Greetings, StandOut community! 🍂🌰🍄
Performance management continues to evolve as organizations seek more effective ways to drive performance, support growth, and create meaningful employee experiences. As a result, modernizing performance management has been a key focus of our research, client conversations, and advisory work over the past several years. In this release, we're excited to share new insights, enhancements, and offerings designed to help you build a more human-centered, strengths-based approach to performance in your organization
Many of you have asked us for the following, and we’re pleased to deliver many performance resources with this release, including:
- 📶 A detailed explanation of all the ways organizations can use different elements of StandOut to accelerate and measure performance while maximizing each person’s unique contribution at work in our new StandOut Position.
- 💻 Real world stories and insights into how clients who have eliminated annual reviews in favor of more continuous, human-centered experiences are able to balance accountability with empathy and trust and ensure growth and development is happening. We are thrilled that Camden Living has agreed to share their story via webinar, and invite you to join.
- 💬 Research into what specific types of conversations are shown to have the greatest impact on performance in our current landscape, and how organizations can equip team leaders to have those conversations and how they can sense where they are happening and how effective they are.
- 📏 Enhanced reporting for clients leveraging the StandOut Performance Pulse.
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💫 💫 The opportunity to engage with our Talent Advisory Consultants through two complimentary workshops, with the option for additional consulting services to design and implement solutions. Additionally, we are pleased to offer the opportunity to join a complimentary session with Connex Partners and StandOut’s Amy Powell for HR and Talent Leaders who want to explore and discuss with peers where to begin.
Please read on to learn more, and be sure to check out our Near-Term Roadmap if you’d like to know what’s next for StandOut.
Release Date: October 17, 2026
Please note that these release notes delineate the items launched on the date shown above. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Client Success Partner or customerservice@tmbc.com. Additionally, your organization may choose to keep items off until a later time; please work with your HR contact to understand when items will become available to you.
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Performance Conversations Research
Performance Pulse Enhancements
Position Paper
New resource! Performance
It’s here (almost). 🎉 One of our most anticipated thought leadership resources will soon be available for the StandOut community!
Our new Performance Position captures StandOut’s approach to performance measurement and acceleration, which is designed to address the challenges faced by HR and business leaders expected to deliver on an increasingly complex array of outcomes. It gives leaders a clear sense of how StandOut’s approach--adaptable to any tools an organization may employ--can provide continuous, real-time intelligence into performance on an individual and organizational level. In addition, it provides organizational leaders with an overview of six core principles they can leverage to modernize their treatment of performance by ensuring that it is strengths-based and co-owned by the employee, the team leader, and the organization. The full Position will be posted here on October 17th.
Research
New resource! Performance Conversations
Organizations invest heavily in performance conversations, but it turns out that employees may be looking for something different. 👀
New research suggests that the most effective performance-related conversations are actually growth conversations focused on development, progress, and future opportunities. A new Performance Conversations brief and supporting assets will explore what employees want from these conversations, what makes them effective, and why helping people grow may be more important than convincing them to stay. Check back here for this new research on October 17th.
Talent Strategic Advisory Offerings
New offering! Performance Consulting
Performance management shouldn't feel like a report card. It should feel like a roadmap. 🚘
Today's organizations need performance management to do more than evaluate past results. The most effective approaches help employees understand what success looks like, leverage their strengths, grow their capabilities, and contribute meaningfully to business outcomes.
Our complimentary Performance Consulting engagement helps organizations take a fresh look at how performance comes to life across the employee experience. Through expert-led discovery, diagnostics, and analysis, participants gain a clearer understanding of what's working well today, where opportunities exist, and what considerations may help shape the future of their performance strategy.
Participants will:
- Assess the current performance management experience
- Compare current and desired states to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities
- Explore leading practices and emerging trends in modern performance management
- Evaluate how performance expectations align with organizational goals, culture, and business priorities
- Identify priorities and considerations for evolving performance processes, programs, and systems
What you’ll gain:
This engagement serves as a performance management health check, providing organizations with:
- An objective assessment of their current approach
- Insights into areas of opportunity and potential risk
- Exposure to leading practices and market trends
- Strategic recommendations for future consideration
The Result:
A clearer path to performance that drives accountability, accelerates employee development, supports business goals, and helps people do their best work.
Ready to move from insight to action?
