In this week's Three To See: Productivity, performance and changing expectations.

There is a touch of levity in my first pick which comes via Andy Headworth's blog Sirona Says:  Xerox's Information Overload Syndrome video raises some serious points on productivity and performance wrapped-up in genuine comedy (although I'm not comfortable with the dart scene at the end).

Gartner analyst, Jim Holincheck's post to his personal HCM Software blog is more sober but no less interesting as he asks What If Performance Appraisals Did Not Exist?

Holincheck skims the touch points in the employment lifecycle where performance factors (Hiring/Onboarding, Learning/Development, Career Path/Planning, Succession Planning and Compensation) and determines that:

"The answer, to me, is not to get rid of the performance review.  It is to do a better job of appraising performance and communicating with employees."

He goes on to share the following options:

1. Get rid of forced ranking, but keep calibration
2. Make sure that total compensation alignes with performance, value delivered, and the market
3. Find other ways to recognize the highest performance other than just compensation
4. Keep an ongoing performance dialogue going

Before concluding that:

"The bottom line is that I do not think performance reviews will go away because the feedback loop is critical to talent management success.  What needs to improve is the performance conversation.  Technology can help in some respects, but managers and executives need to step up their game."

Kevin Wheeler's post to ERE: Why Recruiting Good People Will Get Harder and Harder explores the changing attitudes to work of some professionals who are choosing blended careers over full-time work with a single organisation.

This phenomenon, fuelled by recent experiences of the recession, see's some workers engaged in multiple jobs, partial self-employment or other self-sustaining activity that acts as a hedge against economic uncertainty and engenders lifestyle resilience.

Wheeler observes that:

"Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to flex to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not."

What do you think of this week's Three To See?

Besides the great contribution from Josh Bersin - Today's State of Talent Management - that appeared on the Community Post earlier this week, there are three others that are worth a look:

If you're thinking about using social media as part of your talent acquisition strategy, Ben Parr's recent post on Mashable about Why Teens Dont Tweet will be very helpful.  Parr reports that Twitter is mainly used by the over 24's with those in the 45-54 year old bracket 36% more likely to visit - typically to promote business activity and to gather information and news.  The main reasons given for the lower adoption of Twitter by teens are that they have less to say and care more about engaging with close friends via Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.  Interesting stuff!

On to managing talent:

Anthony Tjan's wrote an excellent piece for Harvard Business Publishing on How to Align Employee and Company Interests by asking direct reports to list their 5 priorities for a period of time and then asking 3 simple questions:  Which priorities will have the biggest impact, which is of most interest to the individual and which is the individual most likely to make a success of?  Tjan writes "that real magic for an employee happens when these three questions produce the same answer."

Continuing the productivity theme, Dr Jim Sellner wrote a frantic post on the 3 Whys of Talent Management - For Joy, Profit and Financial Sustainability that appeared in ezinearticles.com.  In his piece Sellner illustrates how organisations are wasting money by failing to effectively manage the performance and development of employees - a view that sits neatly alongside Josh Bersin's post.

I hope you enjoy this weeks Three To Read as much as I did.

Please leave your comments.