'Our people development superpower’: How Simpli.fi used Progression to support career growth at scale

Simpli.fi is a leading advertising and agency management software company that helps media buying agencies, brands, media groups and networks advertise more effectively and efficiently.

The challenge

Before Progression came along, Simpli.fi’s VP of Development and its People Managers managed career growth ad hoc, discussing one-on-one how each employee was performing and where the opportunities lay to develop.

And that worked fine for a while. But as the team grew, this approach quickly became unsustainable. Not only were there more people to speak to, but the roles themselves became more varied making them difficult to track.

Simpli.fi needed something to help them define and capture the requirements of the varied roles they had.

And that’s where Progression came in.

The solution

Simpli.fi was first attracted to Progression’s frameworks, which have enabled them to outline all the roles in the team along with associated skills and expectations.

‘It forced us to develop our framework beyond what lived in a few managers’ heads.’ — Isaac

This level of clarity was entirely new. Now managers feel confident discussing careers with their teams, and they can do so in a meaningful way. Everything’s clear and transparent.

It was a totally new way of doing things for Simpli.fi, but the team warmed quickly to it. Now they’re absolutely sure of what’s expected of them in their role, and where they can go next within the company. In the last 12 months, Simpli.fi’s frameworks have been viewed a whopping 3,619 times.

‘A large number of people have expressed excitement about being able to use Progression for career planning and their individual development.’ — Isaac

The outcome

While frameworks addressed Simpli.fi’s immediate need, they’ve found far more value in Progression than they first expected.

‘We initially chose Progression to help us define and capture our current role expectations, but we now use it for a lot of different career-supporting functions.’ — Isaac

Previously, Simpli.fi captured kudos in a dedicated Slack channel. But these would get lost throughout the year. Now, Progression helps the team keep track of those thank you messages with Wins. Wins can be added directly in Progression, via the win.new shortcut or in Slack. In the last 12 months, Simpli.fi’s team have added 388 Wins for each other, with 208 of those submitted via Slack.

‘Our favourite thing about Progression is the Wins feature and how it integrates into our Slack workflows. We love the positivity it encourages, along with the memory capture it supports for our Check-ins. We love celebrating Wins!’ — Isaac

All Wins, alongside Feedback, notes and completed Actions, are captured in Progression and easy to refer back to at key career moments, like Check-ins.

The Simpli.fi team refers to all the updates added in Progression as well as the expectations outlined in their framework, to make their quarterly Check-ins targeted and evidence-backed.

‘Our Check-ins are now more informed about the expectations and also the individual's successes during the period. This information leads to much better career development conversations.’ — Isaac

In total, the Simpli.fi team has started 136 Check-ins — now that Wins and Feedback are captured so easily in Progression, preparing for Check-ins is simple, and the outcome is far more powerful.

One of the things Isaac loves most about Progression is the new features and improvements we drop regularly. We’re working hard behind the scenes to make Progression work even harder for customers like Simpli.fi, and have released eight new features in the last six months alone.

‘I really appreciate how Progression keeps iterating and listening to feedback. They’re doing a great job choosing and developing the most game-changing features I can think of (and often that I didn't even know I wanted)!’ — Isaac