To ask for your experiences with ‘forced distribution’ in performance management?

[Spookytoast]

My workplace are now using this system for performance management where employees are ‘ranked and stacked’ against one another and a certain % have to be ranked at the bottom at the end of the year regardless of whether people have actually underperform or not. This obviously means no bonus or pay rise.

I don’t agree with it. As the year as gone on my colleagues have started to become secretive with projects, people are constantly determined to ‘improve’ processes that don’t need improving and teamwork doesn’t seem to work for anyone anymore because people need to be able to take all the credit for the work.

Has anyone got any positive stories of this kind of system in their workplace or tips on how not to let it affect working relationships? I think my colleagues are fab and hard working and couldn’t put anyone in the ‘needs improvement’ box but also don’t want to be put there myself!

How big an organisation are we talking? There's 25,000 of us so there are always going to be under and over performers.

Those who feel they have been awarded the wrong score can appeal, however they often don't have the evidence to support the score they feel they should get.

I can see in a smaller office how this may cause tension though, we're so big it's just one of those things.

The organisations I worked for were large, household names, but the curve was always set per department.so it made it a very competitive environment to work in. You were levelled against people you worked directly with.

A bell curve is common in finance. Not sure of it's an American thing or not, but lots of major banks in the UK do this. The 1-4 ratings are linked to your goals and determine your bonus and payrise.
But since only (e.g.) 10% of all staff can get a 1 rating, 20% a 2, 60% a 3 etc. it is rarely fair for everyone. When you get a 4 you are put under HR performance management.

All department managers of staff got in one room and read out statements of why certain people deserved a 1 or 2 etc and then we argued as we felt OUR staff had done more to deserve it. Then two managers were always forced to take a 4 for a person they did not always feel deserved the low score.
You had to be compelling and well prepared to fight for your staff, as it was always a complete bunfight. The weakest manager always got landed with a 4.

Why on earth would a business START doing this in 2018?!

I work in a global company, one of the uk top 100 places to work. Top uk 100 family friendly firms. We have a system a bit like this.

I was due my review as I was going off on maternity leave. My manager 'lost it'. I pushed and pushed and eventually received it - I was in the bottom category after always being average or above average. I was angry and upset as he'd never said he had an issue with performance. His answer (after his first one of 'don't worry about it - concentrate on your baby') was he thought my performance had been fine but basically had been instructed to place more people in the bottom that year as other teams had people who needed to be placed in good categories. It was one of the most demotovating moments of my career snd I'd have handed in my notice if I didn't need the maternity pay. I complained upwards and was told I'd been scored wrongly but it was now too late to rectify as 'the changes to pay have all gone through and can't be amended' ie they couldn't take some money off someone else. I know if I kicked up a fuss I'd have been a troublemaker.

The joke is that our bonuses or pay rises aren't massive, it makes negligible difference to take home pay, and causes so much hassle and resentment and demotivates people. They'd be better off with a flat pay rise and bonus or just an upfront agreement if you do x you get y. Every year someone decent leaves or almost leaves as they feel they've been screwed over - not the money but the fact they feel like they've been told they are doing a shit job whereas their manager hasn't raised any issue throughout the year.

It is shit

It's bloody stupid. If your manager does not care, then you have no chance of ever getting a high rating as they won't push for you.
What makes it worse is that the ratings are decided in September, so unless you had a great first half year, whatever you do after goalwise won't matter in terms of bonus. But the staff does not know this.

It's awful DH was blackmailed into to taking the hit for his team when he was unwell so he could work remotely...

It was supposed to be "recommended" rather than forced anyway

Ultimately it was still down to having a good manager one that dealt with under performance effectively and would back their those in their team if none deserved it to the hilt.

Managers all fared it too.

Hated*

I’ve never heard of this but I’m studying for my masters in HR right now and this is really interesting, so thank you for starting the thread

We had it in my organisation.

It was an absolute fucking shitshow for all the reasons outlined above.

There are absolutely no positives to it whatsoever.

KPMG did this for at least one year when I worked for them (early 2000s), but not sure if they still do.

