Canadian HR Reporter

24 FEATURES January 27, 2014 CANADIAN HR REPORTER PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Crowdsourcing the performance review Traditional performance reviews are never fun – and not terribly effective By Chris French No manager, no matter how closely she works with her team, has the time to accurately capture and record all the information necessary to give a truly comprehensive performance review. What's worse, some managers come to the table with pre-existing biases — both positive and negative — that can colour their view of a direct report. The limitations of a single manager's point of view represent a single point of failure that can hold back an employee's growth (or conversely, lead to a promotion beyond his capabilities). In turn, this misuse of human resources can damage an entire organization. Fortunately, modern technologies and changes in the way human beings interact and gather information are creating a better solution: The "crowdsourced" performance review. Crowdsourcing is widely understood as the gathering of information from many personalized, open and transparent sources — think Yelp, Angie's List or TripAdvisor. Just as a diverse selection of feedback from fellow travellers, homeowners or diners provides, in aggregate, a clear and accurate overall perception of an experience, feedback from all of an employee's peers provides a better source for employee evaluation and recognition than a single manager's viewpoint. The ability to review and consult the data provided by crowdsourcing gives managers a much larger (and much less subjective) data set to draw on when evaluat- ing performance. This increased level of detail leads to more accurate performance reviews that are more motivating for employees, yield better performances and generate more overall workplace happiness. Let's take a look at how crowdsourced performance reviews work. Social recognition programs At the core of the crowdsourced performance review is the software that powers a "social recognition program." It provides realtime performance data for every employee in an organization. One of the advantages is the information generated can be searched retroactively (unlike verbal employee-to-employee recognition). That means that just as social media watchers mine for information — such as terms that were trending during a given event — managers can retroactively go over the data and see which employees received the most positive recognition from their peers during a given project — in other words, it identifies the "trending" employees. When the time comes for annual performance reviews, managers can dig into this enormous cache of data and use it to inform their conclusions about their direct reports. Instead of having to rely solely on their own subjective points of view, they can crossreference their perspectives with hard data provided by the employee's co-workers. This not only removes the single point of failure but improves performance reviews across the board. Motivation and performance Because performance reviews take up such a small part of an employee's time at the office, one might think that working so hard to improve them isn't a good use of resources. But 83 per cent of employees who are satisfied with their Credit: cifotart/Shutterstock E arly in my career, I became familiar with the term "single point of failure" — a part of a system that, if it fails, will bring the entire system to a halt. Most companies deliver performance reviews rooted in just that: A single point of failure. The belief that a fair and accurate performance review can be delivered by one manager once per year is, unfortunately, not quite true. reviews are also satisfied with their jobs overall (versus only 55 per cent for those dissatisfied), according to the 2013 SHRM/ Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey. This correlation shouldn't be ignored. It's common knowledge that satisfied employees are more motivated, more productive and less likely to leave for another job — and clearly satisfaction with performance reviews plays an important role in their overall happiness. their greatest potential for reward comes not from impressing their boss but from regularly earning recognition from their peers, they're automatically incentivized to work as a team. The rewards system is no longer based solely on the small portion of an employee's work that her boss directly observes, but the constant feedback of her teammates. The result is a workforce that is always looking for ways to leave a positive impression and help out The rewards system is no longer based solely on the employee's work that her boss directly observes, but the constant feedback of her teammates. This is where the company culture part of a social recognition system comes in. Beyond improving periodic performance reviews, social recognition systems also help create what Globoforce CEO and author Eric Mosley calls a "positivity dominated workplace." When employees understand their peers — because they know their boss will be using co-worker feedback to inform their performance review. Additionally, social recognition systems provide a stream of real-time public appreciation for employees. While this may seem unimportant, it's actually critical to employ- ee motivation — fully 88 per cent of employees who receive regular peer feedback are satisfied with their jobs, found the Globoforce survey of more than 800 HR leaders and practitioners. Fixing the review Despite the significant level of innovation that's occurred around compensation and recognition over the past few decades, performance reviews have remained relatively stagnant. Crowdsourced reviews offer the possibility to change performance reviews from a singlesource, once-a-year ritual into a real-time stream of positive feedback powered by a social recognition system, improving employee morale, productivity and overall satisfaction. The world is evolving around the performance review — it's time the review caught up. Chris French is vice-president of customer success at employee recognition provider Globoforce in Toronto. He can be reached at chris.french@ globoforce.com or, for more information, visit www.globoforce.com. 'You have no excuse not to promote from within' SUCCESSION < pg. 19 data you can put in front of people, the less resistance you have because people say, 'You've done your homework.' CHRR: Should candidates be told they're being considered as successors? Dakens: I'm not sure if I'd describe it as a best practice as much as a pragmatic thing to do. Because people aren't stupid… if you don't tell them, they're going to speculate one or two things: 'I'm in the race or because I'm not being told, I'm not in the race and I'd better start looking elsewhere.' So why not be inclusive? And it also makes it easier if you're actually much more targeted in terms of (saying), 'Here are the things I want you to do, this will help you for this job.' CHRR: What's the potential impact on internal candidates if they aren't offered the job? Dakens: People say you should do your best to keep those people engaged and try to keep them for the next three to five years, but if they're actually ready for the top HR job, why are they going to hang around for three to five years? If they do and they're happy and contributing, that's a win-win but, in most cases, if they're good, they're going to get picked off… I predict at Maple Leaf, within a year or two at most, the other two candidates, if they have a burning desire to run their own shop, they'll get picked off. And there's nothing wrong with it. CHRR: Can you find better people if you look externally? knows the players? The learning curve for that new person is steep anyway. The reality is unless the place really needs to be shook up, promoting talented people internally is a far better way. You have no excuse Unless the place really in a large company, in my mind, assuming needs to be shook up, promoting talented people it's a well-run HR department… not to be able to promote from internally is far better. within, unless it's a disaster happening, and Dakens: Probably, because then you need to change the playyou're just adding more candi- ers at the top. dates. But are they so much betIf you've got OK people in kind ter that you would not work with of senior jobs but they don't have someone who knows the culture, the vision or the strategic think- ing capability or leadership skills — those are really hard to develop in a short period of time — you need to go outside. If you have one internal candidate, that's where I'd say, 'You've got to go outside, you owe it to yourself to compare.' But if you get two or three and they're viable candidates and people are saying, 'I could see that person working with me,' then I don't see the reason to go outside. Les Dakens is the author of The Real Deal on People: Straight Talk on How the CHRO Creates Business Value. For more information on his book, published in January 2014, visit www. carswell.com.

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