What is Social Performance Management and how can it help your business?

Facebook is on the road to extinction!

You may already have seen youngsters shunning it for cooler platforms. My kids say it is for old people and they don’t want an account on it. Before we realize, we are getting into the second generation of social media in our personal lives.

As our personal lives have evolved over the last decade with technology and the influence of social media, the way we work has also undergone substantial change; these changes only intensified by COVID-19.

As we move to agile ways of working, where collaboration is more important than rules of the hierarchy, we need to redefine our HR processes to reflect this change.

In this post, we will be showing how Social Performance Management can redefine the DNA of every organization and bring about true transformation in the ways of working!

What is Social Performance Management?

Social Performance Management is a way of measuring contribution, not just performance, in a networked organization. It is much deeper than 360-degree feedback processes, that are more geared for development than performance evaluation. It is also the next generation in seeking feedback from collaborators by getting help from principles of social media.

Have you been in a situation where you believed that someone was being evaluated without taking inputs from collaborators? Or have you received a performance document to provide feedback as an “additional stakeholder” where you don’t know what to fill for most goals, since you have only worked with the individual concerned for one or two goals?

Social Performance Management extends the social media concept of following/unfollowing to goals. The goal owner can tag a collaborator from anywhere in the organization while the collaborator reserves the right to unfollow the goal if it is not relevant. Each goal, thus, becomes a micro-community where collaborators can work effectively together.

This mechanism operationalizes collaboration, which is a Core Value or Competency in many organizations.

Why is Social Performance Management Important?

HR processes went into hibernation with Captain America!

All this while, the world kept evolving while we got busy with our annual cycles. Well, how relevant is the “Hire to Retire” cycle now? How many people will actually retire from one job?

The seismic shifts in the way we work since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic is another trigger for us to start looking at changing the way we perform and measure work.

As we migrate to a permanently hybrid work arrangements, the physical elements of collaboration need to be supplemented with online forms. While MS Teams and Zoom have been game changers in the way we communicate and connect online, true collaboration goes beyond just online meetings. In fact, too many online meetings may just be detrimental to overall productivity.

In this situation, we need to closely define shared accountabilities, set expectations and clearly explain the common problem statements that everyone need to work together on. This is a completely different paradigm of managing work than just assigning goals and tasks to individuals and evaluating those at the end of the year.

This is also the best way of keeping pace with the changing nature of work!

Tips and Reminders for Social Performance Management

#1: Age is not a barrier

Don’t worry about age and demographics before implementing Social Performance Management. Over the last few years, hundreds of millions of people have become familiar with social media in their personal lives. Social Performance Management will be a natural extension.

#2: Power in your palm

Most social media works best on the mobile phone. Social Performance Management that is mobile first will have the highest chances of making a positive impact.

#3: Winning Together

Social Performance Management is a powerful way of creating shared accountabilities and enabling collaboration.

Conclusion

The Future of Work is Now. As we fundamentally change the way we work, from home and office, we need to keep our HR processes aligned to these changes. The age old processes that were built for the hierarchy are no longer valid and reduce the entire traditional performance management process to a check-box exercise that does not enable people to perform better.

Social Performance Management is built for new-age organization, where people work in networks and solve complex problems together.