Some time back I wrote about the Bell Curve and how employees resent it when not used in right manner. It is interesting to know how people see red when it is not implemented properly or done with the sole intent of letting go of people who fall in the lower tail. It is not about "belling the cat" but rather the bell curve is about driving high performance and managing expectations towards that objective.
Interestingly in the past week there were two well known names in the news for their tryst with the Bell Curve for managing performance. Microsoft apparently is moving away and Yahoo is moving in with the Bell curve. So the pendulum continues to swing one end to the other.
While Jack Welch used the Bell Curve process at GE in the 1980's it is said that it worked well. Reason being that people understood what relative performance meant, what it meant to be in bottom 10% and what it meant to be in Top 5% and so in the context of the organization. This has to be a deliberately discussed and understood concept.
Recently it is reported that at Yahoo Inc., there has been a lot of noise about the bell curve being brought in just to get rid of people. If this is not the case then the CEO and HR teams should have handled the objective, implementation and rationale on how to approach the bell curve very sensitively. If not it fires up an environment of mistrust and loss of faith in the HR process. You can read the Yahoo Story here.
In fact a well managed bell curve process actually can be used to distribute pay rises by linking payout to the position on the curve. Managers can also understand where people fall on the curve and in case of extremes (outliers) managers should use it to find reasons as to why someone is performing at extremes which can be both over performing or under performing. This can help moderate the employees performance with suitable action to improve or to move the employee to more challenging roles.
It is sadly understood from the article link above that most high performance companies no longer use the bell curve. Perhaps they don't understand it well or have implemented it badly and giving up. However many of those who are using are fine using a flexible normal curve based on how the company performers with skew changing to left or right depending on how the company fared.
The Bell Curve is not a fad that came and went but is still around and companies like Yahoo are only paying attention to it. Managed well it can be a very useful tool to drive up performance and take the organization to the next level of performance. In a later post we'll discuss how this can be one.
Other articles on PMS
Is Promotion a Reward for Performance Part I
Is Promotion a Reward for Performance Part II
Interestingly in the past week there were two well known names in the news for their tryst with the Bell Curve for managing performance. Microsoft apparently is moving away and Yahoo is moving in with the Bell curve. So the pendulum continues to swing one end to the other.
While Jack Welch used the Bell Curve process at GE in the 1980's it is said that it worked well. Reason being that people understood what relative performance meant, what it meant to be in bottom 10% and what it meant to be in Top 5% and so in the context of the organization. This has to be a deliberately discussed and understood concept.
In fact a well managed bell curve process actually can be used to distribute pay rises by linking payout to the position on the curve. Managers can also understand where people fall on the curve and in case of extremes (outliers) managers should use it to find reasons as to why someone is performing at extremes which can be both over performing or under performing. This can help moderate the employees performance with suitable action to improve or to move the employee to more challenging roles.
It is sadly understood from the article link above that most high performance companies no longer use the bell curve. Perhaps they don't understand it well or have implemented it badly and giving up. However many of those who are using are fine using a flexible normal curve based on how the company performers with skew changing to left or right depending on how the company fared.
The Bell Curve is not a fad that came and went but is still around and companies like Yahoo are only paying attention to it. Managed well it can be a very useful tool to drive up performance and take the organization to the next level of performance. In a later post we'll discuss how this can be one.
Other articles on PMS
Is Promotion a Reward for Performance Part I
Is Promotion a Reward for Performance Part II
1 comment:
What ways can the bell curve be useful to organizations if some like Microsoft are leaving it behind? Kiran
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