We are sort of geeks when it comes to performance reviews. We’ve made it our business to become obsessed with them, including looking at how the biggest companies in the world review their employees.
Recently Yahoo! has been criticized for a controversial performance review system. Their Quarterly Performance Reviews
have been maligned for not accurately evaluating an employee’s true worth and creating a lower class of employees that may not actually exist.
“Under the controversial ‘Quarterly Performance Review’ (QPR) system, Yahoo! managers are required to rank employees along a bell curve, meaning that half the workforce will be ranked as meeting expectations (or, in Yahoo’s terms, ‘Achieves,’) while at least 15 percent must be ranked below the average (either as “Occasionally Misses”or ‘Misses.’),” wrote Holly Jones in an article at www.hr.blr.com. (opens in new tab)
This is similar to Microsoft’s “stack-ranking,” system, which was recently abandoned. It was an example of another system that does a decent job of recognizing the highest achievers. However, it punishes everyone who works on the same team as an achiever.
These systems are also frustrating for managers. Imagine you’ve done an incredible job managing your team and worked hard to create a roster of superstars. Now imagine your company’s policy says you have to give at least 15% of your team a below average grade.
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See our Overview of our 360 Performance Feedback Review Templates from our Software tool.