Andrew Mc Afee wrote two interesing posts on the need for using 2.0 ratings for employees ( here and there).This kind of concern seems to be more and more actual for companies (I wrote about it there) and it confirms the accuracy of the old adage “tell me how you’re assessed, I’ll tell you how you work”. However putting thoses principles at work and build an assessment system relying on employee’s activity on enterprise social platforms (ESSP) can be more harmful than healthy.

McAfee proposes a multidimensional scale to score people’s participation, see who are the most active and distinguish according to their behaviros (creators, in reaction, raters…). A priori useful. But what for ?

Let me remind you that evaluation has to take into account what we want people to do and the way we them to do on pain to build a system relying on paradoxical injunctions that will cause a loss of sense.

Example : I want you to collaborate on the platform. But as a sales people you’re in competition with your colleagues. Be sure people will focus on the second propostion and get rid of the platform because they will favor what makes sense for them, what they are asked to on a contractual basis. And if one makes sense and the other is what he’ll be evaluated on, be sur he’ll get lost, doubt, and become less efficient.

Consequence : before evaluating anything else than individual performance, a strict alignement has to be set up between employees’ objectives and the way they’re asked to work. Then, and onlu then, it will be possible how objectives are rached and pilot how the platform is used according to stats and people’s acticity in order to undersant why it’s used or not, why it’s used for and try to correlate this with operative results. In two word : evaluation is made through people’s performance and management is made through the plateform’s activity which make it possible to assess who’s got the right attitude and who doesn’t.

In fact it’s harder. Imagine a person who reaches its personnal objectives without being socially active. What to thinj about it ? That social pratices haven’t been implemented in business processes ? Why not. We can also think his individual performance was realized to the detriment of the group (local maximum vs global optimum) and that the evaluation system has failed. Example : an employee’s performance is 100 which is very well. His colleagues performance are 50 or 60. On a global scale, it would the necessary to ask him to take a little time to help the others increasing their performance even if it implies his would drop to 80. As Bob Sutton wrote in “The Knowing Doing Gap”, a salesman whose outperforms his colleagues is not a chance but a danger if he doesn’t go into service with them. It’s often the symptom that shows that a person plays for himself and, at the end, against his company.

Some people may also start participating all over the place without bringing anything valuable to the others. Making noise to show they participate and quickly go back to the old good methods.

Whatever, getting a good evaluation for one’s activity on an ESSP doesn’t mean nothing in terms of business performance which remains the final and only goal.

So, how to make all these things coherent ?

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