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Fighting the Forced Ranking of Employees?
Allen asks: "The company I work for has a forced ranking system for performance reviews. Employees are ranked from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, in a bell curve arrangement. Department managers are required to identify: 10% as 5s (excels), 20% as 4's (exceeds), 50% as 3s (fully meets), 15% as 2s (partially meets), and 5% as 1s (requires action). In an department of 100 employees, this means that 5 employees must be identified and labeled as ones, and at least 20 employees as below average. The net result is every employee in the department is competing against their peers to increase (or maintain) their ranking. We're supposed to work together as a team, and support each other to get the product out the door, but the forced ranking system encourages us to instead stomp on each other, and stab each other in the back, in order to secure a higher ranking. That and, after working our collective rears off to get a new product out the door, several of us were given below average rankings that we believe are undeserved. How would you fight a forced ranking system at your job? I enjoy the technology I work on, and I enjoy working with my peers, but this forced ranking system is very demoralizing."
Unionize and adopt a more preferable performance review structure as part of your bargained contract. It'll work wonders.
OTOH, the "forced" rankings are, in my opinion, a good thing. It requires managers to not take the easy way out and just rank (relatively) poor performers as "average" and avoid confrontation. Also, it allows people to know where they stand within the company. The company I work for uses a system somewhat like the OP's, and though initially I was against it, after giving it some thought I think it's a good thing.
As for the backstabbing, etc. -- that is a problem that management needs to address. That sort of thing usually becomes pretty obvious after a short time and it shouldn't be tolerated. If those who are ranked lower than they want to be are given the support of management to address their areas of weakness, they can (and will) move up in ranking, unless everyone else does a better job of improving.
Your working for a bunch of A$$H0LES running the company who care more about being sadistic to its employees rather than focus on customer satisfacation.
Start looking for a new job and when you get one, get revenge by quiting on the spot with out notice and leave them hanging dry.
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
The company I currently work for has a rating system similar to the one you described. Recently, they started to enforce a quota for each of the rating categories because the vast majority of employees were being ranked as exceeding or far exceeding their manager's expectations. Now, I work with a stellar group of engineers, but if all of us are always exceeding our managers expectations, maybe they should raise their expectations.
When the quota system was introduced, we all bristled at the idea of being forced to participate. We have to get ranked on our teams (with anywhere from 3 to 10 people), ranked within our projects (10 to 100 people), and ranked within our department (~1000 people), although the department rankings are broken down into seniority groups. Frankly, its frightening because as the groups get larger and the managers further from the cube farm, its harder and harder to make decisions about who is doing good work, and who isn't. It also brings into question how it is that we demonstrate value to our management.
But after all of our moaning, we realized that what our managers were trying to do is establish some objective framework in which they could measure us against objective metrics. I would much rather have a manager be forced to rank me with my peers with a policy document in hand to help decide which of us is the most productive, rather than have him pick people to promote and give raises to without ANY objective metric or policy. I don't go out to bars with my boss, but I don't want that to effect my performance review.
My point is this - ranking systems are an attempt at objectively gauging the performance of individuals. Quota systems are in place so that managers don't opt out of the hard part of telling people that they aren't as productive as their peers. Its harsh, and it isn't flawless, but compared with the alternative of an entirely subjective promotions/raises process, I'll take the ranking.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
If the employees also got to rate each other on trustworthiness or teamwork, then the backstabbing would drop. It sound liek the current system rewards backstabbing. If you change the ranking mechanism so that screwing someone gets you a low rank, then you won't do it.
Ranking systems are not neccessarily bad, they just need to be designed to provide incentives for desirable behavior. If a company wants teamwork, then make that part of the ranking .
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is a company looking to eliminate staff. The whole concept that 5% of the staff "requires action" should be taken as an insult. The hiring manager is responsible for hiring people who can do the work. If a manager is doing his job, he should be taking care of any "problem" employees, as the problems come to light. The only way a company could have 5% dead heads is if management isn't doing it's job. So, the only reasonable view that 5% of the staff must be imcompetent, is that 5% of the staff will be let go soon after appraisals. Most staff should get a 3 or a 4, exceptional cases should get 2's or 5's. Next to no one should be a 1.
