How QS ran two company-wide review cycles in 5 months with Workleap

Success story at a glance

Company

• 850 employees globally
• Multiple generations, regions, and time zones

Recognition & culture

• 3,100+ Good Vibes sent in under a year
• 75% of team members recognized
• 1,292 recognitions tied directly to QS values

Performance & feedback

• 2 company-wide review cycles launched in 5 months
• 8.0/10 “Relationship with manager” score

Adoption

• 100% employee activation rate on Workleap
• 100% performance review completion within one month

“Compared to previous cycles on our old platform, which required much longer coordination, Workleap's streamlined process has been a game-changer for us.” - Afiqah Mustafa, Manager of People Analytics and Rewards at QS.

When QS, a global leader in higher education services, decided it was time to upgrade their employee experience, they weren’t just looking for a new performance tool.

They wanted to:

• simplify their HR tech stack,
• support their yearly theme of “Transformative Impact at Scale,” and
• connect engagement, feedback, and performance into one coherent experience.

For Afiqah Mustafa, Manager of People Analytics and Rewards (and HRIS owner), the turning point came after several years with their previous performance and recognition platform.

At first, the partnership felt high-touch and collaborative. Over time, it shifted.

Dedicated account management disappeared in favor of a generic ticket queue. Simple questions required raising tickets with no clear owner. Product development slowed, even as QS leaned further into transformation and AI. Meanwhile, prices kept rising without a sense of mutual benefit.

As the HRIS owner managing multiple systems and renewal cycles, Afiqah knew they needed a simpler, more strategic setup.

Consolidating performance onto Workleap

QS was already using Officevibe to gather ongoing employee feedback. When Workleap Performance launched, it opened the door to consolidating their performance cycles into the same ecosystem.

“As an HRIS manager, I get overwhelmed with all the yearly renewals. We wanted a one-stop solution, and that’s what we found in Workleap,” said Afiqah.

By moving reviews and goals into Workleap Performance, QS could:

• bring engagement and performance data closer together,
• rely on one partner for support and evolution, and
• give managers a more consistent experience across feedback channels.

For Alisha Bartl, Chief People Officer, People & Workplace, she wanted to make sure the tooling they used for performance was growing with them, especially given their annual theme. The partnership with Workleap was exactly what was missing with the current performance system.

“We’ve really loved working with the Workleap team. They have a collaborative style, and it feels like a real, long-term partnership approach. We value the Workleap team as a real strategic partner in our People strategy,” shared Alisha.

Recognition that reflects QS’s culture

Recognition also fit into that picture as a key supporting element. Through Officevibe’s Good Vibes feature, QS customized recognition to reflect their values and encouraged employees at all levels, including the C-suite, to use it.

Ben Sowter, Senior Vice President, Institutional Performance said it best about the impact of having a simple recognition tool people actually wanted to use working directly alongside a new solution for Performance.

“Officevibe was revolutionary in providing a reliable, actionable, year-round reading of our people pulse. The Good Vibes peer recognition features came later for us, but are just joyful, and their injection into the Performance module brings a peer perspective into our annual review process. It's clear from our interactions with them, and the pace and direction of development, that the Workleap team don't only care about their customers but, deeply, about people and their potential... just like QS.” - Ben Sowter, Senior Vice President, Institutional Performance at QS

In under a year, employees had shared more than 3,100 recognition messages, with 1,292 explicitly tied to QS values. That steady stream of appreciation helped reinforce the behaviors and outcomes surfaced later in performance reviews. “Good Vibes works better than any platform we’ve used. It’s flexible, fun, and reflects our company culture,” said Afiqah.

Mid-year migration, full-year impact

QS usually launches their goal cycle in January. This time, they had a 90-day notice window from their previous provider and needed to move mid-year. While no HR team dreams of changing performance systems in the middle of a cycle, QS says was the right (and necessary) move.

With support from their Workleap customer success team, Afiqah:

• migrated QS’s performance data and goals within that 90-day window, and
• launched their first goal cycle in Workleap Performance in June.

“Nobody loves changing their goals in the middle of the year, but Freya and Kyle made it smooth. I felt fully equipped for the migration,” she shared.

Enablement was a big part of making the change stick. Using Workleap-provided resources, Afiqah built a SharePoint hub that centralized guides and training. With 850 employees, those resources still earned more than 1,000 views, people came back to them repeatedly.

By November:

• everyone had migrated their goals,
• QS had completed a mid-year review, and
• they had already launched their end-of-year review.

In just five months, QS had run two full review cycles on Workleap, achieving 100% employee activation on the platform.

Raising the bar on manager feedback with AI

One of QS’s critical engagement metrics is the relationship with managers. Historically, that’s where the performance process sometimes fell short. Afiqah shared that “previously, manager feedback wasn’t great. Comments could be short and rushed.”

With Workleap Performance, she redesigned the review flow to improve the quality of feedback:

• First, managers complete a provisional rating with a short deadline, used for calibration.
• Then, they complete a longer-form review with more time to write thoughtful comments.

What’s more, with Workleap AI now gives managers, especially newer ones, extra support to surface performance insights and turn ideas and examples into clearer, more constructive feedback.

This shift supports a stronger review experience and contributes to their 8.0/10 “relationship with manager” score in Officevibe. According to Afiqah, it also fits squarely into QS’s theme for the year:

“Our team theme is “Transformative Impact at Scale”. At the same time, the rise of AI presents exciting opportunities to scale our impact, improve how we work, and support the growth of our people – our greatest strength. Whenever there’s AI in your system, you know you’re moving in the right direction and you’re going to see a lot of manual work disappear.”

Faster insights with built-in analytics

Beyond running both performance cycles and engagement, Afiqah is responsible for turning data into insights, especially for senior leadership.

On the engagement side, she reports Pulse Survey analytics to the executive team each month. Previously, this meant exporting comments, copying them into external AI tools, and manually building slides.

“I used to paste feedback into QS GPT to summarize. With Workleap AI, it’s built in. I just type a few prompts and I’m done.”

On the performance side, analytics have also removed a lot of manual work.

“Previously, I needed to go to a spreadsheet and build all the charts to show ratings. With the analytics in Performance, we just click and filter down, even to a small team of one person, and we still see the chart.”

No more spreadsheets. No more manual chart building. Just filter, analyze, and share.

A feedback loop that shows up in the product

After the mid-year review, Afiqah ran a post-mortem and shared a detailed wishlist of improvements with the Workleap team.

At the same time, Workleap was already investing in expanding its performance capabilities based on feedback patterns from many customers. Many of Afiqah’s requests aligned with features already on the roadmap or in active development.

As those updates went live, the Workleap team kept her in the loop. For QS, that meant:

• stronger performance analytics,
• AI-powered summaries of employee strengths (built on recognitions shared through Good Vibes), and
• a more robust year-end review experience, without adding extra tools or manual workarounds.

For QS, it’s clear their voice is heard and reflected in a platform that’s evolving with real customer needs.

Why QS recommends Workleap

For organizations using Officevibe alongside spreadsheets or legacy tools for performance, Afiqah’s message is straightforward:

“If you’re using Officevibe and still running reviews in spreadsheets, you’re missing out. Workleap Performance makes performance management smoother, smarter, and more human.”

For QS, the impact is clear: better recognition, stronger performance processes, AI-driven insights, and a platform that evolves with them.

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