Login required to started new threads

Login required to post replies

Philosophy behind employee ratings
Quote | Reply
I had an interesting conversation with someone in HR where a close friend works.

They had a pretty typical rating system. There were numbers associated with it which translated basically to:

"Terrible" - "Below Average" - "Average" - "Above Average" - "Excellent"

And you got raises and bonuses based off of those ratings.



They modified their system a couple years ago to one that REQUIRED that at lease one person in the group got the terrible rating. Even if no one did a terrible job, you had to give it to someone.


I can only guess that the philosophy was that it would motivate people to work harder and not be that one person.


They've since dumped the system. I had the opportunity to ask why, and the HR person told me, "Well, what ended up happening is that people stopped cooperating and working together. Instead of trying to help each other succeed, they didn't want to do anything that would help someone else get their job done because they needed to make sure that someone else in the group was the bad apple."


I'm also curious how this gels with the millennial work force.


On an interesting note, the pendulum swung the other way and now they don't give out ratings at all.


Any thoughts on this?

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
I've had appraisals for the last 7-8 years

In theory there was the employee part that I'd fill out, then my boss would fill his out.

My grading would be compared to his. We'd meet in the middle. I'd have targets for the following year and we'd repeat jt

The way it actually worked is I would fill my part, his part and areas for improvement and goals for the following year. I'd wait till the day they were due for submission. Swing by his office. He'd sign it. All good

The reason was 1) I never took the job for personal development and 2) he had no interest in it as it was all a joke

If you did it seriously you'd be screwed out of your raise. So we all played the system
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
Yeah, they did that around here for a while. It is sure to lead to hard feelings and pissed off people.

My guess is they do that when they want to lay people off but don't have the guts to come out and do it. So they piss off people hoping they will quit.

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
 
They've since dumped the system.

Uh, duh.

I'm also curious how this gels with the millennial work force.

It doesn't. Doesn't work with any work force, GX, boomers, millennials, etc.

It's stupid. That's why they dumped it. The point?
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [Andrewmc] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
I had a pretty bad boss a few years ago. He was new to managing, didn't understand how to manage, but didn't know he didn't understand.

Target evaluation conversation went like this:


"How many projects do you think you can complete this year?"
"5."
"Okay, lets make your target 6."
"But I just told you 5."
"The point of the target is to motivate you to work harder."
"But you are screwing me out of my raise and bonus. If I do a reasonable amount of work, I get a bad raise. If my output is 20% above expected, I get an average raise. The way you plan to evaluate me is unfair and employees don't like being treated unfairly."


There was a similar conversation regarding being lowballed on my salary and job description during the depression. I told him one year that I was still being underpaid and he proceeded to tell me that I could get a bigger raise if I outperformed my position. "But that bigger raise gets me closer, but still under my level. I'd have to perform well above average to only get paid slightly below average."

He didn't get it. Got promoted twice, and then driven out of management once they figured out he was all hat, no cattle. Next boss was awesome.

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
Next time make sure your target is 4

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
I was an exec at a startup that was acquired by a very large corporation a few years back. I had a retention agreement post-acquisition for 3 yrs so long enough to understand the HR processes in place at large corp. They had a system that required a score from 1-4 (1 being the highest score). As a manager, you could only issue a score of 1 for up to 20% of your team, and 10% HAD to have a score of 4.

Then, they'd systematically fire anyone with a 4. Part of a long-term expense trimming plan. If anyone resigned, their position could not be backfilled. It was terrible and demoralizing. I didn't care if I received a 4 because if they terminated my employment they would've been required to pay me out for my entire retention agreement. I was assured of not being fired but I was also assured to receive a 3 or 4 on my review because my boss, who was one of the top 3 execs, could use me to get rid of one of the low scores.

At my current startup, I review every employee performance review just to ensure it's fair and that no one is receiving top performance scores all the time which makes it impossible to provide constructive feedback on their areas of improvement. Also, managers, regardless how senior/experienced, tend to give better marks to employees they like vs ones they don't like regardless of relative performance which I look for.

