Evaluating an Effective Online Forum

This activity is important because professionals increasingly hold online discussions to make workplace decisions and coordinate their work.

The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate your understanding of effective posting practices on online discussion forums.

Read the discussion forum below which shows several employees' posts about how to develop a better performance review system. Then, answer the questions that follow.

Here are portions of an online forum about a companys performance review system:

(1) Jackson: Hi team, this week well use this forum to discuss our performance review system. Specifically, we want to explore the benefits and drawbacks about the timing of our reviews. Currently, our reviews are conducted annually. The HR team wants to know what we think about quarterly reviews. The HR team wants us to share our views with them by September 10.

(2) Cynthia: Ive never experienced quarterly reviews before, so its hard for me to say if thats better. My hunch is quarterly reviews would be more fair and helpful. But, I also assume they take a lot of extra time for our managers. @Erin I think your last company held quarterly reviews. What are your experiences with more frequent reviews? Has anyone else worked at a company with more frequent reviews? Tell us what it was like.

(3) Erin: @Cynthia your assumptions match my experience. I enjoyed getting more frequent feedback. But, when I was a manager, it was a crushing responsibility because the company expected me to conduct the reviews without lightening my load elsewhere. @Nigel thanks for sharing your experiences with monthly reviews. You mentioned the reviews are more like check-ins that dont require so much time by the managers. Totally makes sense to me. @Vilma also think your comments about adding peer reviews makes a lot of sense and relieves managers.

(4) Nigel: Hi all, theres one discussion point I hope we can meet in person (or by online conference) to discuss. I appreciate the HR team wants our input about the frequency of reviews, but Im worried that were not addressing one of the problems: perceived fairness of the reviews. I believe in 15 minutes, we could work out a few common concerns to share with the HR group from our whole team.

(5) Jackson: Thanks for your comments, team. Overall, here are what I think are the key take-aways: (a) we want more feedback, so quarterly reviews may be helpful; (b) we dont want to create an unreasonable burden on managers; and (c) we want more conversation around objectivity and fairness of the reviews. At this point, I propose I draft our comments into a short report for your review. I also suggest we set up a one-hour meeting to review our teams report.

What strategy in section 1 most contributes to an effective forum?

Multiple Choice

• This post summarizes and suggests next steps.

• This post poses questions to garner input from others.

• This post seeks in-person conversation for more sensitive topics.

• This post shows appreciation for other teammates and their ideas.

• This post lays out the purpose of the forum clearly.