Australian Firm Showing Agencies Who Their Best Employees Are

Children have ditched crayons for iPads. Now it's time for federal agencies to ditch the pen-and-paper method of tracking employee performance. Australian firm Acendre wants to do just that with its cloud-based ePerform product, says North America president Liam Ackland. ePerform has been built specifically for federal agencies in response to White House mandates on employee performance. Agencies have to start using at least one performance management system that helps track a federal employee’s performance, including senior execs. 

Liam says one of the big challenges in government is the aging workforce and knowing who the best performers are as they get ready to retire. It helps agencies know who should be paired with the incoming recruits for guidance. Liam says once the process for measuring an employee’s performance is automated, finding those high performers is easier.

The company, run by CEO Mike Giuffrida (sitting) and CFO Josh Steele, also targets the federal space with an eRecruit tool, which helps with recruiting, onboarding and employee retention. The Department of Agriculture was the first federal agency to use Acendre’s eRecruit solution, says Liam. Other large government departments are starting to follow USDA’s model, and Liam says new customers will be announced soon. One of the draws of Acendre's products is that they can be configured to how agency’s already do their recruiting and performance reviews.

Acendre has 80 people, with 20 of them based in DC. Liam says now that the foundation has been laid in the US, he expects the presence here to grow.