In my experience, managers begin to keep people around specifically because they're bad (although not unacceptable) performers. You need them to assign them their low ratings. Juggle their rankings each evaluation so that they don't get fired, and occasionally trade them from department to department. When layoffs appear, shed them first... but don't shed them before then, because, just as there are quotas for evaluations, there are quotas for layoffs.
It's a stupid game.
Leaving is the simple solution - find a nice job somewhere that they don't care how you perform, the problem is that loosers and slackers will tend to hang out there
Game the systems: Figure out how you will be rated, and maximize your value to the management team. Bring your concerns about how other people are gaming the system. It turns out in environments I have been in with Ranking systems - the review feedback on backstabbers has not been very good, and people that genuinely help their team mates tend to do very well. YMMV depending on your manager.
I will also say that it is very important for you to trust your first line manager in this environment - they will be defending the rating that you get and are responsible for getting you bumped up, or having some other manager have you bumped down. It turns out that the managers are much more competetive in this environment than the employees ever will be (you ever seen two managers get into fisty cuffs with several managers trying to seperate them after a heated discussion on who's employee is better ?)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
- Attitude - This is very important. You must have a positive attitude about the company and your work. Let everyone know that you are excited about the company and moving up the ladder within the company. Never be satisfied with what you have, always want more.
- Your Boss - You have to find out from your boss what it takes to get a top rating. Have a one on one meeting with your boss and let your boss know that you really want a top rating. Get them to tell you what steps you need to take. Follow up and make sure you are on the right track throughout the year.
- Documentation - You can't count on your boss to document your progress so do it yourself. Keep track of every project you are on and every class you take that can help you in your job.
- Projects - Get involved in projects any way you can. Your company probably has Six Sigma or BPI. Take advantage of these opportunities. If you see something that needs improvement, write up a proposal and sumbit it to you boss or whoever is in charge of such things.
- Flexibility - This not only means being willing to work overtime, but it means working out of your area as well. Look for opportunities to cross-train in other areas. Be willing to take on additional responsibility for no additional pay. Be eager to learn.
- Be an Expert - Become an expert in your job. Even if your job is nothing but cleaning toilets, know everything about it.
- Be a Team Player - Customers aren't just the poeple at home using your product, your teammates are also your customers. Find out what you can do to make other people's jobs easier down the line. Never say "That's not my job." Be willing to help anyone.
- Do Things by the Book - Always try to follow company policies and processes.
- Accept Responsibility - If you mess up, don't be afraid to admit responsibility. Apologize for messing up and ask what you can do to fix the problem to make sure it doesn't happen again.
You don't have to stab people in the back to get a good rating, but remember that no one else is going to help you. You are the one who is ultimately responsible for your rating. Don't let others discourage you either. If someone calls you a "company man" or brown noser, just smile and shrug. Also remember that showing up every day and doing your job well is what they expect you to do. While this is admirable it will only get you and average rating. You have to go above and beyond to get that top rating. I know you can do it so get after it!Smeghead every day of the week.
a) They don't trust their managers to do the hard job of making honest assessments.
b) They assume there are lurking low performers that have to be rooted out and elimininated.
c) They treat people as standard "parts".
Really, how long do you want to work for people who think like that?
You can generally not change a bad work situation - put that place behind you
I used to work for a company with a policy (a quiet one mind you, but I was a manager) of every year identifying the bottom 5% of the employees and laying them off. This wasn't just forced rating distributions - sorry, you rated low this year - you are gone. And 5% was expected to be identified every year.
I don't work there anymore...and I wouldn't work in the environment you talk about either unless I simply had no choice.
Obviously there are WAY too many people too high up in corporate America with ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE how to motivate and manage people.
The heights of genius are only measurable by the depths of stupidity
My company has a similar system, but they also enforced performance pruning--where you remove the employees who are marked as unacceptable and rehire those positions. This means that 5% (or in our case 10%) of the company was subject to being laid off for performance reasons every year.
The system is in place to ensure that maangers actually spend time on evaluations and don't give everyone high marks. This is a good ideal, but a very poor method of achieving this goal. I am no HR person and I don't have any earth shattering ideas for solving the problem.
