CLIENT: Havelgrund Software GmbH🇩🇪Germany

Keelson - Performance and OKR Platform with the Works Agreement Built In

Performance Management for a Berlin Software Scale-Up

Designed and built a clickable performance platform for a 520-person Berlin SaaS company with a works council: OKRs on an alignment tree with weekly check-ins, a manager review workspace with an AI summary the manager must edit before submitting, and calibration on a 9-box with a reason logged for every change.

Scope of Work
Product design, UI build and clickable demo
Industry
HR & Payroll / Performance & OKRs
AIEnterprise
Compliance & Certifications
BetrVGGDPRBDSGAGGEU AI Act

Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.

Impact

5 Screens
Clickable end to end

Home, OKR tree, objective detail, the manager review workspace and the calibration session. Every one of the 22 demo objectives opens its own detail page with key results, check-ins and a progress chart.

No AI Ratings
Assistive summaries only

The AI draft reads only the written review inputs, links each sentence to its source, never fills a rating field, and blocks submission while inserted text is still unchanged.

5 or More
People before fairness data shows

Calibration shows rating distributions by gender, age band, working time and parental leave only for groups of at least 5 people. Smaller groups are suppressed.

22 Objectives
Realistic demo data

4 company, 5 department, 8 team and 5 individual objectives with 45 key results, 35 employees in 6 departments, a 6-phase review cycle and a 17-person calibration session.

The Problem

Havelgrund grew from 140 to 520 people in three years and its performance process did not keep up. OKRs lived in a spreadsheet updated once a quarter, managers copied peer comments into documents by hand, calibration ran on a slide with sticky notes, ratings reached employees by email on different days, and 1:1 notes sat in personal pages the report never saw. When the newly elected works council asked what data was collected, who could see it and how ratings were decided, HR could not answer from one place.

Our Solution

Keelson covers the whole performance loop in one app: company, team and individual OKRs on an alignment tree with weekly check-ins, a three-column manager review workspace with an optional AI summary that stays the manager's own work, and calibration sessions with a 9-box, guideline bands and a change log. Every setting the works agreement covers shows the agreement version that governs it.

The Challenge: Performance Data Under a Works Agreement

In Germany, performance software is generally treated as a technical device that can monitor employees, so how Havelgrund collects, shows and rates performance has to follow a works agreement with its Betriebsrat, as well as data protection and equal treatment law.

Co-Determination on Every Setting

Under section 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG the works council generally co-determines systems able to monitor performance, and section 94 covers assessment principles. Templates, rating scales and calibration rules cannot be used until they are agreed, and the product must collect no activity data such as logins, commits or messages.

AI That Must Not Decide

AI that evaluates workers is generally listed as high-risk under the EU AI Act, and GDPR Article 22 rules out ratings made by automated means alone. A pilot with a generic writing tool ended with managers pasting text in unchanged, and the works council asked for it to stop.

Fair Ratings Without Exposing People

The AGG prohibits discrimination, so a calibration panel needs to see whether ratings skew by gender, age, part-time work or parental leave, but only in aggregate and never in a way that identifies one person in a small team.

Who Sees What

Individual objectives, shared and private 1:1 notes, feedback, reviews and improvement plans each have different audiences. Two improvement plans had been discussed in a public channel by mistake, and every view now has to respect the viewer's role and reporting line.

Our Approach: From a Works Agreement to a Clickable Platform

01

Spec and Rules Research

Mapped 8 roles, from employee and manager to HR business partner, works council member and DPO, 38 screens and the data model for objectives, key results, check-ins, 1:1s, feedback, versioned templates and rating scales, review cycles, AI summaries, calibration sessions and improvement plans. Wrote down the rules the design follows: BetrVG sections 82, 83, 87, 94 and 102, the GDPR and BDSG, the AGG and the EU AI Act.

02

Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit

Built 5 key screens on a production dashboard kit: Home with the active cycle and a to-do list that changes with the viewing role, the OKR tree with an Unaligned column and quick view, objective detail with a check-in modal that updates key results, the manager review workspace with the AI summary panel, and the calibration session with drag and drop on a 9-box, a distribution view and a fairness check. All actions run on local state.

03

What a Production Build Adds

Integration with the HRIS (such as Personio), SSO and SCIM provisioning through Okta or Microsoft Entra ID, Slack or Teams reminders, calendar-linked 1:1s, team-level metrics from Jira, Linear or Looker, AI summaries in an EU region with no training on customer data, e-signature for improvement plans and release to compensation planning. Plus role-based visibility, an append-only audit log, scheduled retention runs and the remaining 33 screens.

Why It Works: The Manager Stays the Author

AI Drafts Stay in Their Own Panel

Before first use, a notice says what the assistant reads and what it does not do: no ratings, no tone or sentiment analysis, no messages or activity data. The draft is split into strengths, areas to develop and contributions, and each sentence highlights the inputs it came from.

Submission Rules You Cannot Skip

Inserted text stays highlighted until the manager edits it, and submit is blocked with "Edit the drafted text so it is your own assessment, or remove it." The manager also confirms the review is their own, and the employee is told AI assisted.

Every Rating Change Has a Reason

In calibration, moving a person between boxes or changing a rating needs a reason, which goes into the change log with who proposed it. Guideline bands such as Exceeds 15 to 25% are outlined amber when a group falls outside them, with no forced quotas.

The Agreement Is on the Screen

Screens governed by the works agreement link to the clause, such as BV-2025-03 version 2, clause 5.2 on the review template, which also shows when the works council agreed it. Potential is marked for development planning only, and 1:1 notes are never pulled into a review.

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