Online Personnel Management Evaluation Systems Are A Two-Edge Sword
The recent trends toward online personnel management systems that evaluate, monitor and drive the corporate careers of managers and high-potential non-exempt employees have a downside.
As reported in The Wall Street Journal, many companies are trying to identify rising “stars” as a whole generation of managers approach retirement.
Recent reports of security breaches resulting in data about individuals being bandied about within organizations have raised an interesting trade-off scenario.
In one case, an IT-support company found itself in the embarrassing position of having key data and assessments of personnel inadvertently leaked to a client.
Through this breech, the client learned that it was not getting the supplier’s best talent particularly suited to the contracted project.
The company lost the contract as well as several key employees who learned they were not valued as highly as they thought.
Looming Management Gap
Personnel managers are realizing that the massive layoffs in the last two decades have left many companies bare of competent managers who have the knowledge and experience to continue many of the company’s core competencies.
Ironically, as one expert said, “the current environment is like the technology for 15-inch battleship guns: in many companies, the skills and knowledge do not exist anymore.”
For companies of all sizes, this problem is becoming particularly acute as long-time employees begin to phase out and younger staff are not as committed to the company. No longer are “lifers” the norm at any organization.
In the wave of the business start-ups of the 1970s and 1980s reaching a mature stage in their life cycles, many second generational leaders also face another hurdle: it is hard to manage a worker who may have been one's first boss.
Then too the radical changes in skills needed in today’s business climate are also impacting the promotion and management processes.
Emphasis Put On Several Factors
Online management systems put an emphasis on rising managers being able to:
- Obtain easy facility with IT products and services,
- Master demanding market competition with an emphasis on analysis and quick reaction
- Quickly adapt to rapidly changing Internet communication and marketing channels
- Learn the techniques of managing a rapidly changing workforce
Quantifying and measuring these attributes often leads to difficult assessment decisions.
For instance, how important is it to speak and understand Spanish if your workforce is gaining an increasing number of Latino workers?
Another consideration is how does the company maintain and amplify the notations within the online system?
Managing Negative Comments
Equally as important is the question of managing the negative comments within the system.
As one legal authority said, “once it is in the system, most things can never be erased totally. In today’s legal environment, emails and other electronic documents can come back to haunt you in court.”
Finally, there is the mentoring aspect that is so critical to organizational fluidity and growth.
In the end, it is this factor that ultimately decides who wins and who loses in any organization – big or small.
