Speaking of “doing the wrong things righter” Microsoft has eliminated forced rankings in performance appraisal: to do performance appraisals righter.
Microsoft exec puts her stamp on human resources:
The forced curve was company policy. And it climbed up a list of employee gripes that grew as Microsoft’s stock, which accounts for much of the company’s compensation, languished.
In May, after barely a year as Microsoft’s human-resources chief, Lisa Brummel swept away “artifacts of the past,” starting with the widely disliked forced curve.
Good (see mini-Microsoft and our previous related post: Performance Without Appraisal), but the rest of the artifacts of the present should also be swept away.
Related: Failed Practice: Forced Ranking – New Rules for Management? No! – Performance Appraisal Problems – Deming on Performance Appraisals – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal
“The performance-management system tells you what it is in this company that we value and reward,” said Herman Aguinis, a professor of management at the University of Colorado at Denver Business School, and author of a recent book on the topic. “If you’re changing the things that you value and reward, people are going to change their behaviors accordingly, so it is a very powerful tool to change a company’s culture.”
True, so tell your people you value them for how there performance evaluation looks each year (not for them but the disembodied evaluation)? This is similar to Seth Godin’s post where he talks about hiring people based on good interviewing skills versus what is actually needed to do the job. This in not to say performance need not be managed, managers should be managing the people that work for them and the systems within the organization. The performance appraisal is just the wrong method.
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