Using Social Network Analysis in performance evaluations

Given that the course’s name is “Social networks in organizations” I started thinking from the day we were assigned the task of creating a blog post, in a use of this methodology of understanding how groups of people are connected in, well, an organization. It wasn’t an easy thing to do I must admit. Even after several days into the course I was struggling with how something that prioritizes the “how” over the “what” can be used inside an organization.

But then, in a struck of inspiration, almost like the one I think hit Stephen Hawking into thinking and proving that a massive black hole is sitting in the center of our galaxy, I thought: Organizations live and breathe for the “How” over the “What”, and there is not one instance where this is more truth than the beloved mid-year and end of the year performance evaluations.

For you readers that haven’t been members of a medium to big sized company (anything above 20.000 employees qualifies as that), performance evaluations can be summarized into two things: Either arguments to promote you, or arguments to fire you, that’s the untold truth.

So where exactly does SNA fits into this picture? There’re a set of metrics in almost every performance score card, those coming from something called “360 review”. This is nothing more than how is your performance perceived by the people you interact with. Depending on the organization, the specific weight of this may vary.

 In the organization I was member of, it was hands down the most important metric, you could be the very best of your department, but if your 360 review was not in those same levels, you would then be a member of the infamous “high potential candidates” group. Think of them as the 99 MPH triple A prospect that no one in the bullpen likes.

How you are perceived and connected matters in an organization. Regardless what you talk about. The more connections you have, the more the number for the 360 review will be. Because the methodology of it rewards people well known by the managers performing the evaluation. And when more people are able to provide relevant information and comments about you, the more are the chances to obtain a good score in these metrics.

This is where SNA comes into play. Determining how really connected a person is before starting the assessment will give a little bit of validation to something that, in my opinion is very very wrong. Using cliques and degrees of connection as a way to determinate your true social network and establish whether or not it can create a positive impact in your performance and the way you are perceived. Using SNA could give the HR department a better view of how a person’s connections are consistent with the results of their personal evaluations before the 360 review. Let me make this clearer, because I believe this is the main benefit and the base argument of this post.

Suppose you have a high score in the personal review, you’re expected to have pretty much the same result in the 360. However this is not always the case, because unfortunately the reality is that if you’re working hard to get results, you can’t socialize and built your network, and people will perceive you as “high potential” but not connected, therefore, a bad candidate, soon to be “encourage to leave”. But what if after the SNA on this person the results are that under different attributes and networks, the person does have a strong connection with peers and it is perceived as a valuable contributor to the organization.

As I said, SNA can give some validation to an almost unfairly subjective process. It can provide evidence to determinate how any member of an organization is truly being a member, pretending to be a member or just not involved at all. Now, those pretending to be a member are the ones getting all the promotions, because like I said, is just almost impossible to be good at your job and building a strong network trough out the company. I believe that with SNA, the wide part of the curve will move towards the people that are contributing and making an effort into creating a beneficial network, for them and for the organization.