I’m going to play my 2-year-old self today. “No-no-no-no-NO.” What brought that on? Hearing the proposal for a new website called “Unvarnished.” It allows for employees to be reviewed anonymously, for the world to see, with no way of removing a negative review.
Like the sites RateMyProfessors or RateMDs, the intention is to reflect a truly unvarnished perspective of a person’s professional reputation, versus those that are carefully managed, like on LinkedIn for instance.
I won’t even go into all the ways this could harm good people, despite the stated safeguards to prevent abuse and defamation. My professional (and personal) reaction is, I would do everything possible so that the Human beings in my organization would not feel the need to resort to this.
It’s imperative that organizations have mechanisms in place to make it safe for people to give feedback - feedback ranging from awkward to that which has serious consequences. It’s imperative for managers to get a range of real perspectives when evaluating employees’ performance. And it’s also imperative that employees understand and trust the system by which their performance is evaluated.
If your constituents don’t have internal means to say what they really think, safely… if there are not checks-and-balances to support their trust in your processes… you’ve got problems. And a mechanism to blow off steam online is not going to make it better. We as HR professionals and managers need to attend to the Human need for an internal place-to-turn so that no one feels cornered enough to choose a more harmful option.
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