员工排名体系风光不再

    作为一位杰出的管理者，通用电气公司(General Electric )CEO杰克•韦尔奇在鼎盛时期拥有至高无上的声誉，就连微软(Microsoft)、福特( Ford)和康菲(Conoco)这样的业界大佬也争相效仿他的管理政策，其中就包括一些员工注定会被评为失败者的《幸存者》(Survivor)式评价体系。

    他推广的这套“评级和封杀”体系(rank and yank)致使员工相互竞争，以避免被贴上失败者的标签。一些员工因为最终落在排名曲线的错误一边而受到惩处，他们通常被排斥在绩效加薪或奖金发放计划之外，有些人甚至因此丢了饭碗。

    弗吉尼亚州乔治•梅森大学(George Mason University)管理学院管理学教授辛迪•帕克说：“只有其他所有人都被视为失败者的情况下，才会有某一位员工能够获得高评级。”

    虽然公司绩效管理专家不赞成这种“堆垛式”评估体系，但许多组织——包括律师事务所、咨询公司、银行，使用分级曲线的大学教授就更不必说了——都在使用非正式的堆垛式评价体系，比如根据员工向客户收取的款项数目衡量员工的价值。

    但迫使管理者把员工分隔开来是一种“弊远大于利的政策，”美国智睿咨询有限公司(Development Dimensions International)总裁鲍勃•罗杰斯在其著作《实现绩效管理的承诺》(Realizing the Promise of Performance Management)一书中这样评价这种管理实践。

    他总结说：“这种末位淘汰制往往会造成损害，同时导致人们的行为发生变化，但不是朝着好的方向。”

    早在21世纪初，一些公司就因强制式评级量表(改编自军队的“不上就出局”晋升政策

    )而遭遇麻烦。即便如此，依然有大量公司在全部或部分组织架构中继续沿用这项政策。其中最引人瞩目者当属微软公司。但就在上周，旷日持久的批评浪潮终于迫使这家软件巨头低下了头。许多有识之士认为，这种僵硬的评级方式往往会削弱员工的协作精神和创造力。

    根据科技新闻网站AllThingsD发布的一份报告，甚至就在微软准备抛弃这种备受争议的评估策略之际，处于困境的另一家科技巨头雅虎公司(Yahoo)依然在采用。虽然雅虎并没有确认这一点，但大量报道显示，这家公司行事高调的掌门人玛丽莎•梅耶尔正在依靠堆垛式评级模型筛除、解雇一些员工——这一评估方程式的“封杀”部分。

    早在21世纪初，就有人对韦尔奇的做法提出过质疑。当时，固特异公司(Goodyear)和福特公司的员工率先发难。这两家公司的员工声称，各自公司的排名体系带有歧视性，他们之所以被筛除是因为年龄问题。2002年，福特公司支付1,050万美元，终结了两项集体诉讼案。这两家公司后来都放弃了这套评价体系。

    微软也与提起诉讼的员工达成了和解。这些员工声称，“以白人男性为主的”微软管理层实施的强制排名体系引发了种族歧视问题。此外，康菲公司也选择以庭外和解的方式解决了美国司法部提起的诉讼，后者指控这家位于休斯敦的石油公司使用了一种偏袒外国廉价工人、但不利于美国公民的评价体系。

    尽管通用电气公司自身也惹上了与年龄和种族歧视有关的官司，但韦尔奇辩护称，淘汰业绩垫底的员工是必要的举措；让员工在步入很难变换工作的职业生涯中期之前离职，是一种更人性的做法。批评者则认为根本就不是那么回事。目前，许多公司正在稳步放弃这套体系，转而允许管理者以更广泛的公司标准（而不是以他们在一个小区域或部门的同事作为基准）来衡量员工。

    In his heyday, General Electric CEO Jack Welch was such a renowned manager that other corporate giants like Microsoft, Ford, and Conoco rushed to mimic his policies, including Survivor-esque evaluations that guaranteed some workers would be graded as failures.

    The "rank and yank" system that he popularized results in workers being pitted against their peers to avoid being labeled as losers. Those workers who ended up on the wrong side of the ranking curve were penalized, usually by a denial of merit raises or bonuses, and sometimes by losing their job.

    "An employee could only get high ratings if everyone else fails," says Cindy Parker, a management professor at George Mason University School of Management in Virginia.

    While company performance experts frown on such "stacking" evaluations, plenty of organizations, including legal, consulting, and even banking -- not to mention college professors who use grading curves -- employ informal stacking systems, for example, by measuring employee value according to the dollar amounts they bill clients.

    But forcing managers to segregate their workers "does far more harm than good," says Bob Rogers, president of Development Dimensions International, the management development firm, who called out the practice in his book, Realizing the Promise of Performance Management.

    "It causes damage by filtering employees from the bottom, and causes changes in people's behavior, and not to the good," he concludes.

    As far back as the early 2000s, companies ran into trouble with the forced ratings scale, adapted from the military's up-and-out promotions model. Even so, a sizeable chunk of companies continue to use it in all or part of its structure. The most notable company was Microsoft (MSFT), which hung onto it until last week, finally bowing to long-standing criticism that such rigid employee ratings can cripple collaboration and creativity.

    Even as Microsoft was jettisoning the controversial appraisal practice, the beleaguered tech giant Yahoo (YHOO) was adopting it, according to a report from AllThingsD, a technology news site. Yahoo did not confirm its use, but reports indicate that its high-profile leader, Marissa Mayer, is relying on the stack ratings model to winnow out employees and fire them -- the "yank" part of the equation.

    Questions were raised about the Welch approach as far back as the early 2000s, when employees of Goodyear and Ford (F) challenged the rankings as discriminatory. Employees at both companies claimed they were singled out because of their age and, in 2002, Ford paid $10.5 million to settle two class actions suits. Both companies later dropped the evaluation system.

    Microsoft also settled lawsuits with employees who claimed the forced ratings led to racial discrimination by "predominantly white male" managers, and Conoco (COP) settled a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that accused the Houston-based company of using the appraisals to favor cheaper foreign workers over U.S. Citizens.

    Although GE (GE) faced its own lawsuits alleging age and race discrimination, Welch has defended the grading, claiming it's necessary to weed out bottom performers and that it's kinder to eliminate employees before they hit the middle of their careers, when it is much tougher to change jobs. Critics feel otherwise and companies are steadily dropping the system, instead allowing managers to measure employees against broader company standards, not against their peers in a small section or division.