Slashdot Mirror
GE Considers Scrapping The Annual Raise (bloomberg.com)
A user shares a report that details General Electric's rethinking of the annual raise. Bloomberg reports: "GE executives are reviewing whether annual updates to compensation are the best response to the achievements and needs of employees. The company may also scrap the longstanding and much-imitated system of rating staff on a five-point scale. Decisions on both issues may come within the next several months, spokesperson Valerie Van den Keybus said by phone." "We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper, said in an e-mailed response to questions. It will involve "being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, acknowledging that employees and managers are already thinking beyond annual compensation in this space." In response to this news, ErichTheRed writes: First it was "stack ranking," the process where GE fires the bottom-rated 20% of the workforce every year. Now, a new HR trend may be brewing at GE that is destined to be copied by MBAs everywhere if it takes hold. Personally, in terms of cargo-cult HR trends, I'd take Google's open office nightmare over this one. What do you think this would do to employment stability if widely enacted? I can definitely see banks rethinking 30 year mortgages, for example...
I bet real money the executive compensation packages will continue to grow unabated.
The cockroach that came up with this one will get an extra bonus for the year.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
The thing about performance appraisals is that they are a process. What is good about process is that while in many cases it's not required its good at rounding up the edge cases. It assures fairness in opportunity. Otherwise the squeaky wheels get 90% of management's attention. it is also a chain. It's a time when middle and upper management communicate about employees. it's a time when every employee gets time with the boss. All of these things of course should happen all the time but they can't. there isn't enough demand or time so instead we have to reserve time for it. Thus even though for most employees the process is perfunctory it's not perfunctory for everyone. Also you get surpises. You hear things you wouldn't have heard about aspirations and frustrations in these 1 on 1s because the framework of telling what you did the last year brings it out. It's a time when a manager can tell you that if you want a certain new job what you need to change to get it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That's right, it's all about "being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards." Scott Adams already figured out this system 20 years ago.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Then they left to get another 5-10% at a new job down the street.
And we laid off the bottom 20%, leaving us staffed at 60% to do all the work.
WTF, and management wonders why we can't get anything done.
As for me? I'd be tempted to cross GE of my list of places to work, except they weren't on it in the first place.
Exactly. Here is what happens to me in EVERY job with this review nonsense:
First year. Great review! You're a rock star. 5% bonus.
Next year: Good review. 4% bonus.
Third year: That guy's getting paid too much, find a way to screw him because he failed to read one e-mail, even though he saved the company millions. 1% bonus.
Find new programming job: 10% bonus.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
How much do you want to bet that executive pay won't be following this new model?
Give me what I want and deserve or another employer will. That's worked pretty well for me my entire career. Sometimes they gave me what I wanted. Sometimes another employer did.
Reminding me to feel grateful for a couple percent you gave me at my formal review is annoying. I don't feel grateful. I feel like a cog in the machine.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"We uncovered an opportunity to improve the way we reward people for their contributions," GE's head of executive development, Janice Semper said. "It will involve being flexible and re-thinking how we define rewards, "
Translation: We're always looking for new ways to screw our employees.
No. I thought so at first, but further digging, this makes a lot of sense and is something many companies and contractors have been doing for quite some time.
Typical negotiation with a potential employer (small/mid size company) goes like this. If the company cannot or does not want to give the salary being asked by the applicant, something can be negotiated, such as additional vacation time, or a larger 401K contribution.
I for one could be happier with an additional week of vacation over a 2-3% increase, every per year. Or additional personal holidays, or the ability to take every other Friday off (like the 9/80 programs many government contractors have.)
For single people I wouldn't recommend such a trade-off. You want to earn and save as much as you can when you do not have kids. Once you have kids (like myself), or have to travel abroad to see in-laws (again, like myself), or many other reasons, you might want to have additional vacation time. Not everything has to be a nefarious plot, even in cut-throat corporate America.
I wish I was just being bitter and cynical, but this just seems to be the pattern. Some of the jobs I plain quit, I didn't even hate the job. I would have been happy to stay there -- provided it didn't mean staying there, year after year, doing the exact same job with the same title for about the same money (or a "raise" that barely matches inflation). Not one effort made, not one single finger lifted to retain me as an employee, no matter how many compliments I got on my performance. Quite literally, talk is cheap. So I'd quit, everybody would act surprised, and I'd take my salary increase and my new title at another company down the road.
