Workscore, currently in beta, has several not-new features, such as rating your own workplace and seeing how others rate their workplaces. But the most interesting feature involves letting users build a social resume — a profile of their skills, plus ratings from co-workers the user has selected.

Users who collect enough ratings can then send ratings links to individuals — such as HR managers — at prospective places of employment. Essentially, it’s a way for a job hunter to say, “Here’s what others (but not my boss) think of me.”

The site — and the social resume — is a reaction to the reluctance of managers to give references and appraisals on a  former employee when contacted by a company thinking of hiring the employee.

The flaw?
Yes, we see the flaw: So, someone gets his buddies/workmates to give top reviews that make the applicant look like the best thing since the invention of the microchip. The fix is in, right?

Well, maybe. As we said, Workscore requires users to amass a bunch of reviews, not just one or two. That means people looking to game the system will have to find a whole bunch of buddies at work willing to play along. Further, users who are reviewed can’t see the scores individually or change them, so the user is taking a bit of a risk by sending blind reviews to an employer.

And reviewers remain anonymous so they can’t get sued for saying bad stuff about an employee.

One quirky caveat: The system allows users to weight individual scores. In other words, if a user thinks a particular reviewer is likely to give high scores, the user can give those scores greater weight. Conversely, if a user thinks a potential reviewer is likely to be critical, that score can be given a lighter weight. Though you’d have to wonder why a user would approach someone like that for a review in the first place.

How valuable would Workscore ratings be to applicants and, especially, HR managers? It’s unlikely you’d ever hire someone based solely on Workscore ratings, no matter how much you might trust them. The ratings might develop into just another tool used to judge the applicant. We’ll see.

Note: As mentioned, Workscore is in beta, so if you give it a run-through yourself, you might hit a few technical bumps here and there.

Her story:

The tough message came down from upper management: We were in a dogfight with our competition, and every part of our operation – including performance reviews – had better contribute to improving our operation.

Our performance-review process had been pretty much by-the-book: once a year, with a raise determined by the rating in the review.

It was clear, however, that the reviews weren’t leading to improvement. We decided that cosmetic changes weren’t going to work. We had to take some bold steps. How bold? How about dumping annual reviews altogether? We did that – and more.

Shorter is better
When we made the decision to get rid of annual reviews, we knew we had to find a results-oriented system to replace it.

Our answer: monthly reviews.

We didn’t call them that; the new name was “monthly goals evaluation.” Yes, monthly. That gave us quicker and better information on when we needed to change and make improvements in any part of our operation.

OK, so we knew how often we were going to do appraisals and why we were doing them that often. But we also had to figure out what to appraise and how to measure it.

Measurement matters
When we analyzed our performance standards under the old system, we realized most of the standards were just too soft – there was little or no way to measure improvement or dropoff. We needed numbers – hard, realistic numbers.

That’s what we told all our supervisors. They:

• had to come up with monthly numerical goals for each employee, and
• involve each employee in setting those numbers, so no one would feel as if the goals were dictated.

One more thing we told them: No one will suffer for not making a numerical goal. Instead, we’ll look at why the goal wasn’t met and what we need to do to meet it. Then we’ll determine raises based on overall progress during the year.

The results
Did it work? Well, after a year under the new system, we increased revenues and surpassed our original goals for profitability.

Further, we didn’t have to lay off anyone. We found our increased productivity allowed us to do more with fewer people, meaning we were able to use attrition to cut employment.

And now, monthly goal evaluations seem as natural to us as the sun rising every day, rather than some big change.

Elizabeth Duffrin, Reno, NV

Question:
Our CEO wants me, the HR manager, to sit in every time a supervisor gives an employee a below-standards performance appraisal. I would serve only as a witness for what’s said – such as agreements about problems and ways to improve.

What do you think about the idea? Should this be an HR function?

Answer
Not a bad idea, answers Jonathan Segal, an employment-law attorney with the firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen.

Maybe, however, you won’t want to limit participation to only the bad reviews. Just sitting in on the bad reviews makes HR look like the Grim Reaper, who only shows up for bad times (such as terminations or disciplinary actions). That’s why you may want to consider sitting in on all reviews. Of course, there are only so many hours in the day, and HR can only do so much, but being at the good reviews, too, would prevent a negative image of HR.