I'm not a fan of doing formal employee reviews at all and would rather monthly discussions with respective managers but HR is what it is. As an aside, an HR department is the best way to tell when a startup transitions from being a startup to being a real company (and stops being any fun!).
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
BarryP wrote:
I had an interesting conversation with someone in HR where a close friend works.

They had a pretty typical rating system. There were numbers associated with it which translated basically to:

"Terrible" - "Below Average" - "Average" - "Above Average" - "Excellent"

And you got raises and bonuses based off of those ratings.



They modified their system a couple years ago to one that REQUIRED that at lease one person in the group got the terrible rating. Even if no one did a terrible job, you had to give it to someone.


I can only guess that the philosophy was that it would motivate people to work harder and not be that one person.


They've since dumped the system. I had the opportunity to ask why, and the HR person told me, "Well, what ended up happening is that people stopped cooperating and working together. Instead of trying to help each other succeed, they didn't want to do anything that would help someone else get their job done because they needed to make sure that someone else in the group was the bad apple."


I'm also curious how this gels with the millennial work force.


On an interesting note, the pendulum swung the other way and now they don't give out ratings at all.


Any thoughts on this?

I work for a very large global tech corporation, and this is how we do it also now. No official ratings. We might have gone through the forced bell curve rankings at one point in the evolution.

There is a ranking calibration that happens among the smaller workforce, but ultimately each leader is given X amount of $$ to give merit increases during that time of year. He as the leader will then dole that out as he sees fits based on how he feels his individual team member performed. But everyone gets something, but some may get more than others.

.
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [JD21] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
My wife dealt with an issue once regarding the ratings bell curve. Her company had layoffs, and 65% of her group cut cut.....not because 65% of her group sucked, but because the company decided to reduce that area of research.

So when the next round of performance reviews came, an above average employee became a bottom 20%er. Some one who was in the top 20% is now an average employee. In order to get what was top 20% you have to be in the top 7%.

Yeah, they got screwed twice. Lost all of their friends, picked up the extra work, and then got dinged on their reviews.

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
For the Navy, we have a tiered rating system. Basically goes from Early Promote through Must Promote, Promotable, and Significant Problems. We also have a forced quota for what percentage can receive EP or MP. However, you're not required to give any percentage a SP rating. So if you have 10 subordinates, you might be able to give two of them EPs, 3 MPs, and the rest Ps. I've found that if you don't force that stratification, you end up with a bunch of evaluations claiming everyone is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This forces you to think through who your strongest subordinates are, and provide some level of counseling to the others for how they can get better ratings.

However, it also becomes a numbers game, and can be manipulated. Instead of always giving ratings based on performance, they are frequently determined by which people are coming up on promotion opportunities, which people are transferring from one Navy command to another, which ones have announced their plan to resign, etc.

Overall, I think the system generally works to separate the complete trash from the good performers, but there are plenty of holes in it as well.

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [len] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
It took me about a year, but I eventually figured it out. I'm pretty good at smelling out bullshitters. He had an obvious inflection in his voice (I was shocked upper management couldn't hear it). He'd ask how my projects were going. If I told him I'd finished, he'd tell me to work on it longer and give me random nitpicky stuff to work on. If I told him I needed to keep working on it, he'd tell me I'd done enough.

I eventually learned to phrase all of my answers in a way to make it sound like it was his idea.


"How's the project coming along?"

"Well, I remember you seemed very interested in the European numbers,so I'm going to add them in in case you want to send this report to your boss. That should be done Thursday."

