Item: Saba TalentSpace
Rating: 7
Author: Amanda Carpenter

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used for yearly employee evaluations. We self-evaluate and then our supervisors evaluate us via Halogen. We also use it to rate our coworkers on occasion. I think it helps make employee evaluations easier and pretty consistent year to year. It's also used to keep track of goals that were given to us during our evaluations, so it can be utilized all year long, not just during the evaluation period.

Pros and Cons

I think it's a great tool to keep evaluations uniform, by using a consistent format.
It's great that you are able to see all your reviews from the past, so you can see how your evaluations were in the past and how you may want to change things for the future.
It's pretty user friendly, you just fill in the spaces answer the questions or giving the descriptions that are asked of you. You don't have to be a computer tech to use it.

I think some of the format could be paired down. While it is user friendly, there are some extra spaces and steps that could confuse a first time user. For example, some sections don't apply to my position, but they still show up on my evaluation. I know by now that I don't have to fill this out, but some people might be confused by this and wonder how to answer the question when it doesn't apply to them. (This probably may be with my company, however, as I'm not sure how much control they have over the format of the evaluations.)
The goals space should be able to be ongoing, instead of needing an end date. Some goals my supervisor set are ongoing goals, so since they don't have an end date, it appears as if they are overdue on Halogen.
It's really not that difficult to use. It just has a lot of extras I think that don't always get utilized. The option to hide some of those things (i.e. Learning Goals, or Development Goals) I think would be another improvement.

Return on Investment

I think the positive impact is keeping evaluations consistent so that you can consistently track job performance.
Negative impact is the self-performance aspect can seem very repetitious, especially if your job doesn't change much year to year.
Overall, I think it's positively impacted the company. It may seem a tedious thing to do each year, but it keeps evals consistent in a way that I think Faculty evaluations are lacking. (I don't believe they use Halogen, I think it's only staff that do).

Alternatives Considered

Since I have been at HACC we have only ever used Halogen, so I don't really have anything else to compare it to. My other jobs were not jobs were yearly evaluations were done.

Key Insights

Do you think Saba TalentSpace delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Saba TalentSpace's feature set?

Yes

Did Saba TalentSpace live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Saba TalentSpace go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Saba TalentSpace again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Zoom, Adobe Acrobat DC

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it's great for evaluation time, both self and for supervisors. I'm not really sure how else you would use it. It's nice that you can do your self-evaluation, then once your supervisor completes their evaluation of you, you can easily see and compare the two. It's also well suited for viewing your job performance over the years.

Support Rating

The only problem I've ever had with it was logging in, and that problem was resolved quickly.

Saba TalentSpace: Great for Job Performance Tracking

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Saba TalentSpace (formerly Halogen)