It is ridiculous to force managers to say that x% if staff aren’t getting a pay rise or bonus, irrespective of whether they have met their objectives or not.

I’d be looking to leave if I were you.

We don’t do this where I work, but HR sit with us when we decide grades and try and tell us about the bell shaped curve. We fight back with the fact we have a brilliant motivated team. I also pointed out that because they all worked for us as contractors, we actually took on the best as permanent employees - this is why there is barely any average performance. (But if you added in our contract staff, then there would be more of a bell shaped curve). It’s such hard work to fight to get the good grades for the whole team and then it makes not a huge difference in the pay rises as to reward the exception people you have to penalise everyone else. It’s shit. Well the process is fair but the budget is shit!

I don't have personal experience with it, but it sounds like a terrible system. I couldn't work anywhere where management were stupid enough to implement something like this.

I’ve seen managers forced to resort to a rotation system when they have a good, small team.

At my work we don’t have a forced distribution, but there is pressure on managers to not tank too many people high. My manager saves high ranks for the year she wants to promote you. Otherwise you get assigned to the middle. So if you excel, but are new at that level, she can’t rank you excellent because she needs to use it for the person who has earned a promotion through effort and time.

The last two firms I worked in had this system in place. It's widely used. There are no positives; destroys teams, creates aggressive environments, encourages bullying.

We have this.

We had it. The. We didn’t have it. Then we had it again. They just can’t decide on how to manage performance.

Usually you can sacrifice someone at the alter (someone about to leave) to force the distribution.

Lloyds Banking Group do this.

It works slightly differently in different areas of the business, but is equally a disaster however it’s managed.

In my department there are 4 bands of staff.

The top 2 bands go in a meeting room for a whole afternoon, once a quarter.

They spend the whole time discussing their personal opinions on all the staff in the lower 2 bands, and then rank them in order.

Can’t even begin to explain how detrimental it is to the department, and clearly costs the bank hugely in terms of productivity and attrition.

Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and Uber have all had stacked ranking cited in law suits against them as it seems to disproportionately impact women as well as just being a really shit system.

I can't believe anyone still uses it.... especially as Microsoft refer to it as part of their lost decade. They had examples of top ranking people refusing to work with other top ranking people because they knew they couldn't both stay top ranking if they were in the same team. Its madness!!

Surely if you do this then you are in danger of people deciding to not give a stuff.

Why would you do anything other than the very basics as you are never going to win long term.

You might be in the top for a few years but not every single year.

Better to pull out all the stops for one year then leave and go and get another job with a lot more job security.
After all after a few years you might slip so what would be the point if eventually you are going to get fired or lose out on bonuses.

But there again I am one of those people who find this sort of motivation very demotivating

We had it in the civil service, and as union reps we fought to get rid of it for all the reasons mentioned above - It's divisive, unfair and discriminatory. We analysed year on year performance outturn equality data and each year, disabled, BME, part time or older workers were ranked in the "must improve" category much more disproportionately than other staff.

The forced ranking element was not supposed to be strictly adhered to, and the guidance talked about an average of 10% bottom performers, 25% exceeding performance objectives, and the remaining 65% on average add achieving objectives. In practice, it was interpreted as a rule not a guideline, and individual directorates went out of their way to rigidly apply the forced distribution.

We have gone to a fairer system from this year, but it's still not perfect.

Yep. In our department, the mums returning to work on 3 or 4 day working weeks and leaving the office on time because they need to pick up kids are always in the bottom 10% regardless of how good they are.

This has been common in education for decades, right? When I was a university at the turn of the century the exams were marked on a bell curve within a fairly small cohort such that technically after basic revision you could probably improve your grade by more by sabotaging someone else than by doing marginal extra study!
School exams were adjusted similarly, though over the whole country so much less individual effect. That is why you sometimes got newspaper scandals about people scoring less than 100% after getting every question right, etc.

This is true re: education, and seems equally unfair.

RBS used to do this. It was not very popular.

The last company I worked for (top 20 FTSE) did this & it created a horrible atmosphere with managers actively working against each other. They still do it but I can't understand the logic as everything in the Op happened there too.