Eight years ago, Yum Brands, Inc. broke off from parent company Pepsico. Many of the Pepsi executives who moved over to Yum were familiar with Pepsi's hard-driving workforce management approach, in which people were primarily judged on their numbers. Yum's fast-food business called for a focus on people and teamwork, rather than marketing and sales to big clients like supermarket chains. Because of the needs of their business, they wanted to create a new company culture for Yum that was people-friendly.

Yum management faced the challenge of spreading their "customer maniac" philosophy to 850,000 workers involved in running their Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, A&W, and Long John Silver's franchises. The performance criterias most valued at Yum are teamwork, communication, and leadership. The tool they decided on to help measure and enforce these attributes was a 360-degree assessment tool.

A company called Kenexa developed a new version of Yum's cumbersome paper-based assessment tool. The new assessments can be completed online in a three-week cycle. The process begins with an e-mail asking employees who are subjects of the 360s to submit a list of employees who could serve as raters. About a dozen co-workers are chosen to answer questionnaires. The feedback is collected into a report and then the employee goes over the results with his supervisor. Pay issues are addressed separately and are spaced months apart from the 360-degree assessments. All the data is collected at Yum's headquarters, giving the company a valuable snapshot of the capabilities of its management and where organizational development efforts should be focused.

The shift in its people management philosophy has helped Yum achieve remarkable performance and growth. With 33,000 restaurants serving fried chicken, pizza, and other food to 22 million customers daily around the world, Yum plans to open 1,000 new restaurants a year with a strong focus on international expansion. Earnings are contributing to record stock performance as well. Standard & Poors projects that the earnings per share will jump from $2.36 in 2004 to $2.63 this year and will grow at an annual rate of 10% a year over the next few years.