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What if your company culture wasn’t just an HR buzzword but the secret weapon to scaling your business?
Welcome to Kan Talk Kulture, the podcast that dives deep into how remarkable company cultures are intentionally built and how they can transform your team, your business, and your bottom line.
Hosted by Kylie Anne Neal, founder of Kan Kulture and a passionate expert in people, culture, and leadership, this show is designed for business owners, CEOs, HR professionals, and anyone who believes that empowered people are the key to long-term success.
Each episode features real conversations with inspiring CEOs, business leaders, and culture champions who share how they’ve shaped their team environments alongside case studies, practical tips, and bold questions that challenge the status quo.
Whether you're looking to boost employee engagement, create a high-performance team, or align your people with your vision, this podcast will help you connect the dots between culture and growth.
At Kan Kulture, we believe in Kindness, Understanding, Learning, Trust, Uniqueness, Respect, and Evolving, and this podcast brings those values to life.
If you're ready to turn your team into your biggest brand ambassadors and create a workplace people love, this is the podcast for you.
Find out more at www.kankulture.com
Hi, I'm Kylie Anne Neal, founder of Kan Kulture and welcome to Kan Talk Kulture. In this podcast, I sit down with some of Australia's most progressive founders and CEOs. To explore the heart of their company cultures, what drives them, what they value, and what it's really like to work for the companies they lead.
You'll also find occasional episodes packed with practical HR insights to help you. Build safer, stronger, and more trusted workplaces. So whether you're a new team member, getting to know your workplace, curious about creating remarkable company cultures, or just wanting to know more about implementing HR best practice, you are in the right place.
Let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to Kan Talk Kulture. I'm Kylie Neil and Georgina Walker has joined us again today. Hello Georgina. Hello, Kylie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Fabulous. So today we are talking about performance reviews still. Mm-hmm. We are going to be focusing on the 120 day rhythm for performance conversations that drive growth.
Mm-hmm. So we are going to be focusing on why one 20 day cadence. Mm-hmm. You know, I think in models of performance reviews, some companies do them annually, some do them quarterly, some do them monthly. But when we designed and developed the performance reviews that we use with our clients, we always recommend one 20 days.
Why
the million dollar question? So when I first started at Kan Kulture, I was used to the traditional one, one a year annual performance reviews. And as an employee I found there was too much time between, A lot can change in 12 months, and if you're not checking in consistently with your employee, you may lose them.
Things may arise that they don't have a chance to speak about, so they'll, they'll leave or vice versa, they won't be performing. At an optimal level and you won't, you won't want them to hang around anymore. And it just becomes this kind of toxic dynamic. So the one 20 days was to have more consistent check-ins.
One once a month is too many, once a quarter, also too many. So we just found that one 20 days was the perfect timing.
Yes. The sweet spot. It is the sweet spot. Absolutely. And I think the one 20 day cadence. It you, you touched on a word there, consistent. It needs to be consistent. We've seen with our clients.
That we've implemented the one 20 day cadence in, we always ask for the employees for feedback on process, any improvements. It's kind of really interesting to see. Some people think it's too much. Mm. Some people think it's not enough. So settling on the one 20 day, it kind of is that in between. So that means there's three on point performance conversations per year.
It means that if you are working on a project or you know you've got your actions or you're looking at. Energy and energy out and what the advice is that can change quite rapidly. So the one 20 days, so that's once every four months. It does. It does sit right with the companies and it does enable meaningful conversations between a leader and their direct report.
I think it removes surprises as well and normalizes feedback. Yes. They're not formal conversations per se, they're. Just conversations. Their check-ins. Yes.
Yeah. And we, we tested the one 20 days with what's the best frequency for the best impact, because we want them to be impactful. Mm-hmm. You know, too frequently and employees are.
Tick and flick. Mm-hmm. And it, it loses its impact. Yeah. Annually or even bi-annually. So much can change and, and you know, the good old set it at the start of the year, check in the middle of the year. Mm-hmm. Have an annual review at the end of the year. Like, it's just so redundant. But there, I believe there's still such a great space for performance reviews in people practices to create a really good employee experience.
