In the October 2011 edition of HR Magazine UK, I was interviewed regarding my thoughts on integrating social technologies with performance management. Below is the article in its entirety. My contribution to this article is highlighted in red (note: I’m all the way down at the bottom!).
Original source: Energised and Positive, HR Magazine UK, October 2011, Rob Gray
In challenging economic times, amid market volatility, certainties are thin on the ground. But when the going is tough, one thing we can be sure of is that employers will need to maximise the return they get from their staff.
Recent Hay Group research among 1,660 senior decision-makers in large organisations across more than 30 countries – including 100 in the UK – found on average employers were looking to achieve ambitious growth levels of 5.4%. As this outstrips GDP rises in most markets, it is clear leaders are seeking to boost employee productivity. However, given that many workers are already stretched, this is quite a tall order.
Human Resource executives are seeing that many exciting shifts are happening today in the way employees are valued and managed within their organizations. This is in large part due to the revolution of social technologies and its impact on traditional Human Resource programs. With the rise of social media and its impact on the corporate workplace, we’ve seen significant strides in how social technologies have changed traditional HR functions such as recruiting and talent development, and it’s only natural that our eyes turn to other key Human Resource programs as well. 
As we have adopted social media into our organizations, we’ve seen many instances where it has become necessary to discipline employees because of their behavior on social networking sites due to the negative light that behavior has shed on a company. It goes without saying that because of these behaviors, companies have scrambled to draft social media policies to minimize these occurrences and to manage employee performance overall. In many circumstances, actions and policies are put into place to protect the employee as much as the company.