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [slowguy] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
slowguy wrote:
For the Navy, we have a tiered rating system. Basically goes from Early Promote through Must Promote, Promotable, and Significant Problems. We also have a forced quota for what percentage can receive EP or MP. However, you're not required to give any percentage a SP rating. So if you have 10 subordinates, you might be able to give two of them EPs, 3 MPs, and the rest Ps. I've found that if you don't force that stratification, you end up with a bunch of evaluations claiming everyone is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This forces you to think through who your strongest subordinates are, and provide some level of counseling to the others for how they can get better ratings.

However, it also becomes a numbers game, and can be manipulated. Instead of always giving ratings based on performance, they are frequently determined by which people are coming up on promotion opportunities, which people are transferring from one Navy command to another, which ones have announced their plan to resign, etc.

Overall, I think the system generally works to separate the complete trash from the good performers, but there are plenty of holes in it as well.

Agreed. Basically the same system in the Army. Like you said, it works great to separate the compete trash from the good performers. It is effective when you have a pyramid structure of leadership in which each rank has fewer available positions than the rank directly below it. But, it really does also lend itself to some bullshit games.

TO BARRYP: I've reviewed my clients' employee ratings systems for two decades. I have only seen that system a couple times and always thought it was asinine and ineffective. That said, most employee rating systems are worthless. I cannot count the number of times I have been told an employee was not a good performer only to look at 10, 12, hell, 20 years of performance reviews all stating "meets expectations," because supervisors don't have the stomach to do honest evaluations.

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
That's what happens - the first few rounds some below average or average performers get washed out. The next round or two you start eating into solid performers; but after that, you begin cutting the most productive employees, atlteast those who haven't already left on their own. At that point the company is at risk.

I understand decisions to cut a business unit or group. I made a decision years ago to stop pursuing a certain business program which was staffed by 25 personnel all working in a remote office. There was no reasonable way to bring them back into the mainstream effort at the company so I shut down the entire office and laid them all off at one time. They were all solid performers so it was not in any way connected to their skills. While these are unfortunate, business is rather heartless at times, although we provided plenty of severance and a paid-for outplacement company to work with them. Not to digress, but when I did this I did it all at once at their office then had to call the police because there was no way I'd get out of the office alive. I had laptops thrown at me, got shoved. In retrospect, really stupid decision on my part to physically be there and communicate to them as a group. Live and learn!

The performance rating quota nonsense is horrible, in my opinion. I was expecting some disgruntled employees at the big corp to file a lawsuit and challenge the performance rating system but I suppose it's all 'at will' employment so perhaps to reasonable legal argument can be made.
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [JSA] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
JSA wrote:
TO BARRYP: I've reviewed my clients' employee ratings systems for two decades. I have only seen that system a couple times and always thought it was asinine and ineffective. That said, most employee rating systems are worthless. I cannot count the number of times I have been told an employee was not a good performer only to look at 10, 12, hell, 20 years of performance reviews all stating "meets expectations," because supervisors don't have the stomach to do honest evaluations.

This, right here. I nix termination decisions weekly because of this stuff. At our county, all of them have to go through me, and anytime I get a termination notice that lists poor performance, I look at every prior year's evaluation. Can't county how many times I see "Exceeds Expectations" as the norm and then suddenly a "Needs Improvement." It's lazy management. Hopefully, as the gate keeper, I no longer have to worry about defending against a discrimination charge or a lawsuit where I am surprised to learn that this "habitually poor performer" received Exceeds ratings for 20 years before he/she was fired.

''The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t.''

—Lars-Erik Nelson
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
At my work we have value rankings and evaluations. We have been told for the past year and a half that the system is going to change, but we haven't gotten any clear answers on whats changing, and when the change takes place.

Value rankings go from bin 1 (highest performers) to bin 5 (lowest performers). There is supposed to be a bell curve distribution withing departments.Raises are determined by your value ranking relative to people with similar job categories within your subdivision. If your salary is lower than others you are more likely to get a bigger raise. If your salary is higher than others in your bin you are more likely to get a 1 time lump sum instead of a raise. If your salary is in the middle you probably will get a smaller raise and a small lump sum.

