Markus (12/4/2013)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (12/4/2013)
Markus (12/4/2013)
Friends of mine worked for a company that does this and the lowest rated employees are gone in year 2 if they don't improve. I don't know how you improve it your manager has to rate all employees in a 1,2,3 type manner. They used the reasoning of we want only the best employees to work at the company. However, what it DID do was cause a lot of turnover as many good employees would leave.the hypothesis is that change is good and you are constantly driving people forward to improve. And that those that don't constantly improve should go.
It's a system that can work in some areas (sales), but often doesn't work in others. It also assumes that someone having a bad year or two (health, divorce, kids, etc) isn't worth keeping around.
The place I know of that does this is probalby the #1 employer in the Metro area here and that process applies to all departments. They go through employees like crazy.. constant turnover and a very stressful IT Dept.
Thing is the bottom person can be a good employee... just a tad not as good as the person above him. Not that they are bad... Our DBA staff here... 5 DBAs all are very good... now in that senario you have to rate them and the bottom person has a target on them. Sales... yea, I can understand that.
Please understand that as a former Purchasing Manager I have zero love of sales people. While I see your point about sales, I don't agree. I believe it is possible (am I REALLY saying this???) to have a sales force where everyone is doing well and exceeding expectations(gag, gag, gag). You would still have someone who had the lowest sales.
My point is that I do not believe this rating method is ever fair. Even if we use an extreme example of rating and firing politicians, it doesn't work. Of course in that case, we all know all politicians are failures... 🙂
EDIT: I just saw the post Steve made where he suggested that this "may work" in some areas, and he used sales as an example. In reality it is probably true that most sales groups have people who are simply not cutting it. Sales is a unique type of role to play, and maybe there are some companies where this might "work". I still don't think it is fair, and I do NOT mean to imply that Steve was saying it is fair either, only that there may be places it might work. I simply shudder to think anyone has to live with this type of review.
Dave