Welcome to Small Improvements - we are excited to have you on board! This guide outlines the first steps you'll need to take to get your account ready for launch.
Download this guide as a PDF: Small Improvements Quick Start Guide.pdf
We hope you'll find implementation to be straightforward, but we are here to help. Don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected] if you have any questions.
This guide will walk you through the configuration for a brand new account. If you’re a new admin who was recently added to an existing Small Improvements account, check out this guide instead.
Sample Content
Your new account contains sample data to help you test and explore.
Use the Test Drive menu in the lower left corner of your screen to impersonate some of the sample users and see the platform from various points of view:
Salma: an individual contributor
Maria: a manager
Chris: a senior executive who manages managers
You'll also find Performance Review, Objectives, and 360 Feedback cycles populated with sample content.
Once you have the lay of the land, toggle to your Admin view, access the Settings page in the left navigation bar, and click the Sample Content tile to delete the sample content and start with a fresh slate.
If you've already hit the ground running and don't wish to lose your progress, use the End Test Drive option.
To start with a totally clean slate, use the Delete All Content option.
Company Settings
Go to Admin > Settings > Company Settings to input some basic company settings, such as your time zone.
These settings apply to the entire company and cannot be customized for specific individuals.
Feature Selection
Go to Admin > Settings > Feature Selection and toggle off any modules you'd like to keep hidden from employees at this time.
We recommend disabling any features you aren't focused on initially in order to streamline the UI for employees as they are getting acquainted with the platform. You can come back to this page any time and reenable features when you are ready.
Admins will still see disabled features (marked in grey) in the navigation menu, but they will be completely hidden from employees.
Customizations (Elevate plan only)
Customers on our Elevate plan can add a personal touch with their company branding.
Design
Upload your logo and select a color scheme under Admin > Settings > Design.
Wording
Tailor the terminology to match your internal conventions under Admin > Settings > Custom Wording. For example, you might rename "Praise" to "Kudos."
Security
Small Improvements is committed to privacy and security. Visit our Trust Center to learn more about how we safeguard your data.
Customers on our Elevate plan have a few advanced security options. Under Admin > Settings > Security, you can:
Enable/enforce 2-step verification
Enable/disable "Remember me" login
Restrict access to your account based on IP ranges
Customers on our Elevate plan can also enable single sign-on under Admin > Integrations > SAML SSO. Please see here for full details.
Adding Users
You can start getting your basic employee info into the system without inviting them to access the account just yet.
There are three main options for adding users:
Integrate with your HRIS: please see here for a list of supported integration partners.
If your HRIS isn't listed here, they may be able to support a custom SFTP integration (Elevate plan only).
HRIS integrations are one-way only: we sync basic user data (e.g. hiring date, manager, location) from the HRIS to Small Improvements but do not send anything back.
When an employee joins the company, you'll only need to create an account for them in your HRIS, and an account will be created for them in Small Improvements automatically. As employees change teams or leave the company, you'll only need to make your updates in your HRIS, and they'll sync to Small Improvements automatically.
Add users manually: recommended for teams of 10 or fewer
Go to Admin > Directory.
Click + Add Users at the top of the table.
Enter employees’ names and emails.
De-select Send Welcome Email if you do not want employees to access the account at this stage, or keep it selected to invite them to log in immediately.
For each new user, expand the menu in the rightmost column of the table and click Edit Profile to finish entering their information.
Bulk import users: recommended for teams of 10+ employees
Please see here to download our CSV template and for step-by-step instructions.
By default, employees cannot edit their own profile information. We recommend that your HR team handles all profile updates so that you can keep your data standardized, e.g. by making sure Department and Team names follow the same format so that later on, you can seamlessly sort and filter your data according to these parameters.
With that being said, you can allow employees to update their profiles by updating the settings under Admin > Settings > User Management Settings here:
If you are syncing your employee data via an HRIS integration, neither employees nor HR Admins can manually update employee profiles; all updates must be made via your HRIS.
Once you are ready to invite employees to log in, send your welcome emails from the Directory page.
We’ll almost always recommend deactivating an employee rather than deleting them altogether. Deactivation removes the user's access to your account while preserving their historical content; deactivated users do not count against your licenses and can be reactivated at any time.
Assigning Permissions
There are 3 advanced permissions you can grant to users:
HR Admins have full access to nearly all user data across the company (with some exceptions for users in their reporting line).
HR Assistants can help with most administrative tasks such as designing questionnaires, setting up review cycles, monitoring participation, and sending reminders, but they cannot access other users' reviews and other sensitive content.
Tech Admins can set up integrations and help with basic user management, such as resetting passwords.
There are no limits on the number of admins you can have in the account, but we recommend restricting HR Admin access to a few senior leaders.
We consider users with both HR Admin and Tech Admin permissions to be "Super Users" and will contact them first for any sensitive matters. If you are the creator of the account, you'll automatically have these permissions, and we strongly recommend designating at least one other Super User in case you leave the company or are temporarily unavailable.
Please see this page for a full description of each permission level, as well as a walk-through on assigning and updating permissions.
Managers and Reports
You don't need to explicitly grant managers any advanced permissions: if an employee has users reporting directly to them, they are automatically granted access to most of their direct reports' activity.
You’ll also see the term indirect manager used in Small Improvements to refer to an employee’s manager’s manager, that person's manager, and so on all the way up the reporting line.
You can optionally assign employees a secondary manager, which is independent of the reporting hierarchy and grants that person a similar level of access as the employee's direct manager.
You can decide what secondary managers can and cannot see under Admin > Settings > User Management Settings.
Learn more about direct, indirect, and secondary managers here.
Integrations
As mentioned above, Small Improvements supports several HRIS integrations for user management, as well as single sign-on integrations (Elevate plan only).
We also have a Slack integration that allows you to send additional notifications as well as share Praise, plan 1:1 Meetings, and respond to Pulse Surveys directly in Slack.
You must be a Tech Admin in Small Improvements and an admin in your company's Slack account in order to enable the integration.
If you plan to use our 1:1 Meetings module, consider enabling our calendar integration to boost adoption: schedule your meetings in Google or Outlook calendar as usual, and we'll create your meeting agendas for you ahead of time.