Whether we like it or not we are all judged one way or another. Appraisal is constant, be it a school report, a kind remark about our appearance, a wolf whistle from a building site, a round of applause or the middle finger of a fellow road user. It happens all the time.
The end-of-term report at school is probably the first experience we have of being ranked against our peer group. Usually there's a term position reflecting course work plus an additional exam ranking. In national examinations at school and university there is a broader standard. Then we leave education and everything changes.
Depending on the job, a reputation can be earned in several ways. Standing out in front of the boss, keeping customers happy, maintaining a consistent quality of work, building individual skills, taking on more responsibility - all of these factors can enhance a career.
Most big employers today have formalised this career building around the annual or twice-yearly appraisal that can take many forms, from an informal chat with your team leader, to the kind of "forced ranking" adopted in some US companies after it was popularised at General Electric when Jack Welch was chief executive.
His so-called "Session Cs" required managers to rank the individual members of their teams in the top 20, mid 70 and bottom 10 per cent on a performance matrix based on corporate expectations.
Getting a C grade amounted to a Mafia-style kiss of death.
This kind of ranking takes me back to the practice of picking teams in the playground. Lined up against the wall you soon discovered where you stood. I was always one of the last to be picked - cruel but accurate. The easiest way to avoid this ritual humiliation was to own the ball and be the self-appointed captain.
The problem with schoolyard team picking was that people sometimes simply chose their friends. As a meritocracy it was skewed by subjectivity. The same can happenif managers are swayed by factors beyond those relevant to performance.
No wonder, then, that a software system designed to make performance management more transparent and managers accountable for their approach has been attracting growing interest among human resources managers.
In fact interest in the system has been so intense that its developer, SuccessFactors*, based in California and founded by a former Unilever manager, Lars Dalgaard, has become one of the world's fastest growing software systems, running in more than 1,300 companies, including 18 of the Fortune 100.
If you haven't yet heard of Mr Dalgaard or his company, you soon will. Having seen a demonstration of the software at the company's annual conference in New York last week, I am convinced his business has created something special that is revolutionising the performance and talent management process.
Whether this should be considered a force for good in the long term is another matter and something that should be debated. But I have a feeling that this will be a secondary issue among chief executives and human resources directors, whose overriding need is to increase productivity by recruiting, developing and keeping good people.
Take Wachovia, the US bank holding company with $706bn in assets and 110,000 employees. Shannon McFayden, head of human resources and corporate relations, has been using the system to improve the way employees engage with the company.
In the past, she says, the company had used multiple performance management systems with inconsistent measurements that did not define expectations in line with company priorities. Nor did they reflect business results. "We were a mess," she says.
Typically, managers would know their individual teams but had little knowledge of those workingelsewhere in the company. Today, however, managers can find people across the business in searches that allow them to identify people in different ways - by their qualification, say, or a set of skills or experience.
The new system, she says, has made the business of employee appraisal more transparent, so that employees and managers can obtain a clear picture of performance against expectations. The system tracks where successes have been achieved and where some things may not have worked well, highlighting the need for any extra training.
In the same way, HR managers are alerted to line managers who have been tardy in carrying out their appraisals. Where, in the past, the appraisal has often been viewed at best as bureaucratic and at worst a waste of time, the visibility and detail of the computerised system means that managers are more accountable.
A diligent employee is far less likely to be overlooked because the system collects examples of the way every individual delivers work - or fails to do so - against a stated set of priorities.
This is the key as far as I can see:it makes appraisal far more robust and less exposed to abuse. Managers cannot overlook the training needs of employees because those needs will have been recorded and are being monitored by HR professionals.
In the same way, employees cannot overlook the expectations of the job since there is nowhere to hide. But at least those expectations are outlined clearly. How many times have people felt demoralised because no one has explained how their work makes a difference within a business?
Used properly, this software can bring the HR function out of the wilderness and into business planning, because it delivers the kind of information that chief executives need at their fingertips. Gaps in expertise, untapped skills and hidden talents can be exposed in a quick search.
"How many times have people said: 'If only my bosses knew what I could do?' Well, now talent is going to be more visible," says Mr Dalgaard.
It is this very visibility that worries me slightly. If you, like me, relish the opportunity to take things easy now and again, you will no longer be able todo so at the expense of yourcolleagues. Passengers will be weeded out.
But if you feel on top of your job, and enjoy working in a team where your contribution will receive the recognition it deserves, a business that has learned to use this system wisely could become your employer of choice. Personally, I'm attracted to one of SuccessFactors' founding principles that simply says: "No Jerks". If every company used that as an employee standard, life in the office might be a little more tolerable.
As Ms McFayden acknow-ledged, the system doesn't replace face-to-face conversations. Nor would I want to see it used dispassionately in a forced ranking system run on the Darwinian principle of "survival of the fittest". But, in a supportive workplace that helps people to help themselves, a system that can monitor performance in a fair and transparent way could prove a force for good.
So what does it portend: corporate Utopia or something akin to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? We must wait and see.
www.richarddonkin.com
*SuccessFactors.com
