Leaked Microsoft documents detail an employee performance review system where managers are quietly asked to adjust workers' results to limit the highest ratings
Leaked Microsoft documents detail an employee performance review system where managers are quietly asked to adjust workers' results to limit the highest ratings
Microsoft's review process includes a mandate for managers to distribute employees across a scale, documents and managers say.
Sounds like every corp.
Yep, my experience is that companies fiddle with the scores and payouts to avoid rewarding people. It’s why wages haven’t gone up much. On top of that, the review process is as annoying and pointless as possible.
I can't even tell you how many time my annual reviews have been some form of "well you exceeded expectations and are one of the top performers on our team, that's why we are giving you a middle rating. Enjoy your COLA raise which is well below the rate of inflation."
The reviews are directly tied to the bonuses, so they have a point and Microsoft has financial motivation to doctor them. It's pretty frustrating that institutions with more money than they'll ever need, still engage in unethical practices to hoard more money. Like, you've made it guys, just be cool. Is it that hard to be cool?
Standard at IBM 20 years ago
Performance management systems have always been rigged. Certainly at the last company that both my wife and I worked for. She had to manage a small staff, and come review time, she rated one deserving employee with a 4 out of 5 overall. HR called her in and said, "You can't give anyone a four, we don't do that here." They changed the scores and the employee got a 3 like everyone else. Complete bullshit.
“We don’t give anyone 5 stars here.”
Irritatingly commonplace.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It was highly unpopular internally and the company officially abandoned it in late 2013, before long-time 'softie Satya Nadella took over in early 2014.
"What we tell the employees is absolute crap," one person involved with this year's review process told Insider.
"The tick marks are not meant to be ratings or labels — but instead a way for managers to determine impact and recommend rewards consistently across the company."
The manager who compared the process to stack ranking said that in practice, moving people to lower scores winds up being a necessity.
"If the employee delivered slightly lower impact than expected, their rewards will align below the middle of the opportunity range."
Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan at the time instructed managers to give fewer employees "exceptional rewards," meaning a high performance rating that leads to higher pay and bonuses.
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