Wildfire Defense Systems Cuts Manager Review Time 17% With PerformYard

Wildfire Defense Systems ran its reviews inside the payroll tool, the company's HRIS at the time. It handled payroll well enough, but performance management was never their payroll tool’s focus, and managers felt that every time a review cycle came around.

"It was clunky," Maya said. "The goals were in one section and the competencies were in another section. There was a lot of toggling back and forth and then not being able to see reviews side-by-side."

The problems went beyond navigation:

• Constant friction for managers: Screen toggling, session timeouts, and lost work made each review slower than it needed to be, and comparing a self-review against the manager's review was difficult.
• Heavy setup for HR: The team had to build unique profiles that didn't fit everyone, which meant a lot of manual administrative work before a cycle could even start.
• A complicated scoring structure: Multiple rating steps added work without adding clarity.
• No reporting at all: With no dashboards, HR converted scores into averages by hand and built distribution curves in Excel.

"They did not have any dashboards or reporting," Maya explained. "What I had to do was basically take the raw scores and convert those into averages. It was very antiquated."

The friction also made it harder to win over managers, many of whom had never been fans of doing reviews. When WDS surveyed its managers after the Q4 2025 cycle, only 16 of 40 agreed the process was reasonable, and 15 disagreed. "Especially if managers had a lot of direct reports, they were like, 'This is impossible to do. It takes forever,'" Maya said.

Why PerformYard

Maya looked specifically at platforms built for performance management rather than all-in-one HR suites, and PerformYard stood out in the demos for how easy it was to use. After the payroll tool experience, user-friendliness was the first thing on her list.

"Coming to PerformYard was really important for us because of the user-friendly interface, the side by side review views, and the time savings," she said.

Key factors in the decision included:

• Ease of use: Managers needed a review process that felt quick and intuitive, so they wouldn't dread it.
• Goals and competencies together: Seeing both these things side by side in a single review removed the back-and-forth that had slowed managers down.
• Less admin work: Competencies were defined and rolled out by job band instead of built profile by profile.
• Flexible review cycles: Corporate staff and seasonal field staff could each run on their own review cadence.
• Reporting: HR wanted the dashboards and visual reporting that the payroll tool never offered.
• AI assistance: Built-in writing help gives managers a faster way to rephrase and polish their feedback.

"Our payroll platform didn't have any of that," Maya said. "We liked how PerformYard's specialty is performance management, performance appraisals, goal management, all those things."

A Guided Rollout

WDS worked with Caitlyn, its PerformYard implementation manager, to configure the platform and train managers ahead of the first cycle. Caitlyn also helped the team set up its first reports, and a refresher training is scheduled ahead of the year-end reviews.

"Caitlyn was a great implementation manager," Maya said. "She did a bunch of trainings with us."

Reviews Built Around the Way WDS Works

The new setup put goals, competencies, and feedback in one place. Competencies are defined by job band, goals show a percent complete so managers and employees can track progress through the year, and the feedback function has become a regular part of how the team works. Corporate staff run mid-year and year-end reviews, while field staff complete a single annual review that fits their season.

The team was also deliberate about helping managers see that a good review doesn't have to take forever. They encouraged managers to use PerformYard's AI writing assistant where it saved them time, while keeping each review true to the employee.

Measuring the Impact

Maya wanted hard evidence to see whether the switch was paying off, so she ran a paired time study with the 40 people managers who had completed reviews in both systems. 

Managers reported the time they spent on each part of the old cycle and the new cycle in PerformYard:

• Preparation
• Writing and documentation
• Revisions requested by a leader
• Administrative work
• Total time spent

Managers answered in time ranges, which research shows people estimate more reliably than exact figures. Maya used the midpoint of each range in her calculations. She normalized the results by number of direct reports, so the comparison would hold across teams of different sizes, and applied manager compensation data to estimate labor cost. 

The survey itself took managers about seven minutes.

In its very first review cycle on PerformYard, WDS saved 56 manager hours and thousands in labor cost, and far more managers came away saying the process made sense.

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Less Time, Lower Cost

Managers spent an average of 1.4 fewer hours each on appraisals. The gain grew to 22.3% after adjusting for number of direct reports, so the savings came from a better process and platform rather than from managers simply having smaller teams.

Managers Noticed

The sentiment shift may matter as much as the hours. The number of managers who called the process reasonable nearly doubled, and the number who disagreed fell from 15 to 6. Managers who had once called reviews impossible now described easier navigation and less friction overall.

Reporting HR Never Had Before

With help from Caitlyn at PerformYard, Maya built a company-wide performance distribution curve and broke it down by department to spot teams rating far above or below the rest. Work like that used to involve hand-built spreadsheets.

More Savings Ahead

The Q2 numbers include a learning curve. Some managers noted at mid-year that the platform was new and took a little extra time to navigate, but they still found it much more user-friendly than their payroll platform. WDS plans to run the survey again after year-end reviews to measure the second cycle, and its recommendations include centralizing manager notes in PerformYard year-round to shorten the step that still takes managers the longest, writing and documentation.

"When you do these studies, you never know. Is it going to save time? Is it not going to save time?" Maya said. "I was really excited to see the results."