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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."
What company do you work for? Unisys has a 1-5 ranking system on a bell curve.
More than enough BS
Sounds like an academic department in a university. No where else is the competition so high for stakes that are so low. (source unknown) Heh.
-Sean
change jobs. your company's main competitor might be interested in you.
After all, 50% of the employees are below average at any given company. Might as well cut out the deadwood.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
So join 'em. You're going to have to learn the skills necessary to step all over your coworkers in order to claim your spot at the top. You can't beat the system, so you have to play by its rules, or walk out.
Unionize and adopt a more preferable performance review structure as part of your bargained contract. It'll work wonders.
1. Start looking for a new job. That type of ranking system just leads to misery
2. Let someone in HR know how you feel, and how you think it will negatively affect the performance of your group as a team. Do this officially, in person.
3. Obtain new job, as HR will ignore you, because it was their crummy idea in the first place.
4. Write well thought out letter, addressed to your boss, CC'ing the HR department head, your department head, and the CFO, letting them know why you are leaving. Won't help you, but may help some of the poor schmucks that are still there.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, I have seen this as well - and all it leads to is employees 'hanging' each other and resentment when you get a crap mark in your review. I got an Average mark this year - again. When I protested this, I was told that I was doing the work expected of me. But I said, what of all the extra work I do outside of what you ask me to do? Oh, we expect you to do that............ I KNOW that I am a hard worker and do more than that average, and I do it good! I just give up at that point. I will be gone from the team in 90 days, that is the deadline I have set myself. I will go to another team or just leave for another job. They are getting plentiful again - honest!
So you are saying that out of a department of 100 employees you cannot find 5 who in retrospect were a mismatch, have lost interest, are underperforming due to unbeknownst-to-you problems at home, have taken up a crack cocaine habit, or other such?
It seems that we have found the first 1 in your group: you!
My company has long used a 1-5 scale (1 being the best here) for performance reviews. A year or two ago, I was talking to a friend (a manager in another area), and he told me that after telling his people what their numbers were, he was told by his management to lower them to fit the expected distribution. People weren't happy about that.
In my area, we have traditionally not had required distributions, so most people were 1s and 2s (or so I suspect--I only see my numbers). This year they told everyone to use the corporate standard distribution (or whatever they're calling it). Some managers did, and others didn't. The net result is that if your manager followed directions, you were hosed. Fortunately, they recognized that there was a problem and dropped all numbers from our department's performance reviews. So we got a happy outcome this year--they'll have to use the actual substance of our reviews to determine raises and promotions (or a dartboard).
Next year I expect it will be by the numbers.
Anyway, this is just one way that you find out from upper management how special the company thinks you are. Are you treated like a star athlete or a Walmart employee? And watch it shift as the job market changes.
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.
It is difficult for a large organization to fairly administer reviews (& the resulting raises or disciplary actions that should ensue). Doing this on a statistical basis is not unfair or inappropriate...if the sample size is big enough. The problem ensues when the ranking is pushed too far down the organization. 100 is probably big enough of a group, but minimally so. I'll bet the real issue here is that smaller groups are being forced to particpate (e.g. a manager of a group of 20 people within the 100 is being forced to pick 2 top performers and 1 bottom performer).
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.
but the forced ranking system encourages us to instead stomp on each other,
No matter how well they appear to cover their tracks, stompers get a reputation and no one trusts what they say. Including bosses.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
at least you still get to keep your stapler, right?
Thanks for translating, because I couldn't figure out if he wanted us to form an organized crime cartel or lease earlier seasons of ourselves to national networks. :)
El riesgo vive siempre!
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.
A company that decides to treat half their employees below average is a company that is doomed to fail, especially if the value created by the company is mainly created by employees (i.e. software, services, etc).
I know that by definition that ~50% of employees will be below average, but what counts is performance of these employees against the industry average, not against their immediate peers. That's what counts in the market anyways...
The forced quota system is especially bad in companies and industries where massive layoffs have been going on for the past few years.