What also bites about this system is when you get an above average, but no excellent performance review, and there are no comments for room for improvement. Your manager says that there is no way you could be better than you are, but you still do not get an excellent review because of the curve.
And they wonder why we have violence in the workplace....
No Not Again! Its whats for dinner.
I wrote software for a system like this once, but there was a few SLIGHT changes
.com boom)
The company had an OBJECTIVE way to measure the perfomance of each office or unit (proffit/loss - the bottom line) - if you were in a support group, like IS/IT, your departments rating was the SAME as the group(s) you supported - aka, your DEPARTMENTS rating was going to be a 1-5
Now, here's the important part - EVERYONE in the department starts the review off with the AVERAGE review of the department - aka, your department was a 3, everyone starts off at a 3, your department was a 4, everyone starts at a 4!
Your manager could then increase/decrease each person's review by 1 point, however, the AVERAGE of the department could NOT change. So, if you bumped a person UP from, say 3 to 4 (higher was better), you had to DROP someone from a 3 to a 2
Then inside each ranking, you had
1)Job category
and
2)Position in pay scale for that category
You were either "Underpaid", "Average" or "Overpaid" (MY terms, not theirs) Your raise amount differed by which bracket you were in - a 4 who was in the bottom bracket could expect a much better raise than a 4 who was in top bracket. A 2 in the middle or top had better not be expecting a raise - they weren't getting one, where a bottom 2 MIGHT. The 1s? At BEST they were getting warning notes, if not a pink slip
I traveled around the country with the HR folks installing the review database and data. Security was VERY tight. How tight? The server where this would be installed had ALL it's passwords LOCKED OUT, including all Admin passwords, except for MINE, and that was a random password generated at Home office. During the 1-2 days that the database existed on that server, it was NOT backed up, it was NOT in production, it was ONLY on the local segement, and ONLY the managers were allowed on a PC on that segment
It was an "interesting" time - when we walked into the office for "review time" you could SEE the sweat - the GOOD news is that almost all units were 3+. ONCE, and ONLY once did I walk into a field office that was rated a 2, and that was mostly because there were 2 departments that were rated 1 in the building. Let's put it this way - it was NOT pretty for those 2 departments - out of about 20 employees in those departments, I think 5 were left the next day. The FUN days were when you walked into a field office that was a 4 or 5. Those offices 1)Had their act together, and 2)Usually had enough of a clue to KNOW it - there was no sweat, and when we left at the end of 2 days, everyone was happy (10% raises were common for "average paid" line folks (more for lower paid), and this was before the
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Many years ago, exactly this type of situation was one of the principle reasons that I decided to quit being a manager. As part of a corporate reorganization, we had assembled a team that was truly excellent -- everyone had been in the top third of the performance "ladder" in their previous organization. The next department over had not done nearly so well in the reorg and had a lot of dead wood. During a budget crisis, each department was required to put together a 5% list of the people that they would let go (fortunately, the crisis was more imagined than real and no cuts were made). One of the last chores I did before I went back to just being on the technical staff was to discuss everyone in my group's career plan with them. For two of them, I had to suggest that they might want to look for a position in a different department so that they could be "stars" rather than "duds".
At that time, there were only a handful of places where I could do the work that I wanted to do, and all of them used a system like this. I could live with it as a worker, but not as a manager. Still not sure, despite many years, if retreating from management rather than staying on and trying to change the system was the right thing to do or not.
I'm just trying to explain the background of this concept, since people seem surprised at this when it is considered management 101. The GE doctrine was 10%, but my company was more reasonable at 5%.
Yes, the whole point is continual improvement so there is always a new 10%. And yes sometimes someone that was good enough last year is now on the bottom. But we are talking across large teams, not small teams. if you aren't talking about 50+ people or maybe 100+ the numbers are too small. yes you can assemble a great 10 person team, but over that you its hard to keep perfection.
For what it is worth, the PHB's are included in the ranking process as well, at least at my company. That is how we get rid of the PHB's that are problematic as well.
And honestly, if you are at Sun (as another person commented) or another firms with PHBs that don't get it, then by all means vote with your feet and get out of there.
Bell curve does have a logical basis.
Take engineering stats and learn about it.
