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12/10/2013

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I would agree with you that programs like stack-ranking and no telecommuting are maybe best used when companies are in trouble and want to understand their organizations better in order to make quick and necessary decisions.

I personally think that Marissa got an unwarranted black eye over telecommuting and now the same with stack ranking. HR vieww it from the employee perspective only which disappoints me.

I think we have to give leaders the benefit of the doubt that they are doing the best they can given what they have to work with. "HR" programs are only as good as the people using them.

Marissa has already said that ending telecommuting is temporary. Perhaps stack ranking is too. Why should she have to defend her actions to outsiders?

Let's back off our judgments of management actions. Let's be realistic by considering business issues and giving them equal time with "employee engagement" issues before we weigh in with our opinions.

My 2 cents.

Several years back I posted an article at my blog entitled - "Forced Ranking Forces Fear." Sorry, no longer available.

However, research on the topic is quite clear. Force ranking and rank/yank schemes are effective for about 2-3 years and then are losing propositions.

The real issue in my mind is that these schemes assume that employee selection is random, in order to produce a normal distribution??

Bizarro!


Forced distributions also presume that employee performance will follow a random distribution pattern (ridiculous), enterprises will retain a certain fixed percentage of deficient performers while limiting the quota of outstanding workers, and other silly assumptions.

Ann and I both had input to Howard Risher’s Dec. 10, 2013, anti-forced distribution blog that also attacks the concept https://hcexchange.conference-board.org/blog/post.cfm?post=2409. There still remain more ways to manage people WRONG than to do it RIGHT, so don't give up!

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