Consider: when layoffs occur, for the most part (yes, I'm aware of politics and favortism) the ones who get laid off are the ones who would be 1's and 2's in a quota system. Obviously, that leaves behind all the 3's, 4's, and 5's who, even though they are doing the same job they have always been and possibly a lot more, will now be forced to be evaluated as 1's and 2's. A lot of folks with 4's and 5's will also be downgraded, despite the same superior quality of their work.
This system is unfair, de-motivating, and literally degrading.
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.
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
The company I work for uses a similar rating system, but requires peer reviews to be supplied to your manager to be rolled into your official review. Normally, each person writes 2-3 reviews for his peers / managers, and they have 2-3 peers write reviews for them. This means that a large part of your official review is how much you helped other team members. It's kind of a pain in the ass during review period, but it tends to almost completely eliminate the backstabbing described in the original post.
Dan
- 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.
The answer to employee backstabbing is simple: focus that instinct on the goddamn competition.
Encouraging employees to view each other as the competition is so stupid I hardly know where to begin. Just because something is a number doesn't automatically make it objective, especially if the numbers are force fit with a hammer to distribute along a gaussian curve for each department. Take a real objective number, say height, and measure the employees. You will never see anything that resembles a bell curve unless you have something like hundreds people in the unit. A bell curve is simply the curve which on average has the best fit -- the actual curves never match by inspection unless n is very large or you are measuring a feature with tiny variance.
Managing by numbers is good -- but not by any numbers. Only somebody with an incredibly shallow grasp of numbers would rate people this way. But I think there is a better way.
Imagine you have a football team, in which nobody gets to know the score, what quarter or down it is, how much yardage to goal and first down, or anything about the other team other than the color of their jerseys. But they do have a number assigned to them by their coach bsaed on how well he thinks they executed the play he called. How well do you think that team would play?
That's pretty much the situation for workers in American business.
If you want to manage by numbers, then why not teach employees how to keep score? Why not teach them how to read the financial statements and projections, and explain to them how their departmental and personal performance ties into meeting the company's objectives? How the competition stacks up, what their strengths and vulnerabilities are? I think that what's behind the "they don't need to know the numbers" attitude is a fear of bad news. As a manager, I think you should never run from bad news, but face it and improve upon the situation as much as you can. If the company is doing bad, the employees (at least the ones I'd hire) will figure it out, and rumors are always worse than news. If they understand and are engaged in the company's strategy then they can help the company respond to challenges.
As far as the deadwood is concerned, I think it's easier under my system to clear it out. Instead of being forced to assign somebody a low number, I simply say that due to whatever reason you Mr. Employee aren't contributing to our departmental/corporate goals. He may be the greatest employee ever, but we just don't need what he does, or he may simply not be doing his job -- it doesn't matter. We can plan to either change his contribution to the company or transition him out. Except in cases of gross irresponsibility, the employee can leave with his head held high instead of going out the door painted with the scarlet letter.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've been on both sides of this issue. I don't understand how techies can argue against the fact that half of their team is below average *for the team*.
Many posters have claimed that management is not doing their job if there are people at the bottom. But relative to others, there are always people at the bottom. Forced ranking seems to be the only way for a middle manager to get a picture of who needs work and to get the line manager to acknowledge it.
This forced ranking was popularized by the GE management book a while back, where people were ranked A/B/C with a breakdown of 10/80/10 percent.
Being in the 10% of C's doesn't mean you get fired, it is a tool for management to decide who to focus on. The correct solution might simply be to move to a different group or position better suited to the persons skills or interests. Or it might mean more training. Or yes it might mean they will be put on a performance plan to make managements expectations clear, possibly leading to termination.
Such need not be public. The forced rankings can be divorced from annual review ranks, where someone could receive a meets expectations and still be a C. It could be managements job to figure out how to make this merely good employee be great.
For example, you might have a developer who writes good code, but who is very slow because they don't use tools to automate there work. I've seen this a lot. Getting a traditionally IDE oriented developer to learn to use command line tools, perl, or a decent editor with macros can increase their productivity. You wouldn't just fire them off the bat because they aren't as good as your other developers.
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
That's not entirely true. IBM does use a numbering system (1-4 with 1 being roughly equivalent to "walks on water like Jesus"), but in my 7 years there, I never found, discovered, or believed that it was based on a bell curve-type assignment except for one year (2002) when the economy was crap, and our CIO at the time mandated that there would be no 1's given out that year without his express approval.
