When talking about 2.0 ratings, many people jump on statistics tools provide. But enterprise 2.0 being above all a way of doing things, I wondered if, more than measuring people’s 2.0 activity there would not be a 2.0 way of evaluating them on both qualitative and quantitative side.
That reminds me of a Wall Street Journal article about the unseemliness of performance review and the need for getting rid of it. I mainly agree with that, for many reasons :
• Periodicity : having a review every year is ridiculous in 2008. Evaluation and correction has to be made continuously except if leaving an employee out of bearings, saying “if nothing changes I’ll fire him in ten month” instead of handling him as soon as possible seems to be a responsible behavior. And a good employee who’s getting bored and need some carreer evolution will not wait : he will have left before the holy annual review.
• Subjectivity : one person, two reviews, two different conclusions. Reviews are subjectif by nature because it’s nothing but two human being discussing through their own prism.
• Individuality : one person is assessed although his work is in a large part impacted by other people’s. Whatever the result is, he’s not responsible for the whole. Individual reviews, because they put people in a competition, are a true barrier to collaboration.
• One way : the review is most of time a top down process that is more the unilateral expression of a normative and sanction power (I say what is right and I decide to say if you did right or wrong) and not a moment for progression. Before the review, an employee is more likely to wonder what he will be criticized for than to say “great ! this is an opportunity”.
• Partiality : the one who evaluates can’t be continuously on the others people’s back and has only a partial vision of what the employee experienced, what he had to face.
Let’s also add that even managers finds it less and less useful and shortcut the reviews in order to be in line with their team’s activity, which makes the review even more senseless.
Could we say that evaluation 2.0 would be continuous, on the flow, based on a 360° feedback, taking into account the whole context and progres oriented.
Obviously yes..al last for the spirit. With an immediate effect, that’s to say it would not end with promises but with the certainty things would be done. The one who evaluates is not here only to sanction but to provide people with what’s needed to progress, that’s the very nature of a manager.
That’s for the 2.0 spirit.
Considering tools, it’s obvious that enteprise 2.0 tools allow to diagnose a lot of things in real time, like involvement, disengagement, have tangible arguments to make and explaind decision since what was informal and in the air is now translated in readable contents.
If we want to implement evaluations 2.0 it’s the very concept of evalution that has to be redesigned. Then we’ll see what social tools provide in order to deliver accurate datas for a continuous evaluation, more comprehensive and objective.