Oracle Corp. today rolled out a series of updates to its Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management suite, including a team skills portal, performance evaluation support and a feature that helps managers listen better to employees.

Citing a Gallup Inc. survey that found that the top quartile of companies with engaged employees experiences lower turnover and absenteeism along with higher profits, Oracle said the improvements are aimed at reducing burnout, identifying skills gaps and providing career guidance. Today’s announcement comes five months after the company introduced a collection of cloud-based tools called Oracle ME that’s intended to help companies improve employee engagement.

A new capability in Oracle Dynamic Skills gives managers a centralized location from which to review, assign and manage skills development across teams. It provides insights into the core skills needed to meet business objectives as well as role-based skills for team members.

A new evaluation capability in Oracle Performance Management gives managers a single view of a team’s performance against expectations with measures of competencies and individual performance ratings.

Oracle Touchpoints (pictured) is borrowed from Oracle ME. It’s intended to help managers continuously capture, track and act on employee sentiment via a channel that enables fast and frequent communication.

The new features in Oracle Dynamic Skills and Oracle Performance Management will be rolled into the HCM suite at no additional charge. Oracle Touchpoints can be purchased as an additional module.

Oracle said it intends Cloud HCM to cover every human resource process from hiring to retirement. In ranking the company as a leader in HCM last fall for the sixth straight year, Gartner Inc. said the suite demonstrated the “highest average and combined total scores for all functions considered for HR. It is the most well-rounded product evaluated in this Magic Quadrant.”

However, the research firm also noted that Oracle’s name recognition in HCM is not as strong as it could be, noting that “Gartner receives fewer client inquiries about Oracle than some of its competitors.”

Image: Oracle