Performance Review Takes a Page from Facebook - Term Paper Example

? Performance Review takes a Page from Facebook BY YOU HERE YOUR HERE HERE Performance Review takes a Page from FacebookEstablishing Regular Conversations There is a great deal of merit to this statement. According to Fairholm (2009), the ability to develop a cohesive and dedicated organizational culture involves establishing regular communications systems with internal stakeholders. In human resources, one of the most important constituent parts of maintaining competitive advantage is human capital resource. Theory dictates a set of universal needs from employees which are rather homogenous in many different cultures and nations. These needs include social belonging needs and receipt of esteem from others (Morris & Maisto, 2005). Without establishing these motivational drivers for employees, it is likely they will not achieve the pinnacle of their talents and motivations to achieve business or strategic goals. Establishment of regular communications that offer esteem will also build a sense of social belonging that is necessary to achieve performance targets, as this lays the foundation for effective motivation. If the employee has a means of understanding, in real-time, what their actual performance is, then there is no ambiguity within the organizational model. Employees like to have clarity and a sense of purpose or they are more apt to resist change. Regular conversations, such as those provided by social networking software, would remove ambiguity. In most organizations that are dynamic and change is constantly present, it could alleviate some of the managerial responsibilities of having to perform annual or bi-annual reviews, giving them more time to establish the social systems needed to build human capital advantages against competition. Effectiveness of Social Network Performance to Different Demographics For Generation Y, the social network performance would be ideal. Shaver (2010) identifies that most Generation Y workers demand to receive instant feedback about their performance in order to provide maximum value to the organization. Gen Y workers like to maintain business positions in which leaders actively promote the social environment (Shaver, 2010). This would seem to be an ideal medium for this group. Generation X workers tend to learn new technologies faster than other groups. At the same time, they appreciate group flexibility and are adaptable in this fashion (United Nations, 2009). Group affiliation is something that provides this group with more motivation, therefore social networking as a tool to promote the social condition would seem to have benefits for motivation and human capital development. Baby Boomers, when it comes to marketing and consumption theories, tend to be more attracted to products and services that fit their own ethical and moral values. They are considered to be socially-conscious. Therefore, if this older generation of workers can successfully engage with social media, it would seem that the ethical and moral constructs of providing social networking opportunities would make them feel valuable as aligned with corporate social responsibility theory. Veterans are generally not comfortable with change practices. There is more chance that this group would reject social media especially if they are not engaged with it in their own personal lives. Veterans would not be ideal groups by which to establish this unless there was preliminary training to ensure they understood these new technological systems. The Payoff of Social Network Tools That would be highly dependent on the level of motivation and dedication maintained by the individual to determine if there would be better performance through social networking opportunities. However, the process of establishing annual reviews often overwhelms the manager and involves multiple stakeholders in the process that can conflict time management or even reduce managerial effectiveness in other areas throughout the organization. Social networking software is not expensive, especially when linked to or provided by well-known sites such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. As far as cost, it would seem to be a viable opportunity without imposing significant budgetary obligations to the organization. Managers could also use these sites as a self-service training tool, which could give them more experiential knowledge about what actually drives employee needs. Rather than having to set up internal market research evaluation tools, such as the survey or questionnaire, to find out employee attitudes, the real-time opportunities could make managers more flexible and adaptable by understanding real-time sentiment of employees. Managers, having access to this information, could build much faster and more productive profiles of individual employees to come up with strategies that would be more appealing to these workers. It could make them a more humanistic and transformational management team by exposing the emotional states of employees. The Overworked American Worker Social network type evaluations would not hinder Americans even if they are over-worked. These systems are opportunities to give employees more autonomy in the human resources management process and express their real sentiment about what is occurring in the organization. This removes the ambiguity in the organization that can impede group membership development and socialization. By helping everyone in a team environment to understand the genuine and real-time attitudes and emotions of workers, it can enhance emotional intelligence for many organizational stakeholders or improve social cohesion. The ability to simply log-in to a social network site and leave a short statement does not represent a significant increase in workload. By limiting the amount of characters allowed for each entry, as one example, it would actually be efficient and also provide organizational management with the valuable information about employee needs that are necessary to build important social relationships. Research did not indicate any precedents where social networking tended to hinder employee productivity. Instead, most evaluations of social networking as a potential appraisal tool or a system by which to improve organizational team-working are positive in which employees and managers alike respond positively to these systems. Unless the employee were over-burdened with having a role by which to compile, collate and analyze postings from many employees, there is no evidence that social network type evaluations would add significant volumes to employee workloads. Therefore, it should be considered a quality tool for enhancing organizational performance and individual worker productivity. References Fairholm, M. (2009). Leadership and Organizational Strategy, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 14(1), pp.26-27. Morris, C. & Maisto, A. (2005). Psychology: An Introduction (12th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall. Shaver, T. (2010). Understanding Generation X and Y Employees. Retrieved February 14, 2013 From http://www.casagrandepress.com/sample/understanding-generation-x-and-y- employees.pdf United Nations. (2009). Generation Y and Generation Z Working Together, United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund. Retrieved February 14, 2013 from http://www.un.org/staffdevelopment/pdf/Designing%20Recruitment,%20Selection%20& %20Talent%20Management%20Model%20tailored%20to%20meet%20UNJSPF%27s% 20Business%20Development%20Needs.pdf Read More