Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for:
A busy environment where you want learners to be self-sufficient and to be able to access learning solutions at a time that suits them. For anyone who wants to access learning using different platforms such as iPad, mobile, PC, etc Anyone who needs a more in-depth learning solution rather than an overview of key learning points. Read full review I think it's a good platform for tracking and monitoring goals, feedback, and development. We don't use the 1:1 meeting feature, however, I can see how that would be valuable for many organizations. I do like that it is very customizable, however, that also presents problems in that sometimes forms and/or processes can be a bit challenging to create easily and quickly.
Read full review Pros Enables employees to draft work goals and collaborate with their supervisors on a final version - improves mutual understanding right up front. Combines performance goal ratings with competency ratings and provides a blended score. Simplifies the goal weighting so you don't have to do any calculations. 9-box matrix provides useful definitions and descriptions so managers can prepare development notes or plans for individual employees. Read full review 1:1 agendas are easy to create, add comments to and prompt excellent conversation flow on the topics that truly matter to the manager and the employee. The system can be easily customized to reflect your company's language and culture. We did this in several areas of the platform (goals, development, learning), and it made a world of difference in the understanding and adaptation of our users. One example is that in each learning module, we added 3 questions in the course description so that managers would be automatically prompted to ask to follow up / learning transfer questions when their employees enroll and take a learning course. Halogen support is outstanding. Any question I have had has been answered upon the first contact or within 24 hours. Read full review Cons Would be good to have have a virtual "top level" (eg board) user built in to allow senior execs without a direct manager to be able to be set up with KPIs instead of having to create a dummy user Reports have difficulty downloading if pop ups disabled or in some browser environments When competencies are updated while a cycle is open, any changes don't effect that open cycle but only future ones. Would be nice to be able to have the option to apply changes to existing "open" cycles Read full review My organization does not use all of the functions/modules that Halogen offers, but I find that those modules still appear on the Halogen main page. I think a great area for improvement is to hide these functions so as not to confuse employees. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It's not that CSB isn't a decent performance management system, but we have decided to go with just one vendor (Workday) for an HRIS/performance management/payroll system so we can directly relate pay to performance. We are more interested in having just one system that "talks" to the other pieces instead of having to work with several vendors. It reduces the hassle of having to communicate with different support teams, having different contracts, and so on.
Read full review Implementing a new system and process company wide is never an easy task. We moved so quickly in such a short period of time that we were able to learn quickly but also have the opportunity to improve the Halogen experience. We will more than likely will renew our use of Halogen as we already are seeing a small impact which hopefully in the long run will lead to a greater impact
Read full review Usability There are specific things within the goals and competencies that are user-friendly. For example, the rating slider isn't great in my opinion. You can slide in between ratings which can create some odd scoring (if you use scoring). It seems a better solution would be a drop down where you select your rating. There are also some glitches in the system and have been told Cornerstone is aware of them but are focused on delivering new features. There are workarounds, but that doesn't seem to be a great answer.
Read full review Halogen is very intuitive and provides very clean work-space ... lots of white space and modern layouts. There is more than one way to accomplish your action, too!
Read full review Reliability and Availability So far 100%.
Read full review Performance The saving process slows it down. It doesn’t auto save. If you leave a page, it will sometimes warn you, but not always. When you hit the save button, a window pops up that says creating/saving packets. It feels very archaic.
Read full review Support Rating My assistant could better address this issue. My perception is that there is not immediate assistance, and that there can be a wait for help. That is not a negative, just a perception. I have not used support in two years.
Read full review We only purchased the appraisal module and without the other modules offered, you are really limited in what you can do and the process becomes much more involved with needing to maintain information across multiple platforms. We found that they charge for everything and call it "consulting." We poured so much money and time into a system that was just overkill for what we really needed.
Read full review Online Training We bought training provided by 3rd party – it was fabulous.
Read full review It is very easy to use and I can do my own programming instead of paying a technician and waiting sometimes days for them to program the changes.
Read full review Implementation Rating I think we could have done a better job of rolling out the tool to our managers. We were under a tight timeline. In the training, we showed them everything and said go do it by this date. Looking back, I would have done it in pieces: for example, 2 weeks to write goals, 2 weeks to get sign-off from direct reports. I just let them go at it. Since then we’ve moved to agile development environment and are applying the technique to everything. In future would only do through change sprint. It is a big change I didn’t take it seriously enough. I had a team of 3 project managing. You need a champion from every department to make sure you’re getting it right and to make sure what’s happening is communicated. It’s not something you can do without input from department heads
Read full review Get to know your CAM - Customer Account Manager! They are a lifesaver! (Thanks Jorie Basque!)
Read full review Alternatives Considered Lesson.ly has been great to work with but it is a very clear and simple, user-friendly system that anyone can pick up with very little training as it is self-explanatory. It also has a great mobile interface and lots of different features that are easy to add for the admin but really impactful for the user.
Read full review I have used other systems in the past and I like that Halogen provides everything in one space. I would like to see a more developed way to report training, not in the LMS, but I think that for the most part that Halogen is a robust system that is superior to its competition.
Read full review Return on Investment It's tool and it's only as good as the person wielding it. The investment in PiiQ was accompanied by a quarterly cadence and manager feedback training. We feel like our employees are given regular feedback and bonuses are tied to objective accomplishment. Read full review We are able to get our reviews done in a quicker amount of time. Instead of 4-8 weeks we were able to get it done under a month. Halogen has gotten better at given us a heads up when the system will be down. Most patches are done overnight so we can at least verify it was done, but their success rate of a patch not breaking something is not at 99%. So we do lose productivity when the system is down. The tool is easier to do so there are fewer questions from users outside the core team. Read full review ScreenShots PiiQ by Cornerstone Screenshots Saba TalentSpace Screenshots