San Francisco Fire Credit Union has been serving its community for 75 years. Originally founded for firefighters, the credit union has since opened its doors to the entire San Francisco Bay Area community, offering not-for-profit banking with a commitment to high-touch service and giving back. With 165 employees and a recent pledge to donate 1% of revenue to the community, SF Fire is an organization that puts people first—both its members and its team.
Dawn Chute, Chief People Officer, has been with SFFCU for over 10 years, overseeing HR, Learning & Development, DEI, recruiting, and facilities. When she set out to modernize the credit union's performance management process, she found a platform that didn't just replace the old system—it transformed how the entire organization talks about performance, goals, and recognition.
Key Teamflect Features They Use:
Before Teamflect, SF Fire relied on their payroll provider for performance management. The experience left a lot to be desired. "Their platform was very antiquated, not very intuitive at all, seriously lacking in functionality. Everybody kind of hated it." The system followed what Dawn describes as "a very narrow, old school path" with zero flexibility. And feedback to the vendor went nowhere.
Performance conversations happened once a year,a big, dreaded annual review, and engagement survey results consistently showed that employees felt they weren't being talked to about their performance regularly enough.
Dawn discovered Teamflect through a credit union network of HR leaders. After researching at least four vendors, Teamflect stood out immediately.
"Not only advanced and super intuitive, but the fact that it lives in Teams—we were definitely wowed. People don't have to go into yet another website. That really sold us."
Dawn Chute - Chief People Officer
After running Teamflect by multiple stakeholders across the organization, the decision was clear.
With Teamflect in place, SF Fire completely reimagined their performance management cadence. They replaced the single annual review with four quarterly conversations—short, simple, and far less daunting.
"We set up a review template that's super simple, super easy—some rated questions and one or two open-ended questions so that we could make the conversations less overwhelming like the annual year-end one used to be."
They still used a slightly more comprehensive year-end review in February, but kept even that streamlined. The goal was simple: make it happen, make it easy, and track it. "My HR manager and I are able to run reports and reach out to leaders to say, 'Hey, remember you need to have your conversations; please do that.' And they can jump in pretty an take care of it during a regularly scheduled one-on-one.' We did it in May for the first time, and every single leader got through all of their conversations."
The most dramatic transformation has been in recognition. SF Fire used to run a quarterly recognition program that would receive roughly 10 submissions per quarter—sometimes even fewer. After launching Teamflect's recognition module in March, the numbers exploded.
"Last quarter, we got 104 recognitions recognizing 53 people. Just dramatically different from before!"
SF Fire ties bonuses to individual and credit union-wide goals. Before Teamflect, employees would only think about those goals once a year. Now, with goals visible right inside Teams, the conversation is constant.
"They really only talked about goals once a year, and now they're talking about them all the time. It's visual, it's right there in Teams."
Dawn is tracking a specific engagement survey question—whether someone has been talked to about their performance in the last six months. Historically, scores would be high after the February year-end review but plummet by October. With quarterly conversations now in place through Teamflect, she expects that gap to close.
"Fingers crossed, our engagement score for that question stays as high in October as it was in April—because hopefully people are actually talking about performance now."
Getting Teamflect up and running was straightforward. The only internal lift was ensuring reporting structures were accurate in Teams.
"One of the easiest implementations I've been through as far as bringing on a new system."
Dawn also noted how quickly people came around after initial training—including leadership. "My CEO initially said of all of the functionality, 'Oh my God, that was overwhelming.' And now she loves it. It was amazing how shortly after training, people would remark, 'This is night and day from what we used to have.'"
One thing that sets the Teamflect experience apart for Dawn is responsiveness—both in customer support and product development.
"Super responsive, very accessible. I think you guys must have a really good culture internally because it seems like you're all pretty happy and engaged at your job. With Teamflect, it feels like they want feedback. They're listening to their customers and making changes pretty quickly. You feel like you're really listened to."
When asked if she'd recommend Teamflect to other organizations, Dawn didn't hesitate.
"Absolutely. A flexible system right in Teams that offers so much variety in functionality. Not overly expensive, great service, easy to implement—it kind of ticks all the boxes."
San Francisco Fire Credit Union is still in the early chapters of its Teamflect journey, with plans to explore 360 reviews and additional modules down the road. But the impact so far speaks for itself: quarterly conversations are happening, recognition has surged tenfold, and goals are finally visible and talked about year-round.
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