Performance Reviews on Facebook Agree

Performance Reviews on Facebook

Agree or disagree with this statement and provide reasons for your response. If you have regular conversations with people, and they know where they stand, then the performance evaluation is maybe unnecessary.

Performance evaluations are rapidly becoming anachronistic and unnecessary, and often counterproductive, given how rapidly organizations are changing over time. There are many arguments for relying on annual or even quarterly performance reviews (Wilbanks, 2011). In reality, the external environment is changing so rapidly that many companies are having trouble keeping up not just with their competitors, but their customers as well. The concept of developing a performance review process is predicated on a relative level of stability over the long-term (Messmer, 2004). Yet if there is a single, resonating message from the last five years of economic turmoil, it is that the economy, its effects on spending and investment, and growth are all more unpredictable than ever. In addition to the massive amount of turbulence from an economic standpoint, there is also the challenge of keeping up-to-date with current company strategy, which in many organizations has been known to shift quickly to capitalize on opportunities while mitigating threats. Pay-for-performance performance reviews don't work in this context, as the initial objectives at the beginning of a financial period may be completely irrelevant at the end (Wilkerson, 1995). Further amplifying this problem is that the best employees are often not coin-operated or driven by money, they are motivated by having a very strong role in the future of the business. Transformational leadership is what propels the highest performers to continually strive to excel at their roles in an organization and gain autonomy, mastery and purpose of their jobs (Krishnan, 2004). Top performers concentrate on how they are performing relative to their own internal standards, and with excellent leadership those expectations can be defined (Krishnan, 2004). No amount of external pressure can make this happen, it has to be the decision of the employee to work.

2. Compare and contrast the possible effectiveness of the social network performance review to the following age groups: veterans, baby boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y.

The bottom line is that every generation will choose the best possible communications channel and platforms to keeps them connected to their reference groups, friends, relatives and those they seek to be like or emulate. The role of social networks fits into this paradigm as a communications channel that best fits those in the age ranges and generations that have adopted this platforms as a primary means to stay connected with each other. Social networks bring an entirely new level of authenticity and transparency to any interaction and are highly effective in completing performance reviews of those in age groups who have adopted them as their primary means of communicating (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Facebook has reported that they are increasingly seeing greater traffic from older online users including those in their late 50s and into their 60s (Tellis-Nayak, 2010). This is counterintuitive to the overall impression many have of social networks, seeing them dominated by Gen Y and Gen X-age employees (Bernoff, Li, 2008). In fact the most prevalent are Gen Y and veterans including baby boomers according to analysis by Forrester Research (Bernoff, Li, 2008).

On the one hand using social networks including Facebook to evaluate job performance can provide new insights and intelligence into the process. Social networks can provide a 360-degree view of the employee as well (Messmer, 2004). Yet social networks are deliberately designed and programmed to allow for this type of evaluation. There is no actual framework or structure in place to evaluate employees in the context of their work, as social networks are fertile with all non-related work they are doing in their lives. Social networks is where many go to let loose and connect with friends and families, many miles away fro nearly all of them (Bernoff, Li, 2008). It is not fair to the employee to evaluate them using a system not designed to capture their performance at its best in a work role.

3. The biggest payoff of these social network style tools may prove to be better performance by the boss. State whether or not this statement justifies the time and cost of implementing these systems and provide a rationale.

The social network-style tools and collaboration platforms that are gaining so much attention today are actually only part of the solution. The most critical aspect of these systems is the ability to create a highly collaborative, communicative, trusting environment for workers (Bert, 2009). It is not the software that matters the most; it is the ability of a leader to bring lasting change into an organization and lead it to a transformational state over the long-term (Krishnan, 2004). That is the role of an excellent leader implementing these social network tools and propagating them throughout the company.

The statement that social network style tools may prove to be more effective in bringing out the performance of a boss is also predicated on how well they are aligned to the specific needs of the company, and more specifically, the employees. The focus needs to be on using these tools to increase the transparency and information velocity throughout a business if it is to be effective over the long-term. No amount of orders or directives can take the place of a leader who makes it clear that their goal is to lead a significant change in how a company works, ensuring a higher level of information and knowledge sharing (Krishnan, 2004).

The need for these social media tools to align with business processes, improve them, and lead to greater levels of trust while giving each person on a team greater autonomy, mastery and purpose of their roles is the most critical aspect of new software deployments. From this perspective the deployment of the software becomes secondary to the actual development of an overarching an cohesive strategy to make the software an indispensable part of how work gets done in the business. Only by integrating these aspects of performance can a company hope to excel and improve over time given the investments in these new applications.

4. O'Toole states: It has been said that Americans are increasingly overworked. Discuss whether social network type evaluations aid or hinder the overworked American. Justify your response.

Social network evaluations increase the pressure on American workers to excel on an entirely new dimension of performance, and that is their social network and social media use. It also forces them to be very specific in tailoring their responses to questions from friends, what they post to Twitter, Google+ or other social networks as well. In reality using social networking sites as a means to gain greater insights into performance is creating an entirely new set of tasks and dimension to any already packed schedule and series of action items as well (Bernoff, Li, 2008). They hinder the typical American worker because the pressure to perform will never stop once this is implemented.