For organizations interested in going further, our consulting team can provide additional support through a separate engagement focused on future-state design, program development, implementation planning, change management, and customized solutions tailored to your organization's unique needs.
This complimentary engagement focuses on assessment, diagnostics, analysis, and recommendations. Future-state design, program creation, implementation planning, and solution development are available through a separate consulting engagement.
Please reach out to your Talent Solutions Partner or Talent Activation Consultant to learn more. 🚀
Talent Strategic Advisory Offerings
New offering! Succession Consulting
Great organizations don't leave the future to chance. They prepare for it. 🔮
Our new Succession Consulting offering helps organizations assess their readiness for future leadership transitions and identify opportunities to strengthen their talent pipeline. Through a complimentary advisory engagement, organizations gain insight into their current succession planning practices, leadership continuity risks, and areas for future investment.
During the complimentary session, organizations will:
- Assess the current state of their succession planning approach and leadership pipeline.
- Explore business strategy, future growth plans, and anticipated talent needs.
- Identify critical roles that may present continuity or talent risks.
- Evaluate leadership bench strength and succession readiness.
- Uncover gaps in talent development, leadership preparation, and succession planning practices.
- Receive strategic recommendations and guidance on opportunities to strengthen leadership continuity.
At the conclusion of the assessment, participants receive a high-level summary of findings, key succession planning considerations, and recommendations for next steps.
The Result:
Organizations gain greater confidence in their ability to navigate leadership transitions, reduce talent risk, and develop the next generation of leaders. With expert guidance grounded in strengths-based talent strategy, leaders can build a sustainable succession approach that supports business continuity, leadership readiness, and long-term organizational success.
Ready to move from insight to action?
Organizations looking to build or enhance a formal succession strategy can partner with our Talent Strategic Advisory team through a paid consulting engagement designed to create a customized succession planning framework aligned to their business goals, culture, and talent strategy.
Complimentary advisory sessions help organizations understand where they are today. Paid consulting engagements help them build the succession strategy, processes, and development frameworks needed to achieve their future goals.
Please reach out to your Talent Solutions Partner or Talent Activation Consultant to learn more. 🌱
Platform
Performance Pulse Enhancements
We've made several enhancements to Performance Pulse reporting to provide practitioners with easier access to key performance insights and greater flexibility when analyzing results:
- Average of Q1 and Q2 Ratings is a new field that you’ll now see in the first column of the Performance Pulse reporting table. This score is based on average rating values, not standardized scores, and is a valuable metric which many clients were manually calculating to assess performance standings. This field is also available for export and included in Performance Pulse usage reporting.
- Average Standardized Score is another new field we’re adding to the reporting table, exports, and usage reporting, which combines the standardized scores of Q1 and Q2.
- Performance Potential Index (PPI) Score is being repositioned to the last numeric column within the reporting table and export files to improve usability.
These enhancements make Performance Pulse data even easier to interpret, export, and analyze, helping leaders and practitioners spend less time navigating reports and more time using insights to support meaningful performance conversations and talent decisions.⭐
Platform
Engagement Pulse Enhancements
We've introduced several enhancements to Engagement Pulse designed to create a smoother, more transparent experience for team members:
- Users who follow an Engagement Pulse link after already completing their survey will now see a date and timestamp confirming when their response was submitted, providing additional clarity and confidence.
- Team members will now have a one-time opportunity to email themselves a copy of their submitted Engagement Pulse responses for future reference during team debrief conversations.
- And lastly, we've streamlined the survey experience by removing "Optional" labels from questions, with only required questions identified by an asterisk (*), creating a cleaner and more intuitive user interface.
StandOut Premium Content
Migration to StandOut Community
Premium strengths content is moving to a new home.🏠 Previously, clients who subscribed to offerings such as StandOut Strengths Development, Content Subscriptions, and other premium content packages accessed these resources through a separate system known as StandOut Now. With this release, premium content will be delivered directly through private groups within the StandOut Community, creating a more streamlined experience and bringing content, resources, and community engagement together in one place.
Impacted clients will receive communication from their Talent Solutions Partner or StandOut Support team with instructions for accessing their newly created private group.
If you’re curious to learn more about any of these enhancements, offerings, and resources, or the StandOut Strengths Development offering, please reach out to your Talent Solutions Partner or Talent Activation Consultant for more information. 💡