Harvey Cleary Swaps Spreadsheets for Honest Employee Feedback, Surveys, and Reviews

The Challenge

Reviews lived in spreadsheets and inboxes 

Harvey Cleary takes performance reviews seriously. Raises, promotions, and bonuses all trace back to them, and the review forms are detailed. Each role has its own template with weighted competencies, and a person can only be promoted once they are already performing at the next level. In practice, that meant somewhere between 12-14 Excel forms. 

The manual process around those forms was harder to manage than the forms themselves. Employees completed a self-evaluation and emailed it to their manager. Sometimes it never arrived or HR was never copied. There was no electronic report to run, so PJ tracked every review on her own spreadsheet to confirm review conversations were actually happening. 

Employees answered to more than one manager 

On a construction project team, people move between projects, and a single employee may work with three, four, or five managers in a year. Only a few dozen Harvey Cleary employees have one stable manager. Most performance reviews need input from three to seven people, and the HR system only allowed for one manager per employee.

The old approach to combining that input was to gather leaders in a room and discuss scores. It worked, but it was subjective. Reviewers could see the self-evaluation before giving their own rating, and in the room, scores could shift to protect a particular employee. The company wanted a version that was more factual and less emotional.

A small HR team, a growing company

Harvey Cleary's 360 feedback is confidential, so employees get a written summary of their comments instead of a pile of raw responses. For years, PJ read every response and wrote those summaries herself. For more than 400 employees, that meant roughly two weeks at 70-hours each. With plans to hire 30 people in 60 days and potentially 100 in 120, she knew it could not continue.

The Solution: Choosing Quantum Workplace 

Harvey Cleary found Quantum Workplace through the Best Places to Work survey. The team had been using a different survey provider that felt one-size-fits-all. The previous tool was hard to navigate, the analytics were hard to read, and the vendor was not receptive to change requests. That’s why Harvey Cleary moved its engagement survey to Quantum Workplace and kept adding tools from there as needs came up.

When it was time to tackle performance reviews, PJ and a colleague who wrote their original review forms were able to rebuild part of the forms in a sandbox environment so the team could see their real competencies on screen. Two parts of the design mattered most:

1. Run a feedback cycle first, then a review. Everyone who works with an employee rates them in Feedback, using the same competencies as the Excel forms. Reviews then become the place to document the final conversation and the agreed rating.
2. Keep opinions independent. Self-evaluations stay hidden until managers submit their side, and reviewers do not see each other's scores while rating. Managers then see side-by-side charts that highlight where raters disagree.

Quantum Workplace's customer success and implementation teams helped Harvey Cleary rebuild its templates, set up cycles that assign managers per review instead of per employee, and run a test cycle before launch. PJ already knew the platform well from running surveys and 360s, so she was comfortable taking the lead.

The Results

Harvey Cleary now has a connected view of its people, from the moment someone joins the business to the day they sit down for a year-end review. Each tool feeds the next, and a lot of the manual work is now gone thanks to Quantum Workplace.

Engagement that holds steady through big change 

The first engagement survey surfaced a hard truth: employees felt Harvey Cleary was not communicating well enough. The company responded by launching an annual Town Hall Roadshow, where senior leaders and HR visit every office after the survey to share results, business updates, and the changes made because of employee feedback. Leaders also began sharing survey data with directors and senior managers, so insights could cascade down to teams.

The numbers reflect that effort. Survey response rate jumped more than 10 points in a single year and has held at 68.2%, and this was the first year every office met the Best Places to Work participation threshold.

Overall engagement stands at 85%, well above the construction industry benchmark. Intent to stay increased meaningfully, and only one question on the whole survey declined meaningfully. All of this came during a year of new leaders, a new HCM system, an ERP project, and fast growth.

Hours saved from 360 feedback

Quantum Workplace's AI-assisted feedback summaries cut the time PJ spends summarizing feedback comments by more than 60%. Managers use the “Make it Better” AI tool to turn quick notes into clear, constructive comments. Feedback stays confidential, and PJ no longer has to be the bottleneck in the feedback process.

One place for performance reviews

Harvey Cleary ran its first year-end reviews in Quantum Workplace using the feedback-plus-review workflow. Multiple managers weigh in independently. Self-evaluations and manager ratings come together side by side. A final step confirms the review conversation actually took place, which is the visibility HR never had with Excel spreadsheets. Employees can look back at past reviews, and Harvey Cleary can track how people grow year over year.

The numbers from that first 2025 year-end cycle give HR something it never had before: a clear picture of where every review stands. 243 of 346 employees (about 70%) completed their reviews, and 140 of 333 facilitators (about 42%) completed theirs. For a brand-new process with up to seven reviewers per employee, that is a solid starting point, and the facilitator number shows exactly where training and accountability can make the biggest difference next cycle.

Insight that reaches leadership and managers

Retention Radar helps Harvey Cleary spot segments of the workforce that may be at risk of leaving, and PJ uses those findings to plan focus groups. When she shared a report built from the data, executives saw so much value in the first report that they asked her to produce one for every office.

Meanwhile, 52 mid-level managers who completed Harvey Cleary's internal leadership program are piloting Quantum Workplace’s 1-on-1s tool with their teams, giving the company a head start on building regular coaching conversations.

Building what comes next  

Harvey Cleary aims to grow around 5% a year, and PJ's focus is making sure that growth does not cost the company the culture people love. Recruiting and retaining top talent and protecting the down-home feel of the culture as headcount rises, sit at the top of her list.

Quantum Workplace is part of that plan. The team intends to use review data alongside survey and exit insights to see whether high performers are the ones leaving, and to keep refining its feedback and review workflow before the next cycle. A planned continuing education program will help newly promoted employees understand what success looks like in their new role. Next on the list is putting survey action plans in the hands of directors, so engagement becomes everyone's responsibility, not just HRs.