President Obama wants to computerize and standardize all medical records within the next 5 years. An ambition some call audacious and others call imperative. Proponents suggest that Electronic Medical Records (EMR) technologies would, among other things, ultimately facilitate a higher standard of care to patients. Essentially, an integrated system would allow a patient to accumulate a comprehensive medical history that could be accessed at a moment’s notice by healthcare professionals wherever and whenever. Change your primary care physician? Doesn’t matter. Out of town with a medical emergency? No worries. Want to give your neurologist a peek at your cardiologist’s notes? Consider it done. Are there privacy issues? Yep…and others. But doesn’t it make sense that the people being paid top dollar to manage your health have the complete picture of what works, what doesn’t, what’s strong, what’s not? Sure does to me.
So what if we could do the same thing with employee performance records? What if we could standardize at least a piece of those records so the data could be transferrable to new employers? Shouldn’t your development continue where it left off at the old employer? Seems to me that your new boss would like the opportunity to really understand your weaknesses (as opposed to whatever canned answer you gave him/her during your interview.) Seems that might actually give him/her a chance to address them head-on before they creep up somewhere down the road and hinder everybody’s progress. It would also give him/her a chance to quickly highlight and truly leverage your strengths. Tim Sackett and Fistful of Talent had an interesting post the other day about carrying the “hickeys” of workplace transgressions around with you from job to job. I’m not sure any one has to see your hickey until you’re actually on the job. And as long as there was some understanding that they couldn’t kick you out for having a hickey (after all, we’ve all had them) then why not just get them out in the open?
I think about the many years of performance reviews I had with my former employers. It kind of bums me out that those are just sitting in a box somewhere in a storage room…worthless to anything I’m doing today. Electronic Performance Records (EPR)…hmmmmmmmm.
Photo Credit: peteterranova.blogspot.com/
Categories: Performance Management, Technology Tags: Electronic Medical Records, HR, HRIS, Human Capital, Human Resources, Obama Health Plan, Performance, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Weaknesses in Job Interviews