Coincidentally or not, I received a '1' that year and the two years previous to that. YMMV, so if you find yourself in the bottom of the pile, find another pile somewhere else. The only reason I was able to survive at IBM for 7 years was because I worked for an independently-operated subsidiary (Tivoli) for 5 of those years.
If I found myself in a company that rated people on a curve, guaranteeing that some percentage will receive low scoring each year, I wouldn't stay very long even if I was always at the top of that rating scale. It's a mentality problem that stretches all the way to the top.
Again, YMMV. If you're not happy, find some new cheese and move on.
Firings will continue until moral improves. Those with the lowest moral will be fired first, as to more significantly increase the average moral rating.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I have to deal with a similar ranking.
I realize this is not for everyone, but I solve the problem through apathy. Regardless of my rating, I do the best job that I can on any task that I am assigned.
When I was actually in the middle of a business embroglio but remained steadfast in my particular conviction I was told "this will not look good on your performance review" I used a line that I'd been waiting for years to say in just this situation:
"The only way you can hurt me with a performance review is to roll it up and poke me in the eye"
I've been at this job 22 years, and fully expect to be here for many to come (by choice).
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
Acutally, where I work management is very good about sharing with us the kind of numbers you speak of.
Good.
Again, I agree with most of the things you posted -- I just don't see them as any sort of argument against a ranking system of evaluation.
Well, ranking is very different animal from scoring which in turn is very different from scoring according to a predefined curve, which is often the next thing that happens after single number scoring is introduced.
Any good manager has his reports ranked -- it's critical. At any moment I know if disaster strikes, who the weak link is, and who has to be preserved. I keep this information close to my vest unless disaster is looming, in which case I will give the weak link heads up so he's not caught unawares. It doesn't do anybody any good to know what their rank is, and more to the point it doesn't do my employer any good. Also note that this rank is not a measure of the employee's talent, attitude, or virtuousness, but simply a ranking of the impact of the loss of that person on the team. I once worked with a guy who was by objective measures the weakest link -- least intelligent, least industrious, least knowledgeable. And this was in an outfit full of bright, knowledgeable, hard driving people. He turned out to be very important because he was the only person who didn't scare crap out of the customers. Mind you the other guys were respected, just that they didn't make normal people feel at ease. If I had been his manager, I'd have ranked him ahead of the more deserving employees, because he brought someting to the team that was missing. That's what capitalism is about: it's not rewarding virtue, its efficiently using resources.
Measurements are of course useful, if you have several good ones to work with. But you have to be aware of some simple facts about measurements. First, as pointed out above, in small to medium sample sizes, parameters like performance or height that vary widely will never fit a bell curve by inspection. Also: no one measure can tell it all. Trying to boil down a person to a single number is really a form of laziness: I don't want to think about how to use this person most effectively, just give me a number. Having a battery of scores on which an employee could be described would be useful, if you (A) had the instruments to measure these dimensions, and (B) still had latitude for judgement. Lacking good instruments for measuring these qualities, employees can still be evaluated using qualitiative judgements in these areas.
Measurements that are forced to fit a curve are completely worthless. In such a system employees are not being measured, they are being sorted into ranked pigeonholes and then this rank is being treated as statistically rational data. These scores are presumably compared across departments, which is pure malarky, one step down the ladder of statistical meaninglessness from adding up eye color. The practical example of this is two managers, one with a team that is composed of the best employees in the company, the other which is is composed of the worst. By "grading on a curve", we have made the two teams look identical, whereas we'd be better off dropping everyone on team B than losing a single member of team A.
Forcing each manager to fit his employees to any predefined curve is antithetical to the very concept of measurement. It's the ultimate laziness: give me a number -- but don't give me the real one, give me one that suits my needs.
That said, it's perfectly understandable why higher ups should wish for such a system. If it worked, it would be possible to make staffing decisions based on a simple arithmetical formula, and eliminate the need for judgements to be made at any level of management above the direct supervisor. In fact such a system would be too good, since you could replace managers with spreadsheets.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.