Social Media and HR; Behavioral Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) and Simulation Training

Introduction

The current world population is a heavy consumer of social media. A larger percentage of an individual’s time is spent online. Therefore, it is advisable for the human department to take into consideration social media to achieve its objectives. In fact, the impact caused by social media on human resource management is so huge. The HR department can leverage social media in many ways such as talent acquisition, direct recruitment, simulation training, behaviorally anchored rating scale, and communication. The purpose of this assignment is to develop a BARS instrument with at least five different areas of assessment. The paper will, therefore, provide a comprehensive discussion of the challenges faced by HR professionals and employees in relation to utilization of social media.

Behavioral Anchored Rating Scales (BARS)

The process of BARS 

• Exceptional performance
• Excellent performance 
• Fully competent performance 
• Marginal performance
• Unsatisfactory performance (Giordano, Manuti, & de Palma, 2016). 

Communication

Communication is important, especially in organizations. Technically skilled employees can fail terribly in their area of expertise in a situation where communication is poor. Since the 21st century, communication has been recognized as an essential skill to workers and students and affects everyone. Communication can be conceptualized as the capacity to receive or express information and ideas accurately, convincingly, and clearly (Ohland, et al., 2012). Communication entails listening and interpreting inherent information. Social media plays a greater role in establishing an effective communication channel. HR professionals should use social media as a tool to achieve effective communication. 

Leadership

Employees are usually evaluated based on their leadership traits. One of the major ways in which human resource professionals rely on is social media to get cues on a candidate’s leadership skills. The advent of digital media such as twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn has opened up channels through which an individual’s character can be examined and evaluated (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2017).

Interpersonal Skills and Teamwork

The contemporary world of business is characterized by fast-paced global competition and innovation. The HR department has an obligation to establish a team culture where workers are responsible for achieving organizational objectives. Social media comes in handy as an approach towards creating such a culture (Thornton III, Mueller-Hanson, & Rupp, 2017). 

Job Performance 

Simulation training of employees normally entails a planned intervention and hence it enhances the factors of personal job performance. Ideally, job training is directly proportionate to job performance. A mufti factor model is normally developed and incorporated in BARS to identify employee performance across many jobs. The factors inherent in this model include written and oral communication, demonstrating effort, management and administration, maintaining personal discipline, facilitating peer and team performance, job-specific proficiency, and supervision.   

Procedural Modification

An inductive approach would draw solely from commonalities of the content. It will entail the identification of explicit behavior during critical incidents. A deductive approach is applicable where an area of interest is identified as a priority. Theory and research serve as the main source for deductive and inductive approaches (Martin-Raugh, Tannenbaum, Tocci, & Reese, 2016).

Comparison to another Performance Appraisal

Management by Objective (MBO)

MBO is a systematic employee performance appraisal method used in the contemporary world. Traditional performance appraisals were normally based on opinions or perspective of the raters hence they were subject to bias. MBO incorporates an employee’s perspective on their performance.  MBO is an employer-employee method where superiors and subordinates normally set goals to be achieved within a particular timeframe. It assists employees to maintain a steady or upward performance since employers normally keep a record of employee’s performance (Islami, Mulolli, & Mustafa, 2018).

360-Degree Appraisal 

It is a modern evaluation technique where the performance of an employee is determined by certain work-related factors such as customers, supervisors, subordinates, colleagues, clients, or even spouse. An evaluator prepares and asks various questions to the above-mentioned factors and provides comprehensive feedback. A computerized system is fed with the collected information and an individual report detailing performance ratings is generated. It is considered as the most effective appraisal method because it provides all-round feedback (Karkoulian, Assaker, & Hallak, 2016). 

Strengths and weaknesses of BARS

Strengths 

BARS have the potential to improve the performance of the organization because

• They provide clear and comprehensive standards through which employee appraisal is conducted. 
• They are reliable because they are accurate 
• They are reliable due to their ability to remain constant even under different rates from different raters
• They normally provide objective feedback. 
• Critical incidents are rated effectively and their frequency evaluated. 

Weakness

• The creation and implementation process of BARS is normally expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.
• BARS require close maintenance and monitoring due to high employee turnover. Besides, jobs change with time making BARS’ maintenance high. 
• It can be demanding to managers because the process requires intensive evaluation of employee information.
• Concrete behavioral anchors normally affect other rates making it difficult to achieve specificity (Debnath, Lee, & Tandon, 2015).

Recommendations

It is recommended that structuring interviews appropriately will improve on fairness, reliability, and validity of the scores. Interviews should be standardized to achieve feasibility. Future investigations should be directed towards crowdsourcing where properties of BARS shall be obtained. Such investigation should avoid data interference such as been subjective.

References

Debnath, S. C., Lee, B. B., & Tandon, S. (2015). Fifty years and going strong: What makes Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales so perennial as an appraisal method?. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 6(2).

Giordano, M. C., Manuti, A., & de Palma, P. D. (2016). Human capital reloaded: The use of social media in human resource management. In The Social Organization: Managing Human Capital through Social Media (pp. 1-13). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Islami, X., Mulolli, E., & Mustafa, N. (2018). Using Management by Objectives as a performance appraisal tool for employee satisfaction. Future Business Journal, 4(1), 94-108.

Karkoulian, S., Assaker, G., & Hallak, R. (2016). An empirical study of 360-degree feedback, organizational justice, and firm sustainability. Journal of business research, 69(5), 1862-1867.

Martin-Raugh, M., Tannenbaum, R. J., Tocci, C. M., & Reese, C. (2016). Behaviorally anchored rating scales: An application for evaluating teaching practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 414-419.

Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Ohland, M. W., Loughry, M. L., Woehr, D. J., Bullard, L. G., Felder, R. M., Finelli, C. J., … & Schmucker, D. G. (2012). The comprehensive assessment of team member effectiveness: Development of a behaviorally anchored rating scale for self-and peer evaluation. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 11(4), 609-630.Thornton III, G. C., Mueller-Hanson, R. A., & Rupp, D. E. (2017). Developing organizational simulations: A guide for practitioners, students, and researchers. Routledge.