Posted by Dina Douglass on February 13, 1998 at 20:34:08:

In Reply to: Knowledge sharing in performance appraisals posted by Julie Page on February 12, 1998 at 14:30:07:

A recent new hire told me that Ernst & Young, the accounting and consulting firm, incorporates knowledge sharing into its performance measures to good effect. However, another colleague, who also hails from E&Y, disputes that fact. Both worked in knowledge management, so it's interesting to hear their different perspectives.

I have also heard that McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, requires its people to post sales documents when they open a job, and post deliverables when they close a job. As this is part of the engagement opening and close procure, one could say that this is linked to an individual's or team's perfomance measures. (I do not have first-hand information on this.)

Those who argue against making knowledge sharing part of a performance measurement system might say that it is impossible to gauge the value of knowledge contributed, since this is such a hard thing to grasp.

For instance, if Employee 1 posts three press releases, and Employee 2 posts three proposals, which would seem to be more helpful? At first look, I would say the person who posted the proposals, as this will no doubt save others from re-inventing the wheel in the future. But the usefulness of knowledge contributed -- whether gleaned from a discussion or taken straight from the Net -- depends on the specific needs of the person who ends up using the information. If a client needs the information in a press release posted in one of our firm's knowledge sharing systems, and we can easily retrieve it, then we have made our client happy. But the person who evaluates the performance of Employee 1 may well be inclined to think that this person didn't try as hard as Employee 2.

In the past, I have tended to argue *for* linking knowledge sharing to performance measures. However, if everyone in a company as large as ours was required to contribute some form of knowledge to get a good perfomance rating, I suspect that the quality of knowledge in our on-line systems might be diluted. It's hard to say what might happen.

Just a few thoughts. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you'd like to discuss further.

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Knowledge sharing in performance appraisals Boris 20:24:19 3/02/98 (1)
  • Re: Knowledge sharing in performance appraisals cesar cromwell belen 22:45:14 7/02/98 (0)
• Re: Knowledge sharing in performance appraisals Martyn R Jones 03:09:42 2/17/98 (0)

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