Random process => normal distribution = bell curve.
Yes, you could get all the good people in one group, but that would be very unlikely. Possilbe, but unlikely, just like walking (tunneling) through a wall.
I once TAd a class with 200 students. Amazingly bell curve performance.
If you have to cut someone, wouldn't you rather it be based on a defensible metric of some sort rather than some arbitrary "suzie is cute, so I cut john". Yeah, it promotes backstabin and my for myself attittude.
Wrong! You are making an easy mathematical error, but fortunately it is easy to understand your error if you are willing to think about statistics for a moment.
"(T)he fact that half of their team is below average *for the team" is not a fact, and it is actually extremely unlikely for any team. The "normal distribution" applies (when it does) to very large samples. The smaller the group, the less applicable the normal distribution is. This is one reason why "grading on a curve" is absurd in anything but huge classes, and arguable even there.
Even your minimal claim has simple counterexamples, eg: You've got six people on a team. Five are ordinary and indistinguishable in ability. One is great. In that case, Five are below average. While extreme, this is only a simple case. If you look at likely cases, most of them don't divide neatly in two, neither do they fit a normal distribution, which the GE example approximates with three values instead of two.
The number of people one manager rates is small enough that the normal distribution will almost certainly not apply.
If you have trouble with this, sit down with a coin and flip it, graphing as you go. Even with exactly two integer options, the distribution will not be 50/50 for quite for some time, although the longer you flip, the more those discrepancies will vanish into the noise.
Hell, I'll write a script using a RNG to demonstrate it. I've argued this before. I'm only bothering now, because in your case it is important.
Another example that will obviously violate your expectations. Imagine a task that is easy to do to a certain level of ability, and improvement after that point is very slow and difficult to distinguish. Imagine also that the ramp up speed is fairly fast, but before that point, performance is simply inadequate. Now imagine a team where most folks have been doing this for long enough to be good enough. Maybe a few are better, but not by much. Now there is one new guy who is utterly incompetent. Once again, most are above average. Again, this is an extreme example, but not an uncommon one at most workplaces.
If this isn't what you mean by "average" you shouldn't use mathematical terms, and if you want to define a midpoint that isn't "average," you need a statistics course before you'd better inflict it upon other people. Forcing data to match an arbitrary curve is dishonest or ignorant.
Your methods are unquestionably screwing many of your employees. This is math, not opinion, even if you regard evaluations as arbitrary, which again, they'd better not be. As a manager, you really need to understand how wrong you are. This is logic worthy only of the true PHB.
Your example isn't even the same as the GE example. If you have an odd number, then obviously half are not below average, so your simple rule is already broken in at least half of the possible cases. This doesn't apply to the more complex (although equally wrong for other reasons above) GE example you cite. Nonetheless, your claim is demonstrably different from the GE example, and you should be able to tell the difference. In the GE example, people will be clustered at the 80% point, and thus, only ten percent will be below average.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
If the goal is only to stay out of the bottom 5%, that seems easy. Realistically, at any given time, at least one out of twenty employees is probably actively fucking things up and causing problems. So if you do absolutely nothing, you should be above those people, and out of the bottom 5%. Easy.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I agree, some times burning bridges is necessary.
Many moons ago, I was leaving a job which still needed my skills. They weren't able to find someone to replace me and I agreed to stay on as "on-call" working 10-20 hours a week until a replacement was found. On my last "official" work-day as a full time employee, my final pay-check was supposed to be provided to me (arrangements had already been made). In stead, the payroll department insisted that I wasn't to get my final check until the last day of the month (as was the practice with all "on-call" personnel -- by the way, my last day happened to fall on the first of the month.
I spent two days argueing against the corporate buracracy. I gave up, filed an official "resignation letter" and demanded my final paycheck within 48 hours (as required by california law) and stated that failure would result in a complaint to the labor board and applicable fines.
I had my check the same day, I refuesed to work "on-call" and the company lost about 30% of their clients (averaging about $800k/month) due to their inflexability.
End result: my old employeer bacame more "employee friendly". It had been once, when privately owned -- during my time there, they were sold to Corning and became bottom-line-zombies. The loss of a few million in revenue tought them that happy employees == better bottom line.