How Appreciative Performance Management Leads to Exceptional Service and Quality
EnCompass Staff | April 2024
Since 2021, EnCompass has been honored to support USAID’s Technical, Operational, and Program Support (TOPS) contract, helping the Agency quickly identify and mobilize the support it needs to accomplish its 2022 Climate Strategy goals. In partnership with our subcontractor, the TOPS team works to ensure that USAID had a best-in-class institutional support mechanism, providing the right experts with the right skills to support climate and natural environment programming and rapidly respond to Agency needs.
As an institutional support contractor, we are privileged to be finding great talent to support USAID. We also know that to do their best work, our Institutional Support Contractors (ISCs) need ongoing support. While we are not privy to all the details of our ISCs’ USAID assignments, there are many ways we can offer our services, including: administrative support, knowledge sharing, coaching around growth and development, and even simple camaraderie.
Recently, some of our TOPS ISC Specialists shared feedback regarding our approach to performance management:
I have appreciated the supervision and the strong focus on people and process that are such clear components of the EnCompass Team culture. I have been impressed by the extent that EnCompass embodies its ideals through the emphasis on staff and ways of working that are guided by company values.
Working with my supervisor feels like having a personal coach, and it’s been a pleasure to have her as a sounding board during my adjustment to working with government. Having the opportunity to check in or attend an EnCompass Team training/event frequently provides an occasion to take a step back from [the] everyday of my work with USAID and reflect on the big picture.
I love the travel support I receive from TOPS! I also appreciate that support is readily available, and that the team always responds quickly to emails. Overall, I appreciate the consideration for our work and time with USAID.
The TOPS team has been a great resource when it comes to administrative work, travel authorizations, and answering questions about protocol and expectations. Our project manager has made herself available whenever I have expressed a need for assistance, and she’s been great about following up and closing the loop on things.
I love the people! I feel so lucky to work with the TOPS team, I feel very supported and very lucky. I feel they believe in and support my success.
When we launched TOPS at EnCompass, we had a vision for what an exceptional ISC mechanism could look like. Many of our Specialists are more than a year into their service with USAID, and we are gratified to see that the Appreciative Performance Management systems and processes we worked so hard to embed in the mechanism have been a success and are appreciated by our amazing TOPS experts.