I am looking for information about employee performance reviews in
virtual or global teams

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Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 24 Aug 2003 13:25 PDT

Hello -

Are you looking specifically for "employee performance reviews" or
examples of them, or are you looking for information ABOUT "employee
performance reviews" -- and say, how to conduct them?

Thanks,

jbf

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Clarification of Question by rbrenowitz-ga on 26 Aug 2003 07:37 PDT

Some examples might be nice...but mostly I am looking for information
about how to conduct performance reviews in virtual organizations.  I
am not looking for general info about performance reviews.  I was an
HR director for many years, so I'm OK in general.  I am interested in
how people are dealing with the complexities of doing this virtually.

Rbrenowitz --

This is a very interesting question, especially because I've worked
with a pair of international companies and they've been very different
in how they handled this process.

What makes a "virtual" team unique is distance, so quality of
communications is one of the first things that everyone looks at. 
This Microsoft article is very specific on steps to make virtual teams
work, but note that while this article calls for performance
evaluations every year, most experts call twice a year a minimum:
Microsoft Bcentral
"How to Make Remote Managers Successful"
http://www.bcentral.com/articles/workshop/178.asp

Meta Group, an IT (information technology) market research company in
Stamford, CT, has written quite a bit about managing virtual teams.  A
2002 report said that within 5 years, 25% of the largest firms will
"dynamically assemble, restructure, and dissolve virtual teams on
demand."  As a result, Meta Group recommends a pro-active strategy of
keeping detailed skills inventories and augmenting that with training:
Datamation
"Meta Report: Hit The 'Refresh' Button On Employee Skills" (May 8,
2002)
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/it_res/article.php/1041391 

Virtual team management is an issue that's important to the IT
industry for several reasons, so you may find other resources from the
Meta Group website of interest, particularly a recent report on "Best
Practices in Project Estimation and Performance Management."  You'll
be required to register to get summaries of specific reports, but
they're generally much more detailed than you'll find at competing
computer market research companies' pages:
Meta Group
Home Page
http://www.metagroup.com/cgi-bin/inetcgi/jsp/home.do

A great overall resource, with a large number of issues and
bibliography for further research and it has an incredibly good
cross-reference:
"Employee Performance Reviews/Appraisals" (Carter McNamara, 1999)
http://www.managementhelp.org/emp_perf/perf_rvw/perf_rvw.htm

There's quite a section on the McNamara web page on the issues of team
management and the extent to which individual vs. team contribution is
judged.  This is simply one article from that section:
UCSD HR Department
"Managing Team Performance Issues" (2000)
http://www-hr.ucsd.edu/~staffeducation/guide/teams.html

CIO Magazine's CIO.com website is another location that's rich with
information on "virtual teams."  Though this article is more on
process, it does include several aspects of evaluation and recommends
detailed time-and-activity tracking:
CIO.com
"Virtual Success" (Kazim Isfahani, May 5, 2002)
http://www.cio.com/analyst/030502_rfgonline.html

Three books come up when doing a search on the topic of virtual teams,
all of which cover strategy, case histories and performance management
systems.  I've included the Amazon.com reviews in the links below:
"Virtual Teams That Work," Cohen & Gibson, John Wiley & Sons, 2003
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0787961620/qid=1061916950/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5800589-5315120?v=glance&s=books#product-details

There are 54 sample pages on the Amazon site for this Lipnack & Stamps
book.
The Lipnack & Stamps book details what specific companies are doing. 
An interesting follow-up activity would be to investigate specific
performance review systems, particularly at innovative companies like
Federal Express -- which turns the table and has employees rate
managers:
"Virtual Teams," Lipnack & Stamps, John Wiley & Sons, 1997. 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471388254/ref=lib_dp_TBCV/104-5800589-5315120?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader&img=54#reader-link

"Mastering Virtual Teams -- Strategies Tools & Techniques That
Succeed," Duarte & Snyder, Jossey-Bass, 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0787955892/qid=1061917287/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5800589-5315120?v=glance&s=books#product-details

You might also wish to check some fee-based services, if they're
available from your local library or a nearby university library.  I
did a quick check of Proquest Magazines to see what is in professional
journals and there are some interesting possible articles.  For
example, this study was done by 3 university professors and says that
conflict resolution is a key attribute in managing virtual teams:
"Getting it together: Temporal coordination and conflict management in
global virtual teams," Massey, Montoya-Weiss, Song
Academy of Management Journal, December 2001


I started with the following Google search strategy, which yields
43,000 links, including many good general purpose links and discussion
groups that you may find helpful:
"performance reviews" + employee 

It helps to add a term to narrow this search and the latter search
will give you some interesting reviews of projects, particularly with
U.S. Department of Defense groups which have tried to assess their
teaming efforts:
"performance reviews" + employee + remote
"performance reviews" + employee + "virtual teams"

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Really good answer and gave me lots of tips...A couple of the
references were ones I already had, so I knew they did not have what I
wanted.