentum workflow to incorporate values assessment in your preferred format.

Connecting Performance to Development

Performance evaluation in Acorn doesn't end with ratings—it drives development. Learning pathways are tailored based on the learner's cohort and job role. The Capabilities Module directs learning toward each employee's specific role and enables them to craft a development plan linked to their learning objectives.

You can assign skill pathways or core competencies as part of performance evaluation workflows, creating a direct connection between performance gaps identified in reviews and targeted learning opportunities. This ensures that development activities address actual performance needs and support career progression.

Administrative Visibility and Control

Administrators can view and manage historical information related to training courses and performance evaluations. Report viewing can be customized depending on the type of admin, allowing different stakeholders to access relevant performance data appropriate to their role.

This administrative visibility supports organizational learning by enabling you to track performance trends, identify development patterns across cohorts, and ensure compliance with evaluation requirements.

Best Practices for Implementation

When implementing performance reviews in Acorn, consider the following:

• Define clear competency frameworks that align with your organizational strategy and role requirements
• Customize rating scales to reflect your performance philosophy and ensure consistency in interpretation
• Structure multi-step workflows to accommodate your evaluation calendar and business cycles
• Leverage 360-degree feedback to provide comprehensive performance perspective
• Link development to performance by assigning learning pathways based on evaluation outcomes
• Maintain historical records to support trend analysis and demonstrate performance management effectiveness

By utilizing these capabilities, your organization can conduct fair, comprehensive, and development-focused performance evaluations that support both individual growth and organizational success.