Crowdsourcing Employee Performance

Recognize This! – More feedback from more sources given more regularly throughout the year is far more valuable than an annual review from one person.

We all agree the annual performance review is flawed, largely because of the focus on once-a-year feedback from one primary source. The obvious solution is seeking and recording more regular feedback from more sources.

Just this week, two articles in very different sources focused on this.

First, from Talent Management magazine, “Transform the Review Process” explains how:

“Social collaboration can provide the regular, ongoing feedback employees want and need to achieve business goals and help managers develop their skills and better connect them to the business in real time.”

The article includes an insert panel from me in which I discuss in greater depth “crowd wisdom”:

“By incorporating social elements into a recognition program, managers have real-time insight into employee performance. Recognition within an internal corporate social network also provides crowd-sourced opinions on employee behaviors, offering more frequent assessment of top performers and insight about the influence of leadership within the organization.”

Then, in Investor’s Business Daily, my CEO Eric Mosley and Globoforce client Panduit discuss how to keep globally distributed employees connected to the organization:

“Streamline shout-outs. Recognition and rewards reinforce goal setting. But it’s easy for kudos to get lost in bustling companies. Enter the latest HR technology breakthrough — social media-based incentive programs.

“Globoforce has developed a social recognition application used by firms such as Symantec (SYMC). The Web-based tool encourages staff to nominate each other for variable awards. Employees score points, which can be redeemed for prizes. ‘It’s almost like crowd-sourcing performance appraisals over the course of the year,’ said Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley.

“‘The ability to capture recognition moments provides real-time visibility into the performance of our program,’ said Colleen Houlihan, HR director at Panduit Corp., a physical infrastructure support firm that uses Globoforce.

“Managers see reports that reveal who’s getting the most awards. Also, the tool makes annual performance reviews a breeze. ‘You can mine that data,’ Mosley said. ‘Find the true superstars of the organization.’”

Has your organization implemented ways to incorporate more frequent feedback from more sources? What method or approach are you using?