I had to give a couple of performance reviews last week, and it had been a while since I had sat down and done one. In fact, the last time I did a review was prior to when I started using Twitter. As I sat down to give these associates my nuggets of wisdom, development opportunities and pat-on-the-backs, it hit me on how we could do this exercise so much quicker if we just limited the entire process to a Twitter-like 140 characters.
I believe I’ve uncovered the manager’s dream! 140 character Performance Review – 30 seconds and you’re out. What an increase to productivity, to clarity – I mean how could you not be clear and concise in 140 characters. I’ll even help get you started with some cut-and-paste 140 character performance reviews:
A-Player – Do more of what ur doing. Co. values you. Don’t lose balance. Keep leading ur peers. Get project over goal-line. What can I do for you?
B-Player – Solid performer, I appreciate ur effort. Focus more on results. Prioritize ur workload. Enjoy having u on the team. What can I do for you?
C- Player – I need to see immediate performance increase. Ur at risk of losing ur position. Action plan needed. What ru u going 2 do 2 turn around perf?
A-Player @risk of leaving – U Rock! Co relies on u – ur a big part of leadership future. What would make this pos. more satisfying? Anything bothering you I can change?
B-Player w/ career derailer – Solid performer. Short temper has potential to explode. How can I help u put out the fuse? Must change to advance ur career. Co. wants u 2.
C-Player w attendance issue – Get 2 work, stay @ work – immediate change needed or u lose job. (only 65 characters needed for this one – we don’t want to waste the extra 75 characters on a lost cause).
Now, I’m not naive enough to think this will satisfy every manager, and as always, you’ll still want to coach and mentor those difficult hiring managers on how to give a quality 140 character review. But with time and effort, I truly believe a solid 86% of your hiring managers will use most of the 140 characters in sharing with their staff the feedback they deserve, and you can increase that by writing pre-drafted 140 character review messages that they can just cut and paste to the review form.
Remember – don’t let the work of training your hiring managers on this new 140 character review process get in the way of you launching this new effort. Just think of how much higher your hiring managers will rate your department’s performance in delivering HR value to the organization. Don’t your employees deserve 140 characters?
If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.