It gives you the opportunity to understand what matters most to your employees, what drives them and what has a real impact on their emotional wellbeing. As well as how they like to be managed and what they need to perform at their best. Combine this with features that are built to make one-to-one conversations more effective, with helpful coaching prompts, wellbeing trackers and performance objectives and you come away from one-to-ones feeling and knowing that you've been able to contribute to improvements in their overall performance and how they feel towards work. OpenBlend makes performance convos, a really collaborative process, where employees have a stake in their own career plans and can bring their own agenda to one-to-ones. They know what they are working towards, and have clarity in how their personal objectives feed into company objectives.

The account management experience we receive is brilliant. Proactive and insightful, they really understand the needs of our business and how OpenBlend can best support us. We love that our colleagues are able to use the tool in the way that works best for them - we make recommendations on frequency of use and the benefits of the different features, but ultimately the messaging is that the main purpose is to support effective coaching conversations between individuals and their manager, so it is in their hands.

I have used various CRM systems, bespoke coaching platforms (even Microsoft Excel and Apple ‘Notes’!!) to document coaching conversations in an attempt to measure impact and keep people accountable. The deficiency in all of these approaches has been the ease-of-use and wide-ranging areas of focus that come as standard within OpenBlend. As a platform, it provides a highly customisable experience which allows me to focus on what each individual direct report wants to focus on as well as needs to. Before we’ve begun, people are already invested in my conversations, because they truly feel like it’s to their benefit. When you blend (no pun intended) this with the coaching prompts and suggestions, ability to track long-term objectives and attribute shorter term actions to measure impact and progress over time. It’s the most comprehensive and supportive tool I have ever come across. It allows me the freedom to focus on asking the best question, touching the right nerve and properly listen to what I’m being told, rather than constantly having an internal conversation about how I’ll track something or scratch around to remember what was discussed last time.