Paper trail

Uh-oh. Look what just showed up on our desktop — one more indictment of paper-based business procedures, this one from research firm AberdeenGroup. In its latest report on enterprise technology, Aberdeen recommends replacing the annual paper review of employee performance with software that measures performance on an ongoing basis. We concede that today’s workforce management apps do some pretty amazing things — provide managerial coaching, connect with training and learning management systems, tie into payroll or merit pay programs, offer employee and manager self-service interfaces, handle the assignment of goals across divisions or functional areas. But whether technology should augment or replace paper (along with the much-derided “soft” skill of actually talking to your employees), we leave to you to decide.