HighGround : Enterprise SaaS HR Platform
Web + Mobile + Kiosk
HighGround was a cloud-based platform that elevated performance and culture by connecting teams through goals, check-ins, recognition, and feedback—giving leaders tools to align and engage their workforce.
Building the Team
As VP of Product & Design it was my job to elevate and operationalize the Product Management and UX functions. While in this role I developed our customer engagement model, managed and grew our teams, provided strategic product leadership and set standards and practices for:
Designing for Delight
The idea of corporate culture and performance management often sparks dread in people's minds—so we reimagined them completely. Partnering with experts, psychologists, and key customers, we built tools that served HR teams’ needs while giving employees performance and team-building experiences they actually wanted to use.
The HighGround login screen greets users with a subtle background animation and a friendly "Hello!"
Giving and receiving feedback is easier than ever with HighGround Feedback, with the ability to tailor questions for every department and role.
This innovative product facilitates more conversations between managers and their teams and is fully customizable.
Managers are employees too, so the user experience was designed is such a way to combine tools for both experiences, without added clutter or confusion.
Talent Insights allow managers to quickly assess their team by performance, potential, flight risk, compensation, and more.
Keeping in line with our philosophy of powerful, hassle-free analytics, companies can track the overall mood of their employees over time and they can slice and dice the data by any metrics they choose.
Becoming Enterprise Ready
When HighGround shifted focus from SMBs to enterprise, “nice-to-haves” became must-haves overnight. We redefined our roadmap through deep research and field validation, scaled our team, and became enterprise-ready within a year—winning world-class clients with offerings like: SOC2 Certification, Internationalization and Localization, Regional Compliance in Canada and Europe, W3C Accessibility, Advanced Reporting, and Multi-tiered Customer Support.
Reaching Higher Ground
To compete in a fast-moving market, we accelerated our learning by running customer engagement and product incubation in parallel. This dual-track approach let us rapidly test new ideas while supporting our agile backlog—helping HighGround emerge as a category leader and ultimately leading to its acquisition by Kazoo.
Voice of the Customer
It's is so simple, so intuitive and we keep having conversations with HighGround about how we can make it even more simple and they're so in-tune to that philosophy.
Dean Carter – VP Human Resources and Shared Services, Patagonia
HighGround ropes in key stakeholders at every level, to ensure high user engagement and success at each of our many locations. It has been very, very effective in establishing a feedback culture within the organization.
Cheryl Johnson – Chief HR Officer, Echo Global Logistics
For the manager who isn’t used to engaging in regular coaching and recognition, HighGround is a great tool for helping them develop that muscle.
Kent Frazier – VP of Talent, Leiberman Research Worldwide