What about once the performance reviews are done, what do you think the leader's role is in the follow through between performance reviews
and follow through is the correct terminology? Actually do something follow up. Don't just have the conversation and store the file away. I mean, depending on what the performance review is.
On facilitating that change and helping initiate those changes with the employee?
Yes. Yes. So we have, in the last episode, we spoke about the format that we use and those special little ingredients that we designed from Kan Kulture and the leader's role. It's really important that they take out the advice.
Hmm. But I think the really great thing that leaders have the opportunity to do is if they have more than one direct report, they're able to use those conversations and almost collate them to enable a better environment for their teams to be able to support individuals to. Achieve their actions. Mm. It might be making a connection with someone else in the organization that can help them with a growth opportunity, or it might be things that really give them energy and exposing them to them things more.
But there really is some things that leaders can, you know, kind of bottle up. What's said in a performance review to be able to navigate the team between performance reviews. The other thing that leaders can do is it's that managing up and managing down because they've been privy to those conversations of advice to the company.
They can also reflect on that as they're in leadership meetings or you know, they're having strategy sessions with. Leaders to be able to bring that to the table and say, well, the advice that my team gave was this, therefore I think we should focus in these areas. So there is a lot of work that can be done and a lot of considerations for the performance review, not just being a.
Let's fill out the form. Sit and we might have a meaningful chat, but then closing the door and that being the end of it. Performance is, is alive in organizations every day. And because of tight budgets, because people, organizations can be quite resource poor expectations on agility and being able to pivot and all those types of things.
Being able to navigate performance is a daily and moment. Momental. Yeah. Is that a word moment? It's a moment by moment. Yeah. Um, type thing that managers need to be on top of and they need to keep front of mind. So the one 20 day rhythm does create, if it's done consistently. And we've seen clients come on board to Kan Kulture, and we've implemented it and it does take a couple of one 20 day cycles for the employees to get used to the performance reviews because we do do them quite differently.
It takes a, a couple of goes for the leaders to understand how to bring meaning to those conversations. But I think, you know, we've, we've got a couple of companies now that have had that cadence for. A couple of years now, and it really does form a really good flow. Like it's a really good anchoring moment for the organization to get a stance on how employees are experiencing.
The workplace. Mm. So very important Performance reviews. We absolutely recommend a one 20 day cadence. We, the way that we construct it is have one in April, and that's partnered with a growth journey plan that's set annually. Then there's one in. August, which is partnered with salary review, and then there's one in December, January, depending on the organization, which is actually supported with a talent calibration.
So we feed through those other practices through the cadence as well, which just really forms a, a really nice broad. Representation of performance and how it's rewarded and how the organization hones in on growth and development.
And I think one 20 day cadence is, it's enough time to see. And track performance.
Yes. But it's also enough time to course correct. Yes. People are going down the wrong pathway as well.
Yeah. And we also need to keep in mind that performance conversations don't need to just happen at performance review time. Right. And I, you know, I, I think. Leaders are getting a lot more savvy with that now, where they don't, you know, nothing should be a surprise in a performance review.
It's almost like, you know, a little wrap up of, this is the last one, 20 days. This is what you've achieved. This is where your energy is at, in and out. And then it's like, okay. Past focus and future focused, but it definitely doesn't take away from those incremental performance discussions or the observations and experiences from the leader if someone's not performing in their role.
They need to happen day by day, moment by moment, week by week.
So thank you for joining us for this episode. If you would like to learn more about the way that we do performance reviews at Kan Kulture, please look at our past episode on performance reviews, and we will see you next time. Thanks for joining me on Kan Talk Kulture. I'm Kylie Anne Neal. I hope today's episode gave you a clear review into the values driving your workplace.
All sparked new ideas about building a remarkable company culture. If you're a founder or CEO interested in sharing your culture story, or if you are looking to build a safer, stronger, and more trusted workplace, let's connect. Visit Kan Kulture.com. That's KA. K-U-L-T-U-R e.com to learn more. Please hit that subscribe button to hear more real conversations with founders and CEOs and hands-on episodes full of people.
First culture advice. I look forward to connecting with you on our next episode.