Stepful’s business is turning potential into job-ready talent. Cara Fullerton, Director of People Operations, holds her own team to the same standard, and calibration is where that gets tested.
The challenge
Calibration meant hours of hand-built matrices and jumping between tabs
Before Windmill, calibration at Stepful was an entirely manual process:
“I would create a Google Doc that had all the information, and then I'd have to create some sort of matrices to think about people on.”
Building the matrices took hours before the committee could even start the discussion. Then, once the conversation began, it was nearly impossible to see where anybody stood relative to one another. Every single decision meant jumping between tons of tabs: the reviews, the matrices, the leveling guides, then back again.
The solution
A live calibration grid replaced the static doc, with every review one click away
In Stepful’s first cycle on Windmill, calibration moved into the platform. Once manager reviews were submitted, Cara and Jacob Mark, VP of People, opened a calibration session and worked directly on the Grid view, where every reviewee is plotted across two configurable axes, like performance against retention risk.
Instead of rebuilding a matrix, they just…clicked, dragged, and moved people. A rating change on the grid updated in place, with every review packet just one click away.
“I loved how you could pull people around on the 9-boxes. It was so easy to update things this way, versus needing to adjust each rating individually after the conversation.”
The biggest unlock for the Stepful team was comparing signals side by side. Windmill calibrations can plot any two rating questions, stats, or supplemental data points, so the committee could look at retention concerns and performance together, live.
“We could look at people across different ratings and aspects of their review. Like, are you worried about their retention, and how are they performing? And look at those back-to-back, live together. That was super useful to me.”
Leaders on the committee felt it too. One senior leader described exactly the question the grid was built to answer:
“Windmill's framework was useful on placing within a cohort and how hard we'd fight to keep someone.”
Behind the grid, Windmill also gives facilitators a Windy-generated pre-read that flags reviews where further discussion is needed. Once the conversation is over, facilitators maintain a full history of proposed changes, and have the choice to apply final ratings or send them back to managers as recommendations. At Stepful, post-calibration review edits are easier than ever:
“Windmill really helped cut down time, and we should find ways to integrate it more into our workflows as a company.”
The results spoke for themselves: employee satisfaction with Stepful’s performance review cycle jumped 18% compared to the previous cycle, before Stepful moved to Windmill.
Looking ahead
Past ratings and development plans will carry into every future cycle
As Stepful looks to their next review cycle, their experience with Windmill will only get richer. Past ratings will flow into the next calibration, too, so the calibration committee can see how someone’s manager rating compares to the last one. With Windmill, calibration becomes a trend line, rather than a single dot.
Stepful is also connecting what comes out of calibration to what happens after it. Cara’s team is building development plans from each person’s last Windmill review and Stepful’s team-specific career frameworks, so a review becomes a roadmap for the next quarter. The opportunities are endless.
