Ignite Reading’s one-to-one tutoring sessions teach foundational skills that help students become confident, lifetime readers. Research by the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University found that Ignite Reading's evidence-based approach increased the number of first graders reading on benchmark by 213%. This, of course, is only possible with the support of dedicated tutors, who meet students at whatever reading level they’re at and give thoughtful, compassionate feedback. And the tutors need feedback, too. 

“We think really intentionally about how to encourage our people to bring their best selves to work,” said Darlisha Barnes, Ignite Reading’s Director of Culture & Experience. “Sometimes that means having difficult conversations and working through the unknown. A lot of times it just means supporting really awesome, committed people.”

Managing quality support for 1,500 part-time tutors— each serving 15 students daily—had become increasingly complex and challenging.“We track a myriad of data points that illuminate tutor impact on an individual and corps level,” Darlisha said. “Are they coming on time?Are their students actively engaged in learning during their sessions with them?” 

Ignite Reading managed all this outside its HRIS. This made the tutor data tricky to organize and, in turn, tricky to make actionable. Plus, since full-time staff members supervise a portfolio of tutors at once, it was challenging to identify tutors in need of more support.

“There wasn’t yet a structure that was easily repeatable across different managers’ portfolios,” Darlisha said. “We needed tooling that could streamline the work of our Tutor Performance Managers.”

When existing solutions fell short of Ignite Reading’s exacting standards for clarity and scalability, the team  turned to its beloved HCM provider, Rippling, for help building a bespoke "Tutor Performance" app  from scratch. The app allowed Ignite Reading to effortlessly track, support, and manage hundreds of tutors from a single source of truth. 

The Rippling custom app makes everything clearer and simpler. It gives our supervisors confidence because now they always have the full picture.

Darlisha Barnes

Director of Culture & Experience at Ignite Reading

Ignite Reading’s custom Rippling app ensures that key performance data is organized within Ignite’s HCM, which helps the company effectively manage its tutors with a database of all the key information. 

“The Rippling custom app gives us clarity, confidence, and consistency,” Darlisha said. 

The upshot of Ignite Reading’s custom app organizing all this data? The company saves time logging and tracking tutor performance, allowing supervisors to proactively ensure students get the best instruction possible. For instance, when supervisors type in a tutor’s name, they can see the full history of every past layer of additional support the tutor has received and whether the underlying issue’s been resolved. “Our managers can make confident decisions, without having to piece together whether they know the whole story, Darlisha said, “the whole story’s all in one place.”

Ignite Reading’s performance managers can also filter the custom app’s data so they only see the tutors they’re responsible for, instead of poring through data from 1,500 tutors in an overflowing Google Drive file. The app allows Ignite Reading to ensure data privacy by customizing access controls, enabling team members to focus only on relevant insights and protecting tutor and student confidentiality. “The right people have the right type of access,” Darlisha said.

Darlisha knows the importance of a two-way accountability street. “Things happen. Every day isn’t a good day. As much as we want to track behaviors, as their employer, we’re also responsible for giving them support.” 

Since Ignite Reading’s performance team can list out concerns and explain how they handled any issues that come up across multiple layers of support, managers can give tutors a chance to adjust their behavior. “With this data, we can ask ourselves, ‘did we give tutors a fair chance to improve? Did we do all we could to support them and our students? Did we live out our core values?’” Darlisha said. “That’s the treatment we all deserve as employees. Rippling’s custom app helps us provide it.”

Another helpful feature Ignite Reading gained with Rippling’s custom app: automated messages. If managers log a tutor performance issue that stays “open” and hasn’t been addressed after a set period of time, the system automatically sends out a message asking the manager whether there are any pending concerns. This workflow stops any unresolved issues from slipping through the cracks.

Darlisha was skeptical she could find an app that matched her company’s needs. But her Rippling implementation manager was eager to help build a fully customized product and teach Ignite Reading’s employees how to use it. “He had such a high level of commitment to getting it right,” Darlisha said. The app ended up being ready way sooner than Darlisha anticipated. “Our team is so thankful for how easy the implementation process was.”

Above all, Darlisha appreciated Rippling’s willingness to help her make something that didn’t yet exist, but once realized, could drastically improve the chain of feedback from managers to tutors to students. 

“What’s been really lovely about this experience is I could say ‘I know you don’t have one of these but this is what I’m thinking,’ and there was a palpable excitement about bringing it to life.”

• Time saved: Ignite Reading’s managers have an easier time capturing and analyzing tutor performance, spotting trends, and working with tutors to strengthen their practices.
• Evidence-backed decision-making: Managers now have a more complete picture of tutor performance, allowing them to rely on a deep well of data to better design support tutors. 
• Consistency and fairness: Rippling’s custom app ensures that every tutor gets fair treatment and support, preventing bias prone-judgments from seeping into decisions.