And it kind of boggles the mind. Imagine if the first company hadn't wasted all the years they invested in training me and me gathering institutional knowledge and know-how. All of that was investment. All of it cost money. And instead of using what they paid for, they let me walk away and apply my skills elsewhere, occasionally with the competition. No wonder they can't afford to give raises.
But that's not just one company, it seems to be every company now. It's the American way of doing business. Human capi^H^Httle management.
Breakfast served all day!
You instructor, and her flashing teeth, were pulling your leg, big time.
The Molly McGuires did exist in Ireland, but whether they ever existed in the United States is seriously open to question.
Essentially everything reported about the McGuires in the U.S. is the uncorroborated testimony of one man, James McParland, who was a Pinkerton detective, a publicity hound, and an admitted perjurer (never tried for it though). It was not foreman and managers getting murdered, it was ordinary miners, and they violence started after the Pinkertons showed up. Along with McParland's say-so, inmates reporting "jail house confessions" or men getting freed for their testimony constituted the 'evidence' under which the men arrested as McGuires were tried and hanged. It is entirely possible that McParland, a native of County Armagh, Ireland, used his knowledge of the real McGuires to fabricate a fake plot to assist in the successful crushing on coal field labor resistance.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
GE is considering replacing the ritual of an annual performance review with having managers constantly give employees feedback. That makes a lot of sense to me - praise or criticize performance throughout the year rather than keeping a file and trying to remember what exactly it was the employee did eleven months prior.
Second, they are considering something similar for pay increases - no reason to wait until the end of the fiscal year to give a raise. The top 20% will still be pampered, the middle 70% will hang around for a while until they get tired of lousy raises, and the bottom 10% better keep their resume up to date
In response to this news, ErichTheRed writes:
First it was "stack ranking," the process where GE fires the bottom-rated 20% of the workforce every year.
Erich has it wrong. Welch advocated trimming the bottom 10%, not 20%. And having worked for GE for several years, I can assure you that those who were let go were never missed. The bigger problem was the top 20% who got most of the raises - they were all either ass kissers, children of managers, or helped along because of their "diversity".
The biggest problem with firing the bottom 20% of your workforce every year is that you're always going to have a "bottom 20%" no matter how good your employees are doing. If 20% of your employees exceed expectation, 70% meet expectations, and 10% are below expectations, you're going to wind up firing 10% of your employees who met their expectations purely because you decided on that 20% number. It doesn't matter that they are perfectly good workers and do everything they're told to do competently, you committed to firing 20% of your workforce every year so off they go.
Meanwhile, you need to hire new people to fill those vacant slots in which case, you're likely not saving much in salaries. If anything, you pay more because you need to train the new staff with your systems/processes. And if the new staff takes too long to get up to speed, they might hit the bottom 20% and you'll wind up training someone new.
If you don't hire new staff, you're going to wind up with an ever-shrinking workforce both by bottom-20%-firings and by people leaving because they're sick of the ever increasing workload coupled with yearly threats of being fired if you land in the bottom 20% (despite having more work to do).
Having a set "we're firing this percentage every year regardless of how well the staff actually does" is an idiotic concept that was thought up my management who likely exempted themselves from winding up in the bottom 20%.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
IIRC it takes about 150% of the annual salary of a typical white collar worker to train a replacement, plus the actual salary. So you're cutting 20% off the bottom, we presume you're replacing them with a better 20%, and you're paying 50% of the salary cost of the company in new training. That doesn't seem like a good idea unless the bottom 20% are really, really bad at what they do. In which case you should probably have started with firing all the hiring managers and HR department personnel who let those slackers in in the first place!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... after you factor in inflation.
Well, most of the time anyways - yes, I know the USA has had a recent period of near-zero inflation, but that's not the norm.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The problem is in translation.
It is a great idea, rather than doing an annual raise you give employees raises when they do a great job and become more valuable to the company. (HR and upper managements vision) This means that good employees get raises every few months as rewards and you can directly show them how much they are appreciated and reward them for their contributions to the company.
Middle management on the other hand get graded by how much money they save. Thus, by not giving raises and not having to do annual justifications they save money and get a bigger bonus. Thus no one gets a raise, the middle management looks like they are doing a great job saving the company money, and upper management can not figure out why they suddenly have a high turnover.