Employees are allowed to find out their value ranking, but since you have to jump through a few hoops to get them it is unknown to most employees.

For evaluations your functional manager has a few criteria they get to say whether you do not meet expectations, meet expectations, or exceed expectations. Since these are finalized after raises have been determined I don't think they provide much value except to show upper management what tasks you completed that year.

Historically the company doesn't lay off employees often, the last time there was a large layoff some of the employees let go were poor performers, and others were let go because their wasn't much business coming in where their skill set was needed.
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [JSA] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
Q: Didn't Enron and GE have 10-15% mandatory layoffs off every year? Anyone know how that worked out?

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
BarryP wrote:
Q: Didn't Enron and GE have 10-15% mandatory layoffs off every year? Anyone know how that worked out?

That's a good question. I dunno. If true, seems foolish and short sighted.

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [Danno] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
"This, right here. I nix termination decisions weekly because of this stuff. At our county, all of them have to go through me, and anytime I get a termination notice that lists poor performance, I look at every prior year's evaluation. Can't county how many times I see "Exceeds Expectations" as the norm and then suddenly a "Needs Improvement." It's lazy management. Hopefully, as the gate keeper, I no longer have to worry about defending against a discrimination charge or a lawsuit where I am surprised to learn that this "habitually poor performer" received Exceeds ratings for 20 years before he/she was fired. "

I do well at my job. As I said in an earlier thread, I'm a "love 'em or hate 'em" kind of employee, and I've been fortunate enough in engineering to be mostly in the love 'em category.

Having said that, I had a teaching job for 2 years (15 years ago) where I was in the hate 'em category, partially because of my big mouth (big surprise there, right?). We had an extensive evaluation sheet that had about 20 categories, and three rating level. Really suck, suck, and doesn't suck (teachers were not too pleased about the idea that the best we could ever accomplish was being "effective.")

The semester after I shot my mouth off to the wrong person (I think my exact quote was, "these lesson plans suck.") my reviews started getting the lower ratings. I was a trooper, and worked on all the things that I was told to work on, and then when those categories improved, others would randomly drop. One day I got a surprise evaluation and was told I did a shitty job. The kids took a test that day. I literally reviewed homework the same way the other teachers did for 5-10 minutes, and then the kids sat quietly and took a test.

The same year we had another teacher do the same thing. Difference being, he had about 5 years experience. Out of the blue he wasn't an effective teacher any more right after he shot his mouth off to the wrong person. What did he get dinged on? He wrote his lesson plans in a notebook instead of the back of his grade book. That required a performance improvement plan to fix. The dude was 35 years old and coached 3 sports, too.



....sorry, little rant about the usefulness of evaluations.

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
It took me years to figure out with patients. Underpromise and over deliver. With waiting lists when asked I usually give the most pessimistic estimate of how long it will take and then people generally are pleased when it takes less time.

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [JSA] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
JSA wrote:
BarryP wrote:
Q: Didn't Enron and GE have 10-15% mandatory layoffs off every year? Anyone know how that worked out?


That's a good question. I dunno. If true, seems foolish and short sighted.

It's called "topgrading". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topgrading

Sometimes things look better in theory than in practice. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. When it works, your company can really soar because you have so much talent; when it doesn't, it's a morale/infighting slaghterfest.
Quote Reply
Re: Philosophy behind employee ratings [BarryP] [ In reply to ]
Quote | Reply
I spent the last 10 years at a giant tech company and every year we had performance reviews. It was almost impossible to get a raise and as a result, everyone hated the annual review. Furthermore, we were always told that employees are stack ranked. Numerical ratings trigger the fight or flight response in the brain. Fear is a horrible motivator.

When our kids are struggling we provide them with EXTRA help. When an employee struggles most companies, and managers, give them a poor rating and expect this will motivate them to work harder. If things do not improve the employee is fired. This is a horrible model.
Quote Reply