Bye-bye to the bell curve

“Bye-bye to the bell curve” – These words will sound like music to employees and managers who have long been ‘victimized’ by the unfavorable wrath of the %s defined for the appraisal bell curve. Lately, all of us have heard in the news about major organizations including Infosys, Accenture, Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, Kelly, and the likes having axed the bell curve out of their performance management process.

However, in conjunction, there have been muted questions on how the new system will work? How will we differentiate between performers and non-performers? Will there be any sort of documentation of facts / evidence on which the performance appraisal was based?

I had written on the need for bringing in leniency in the percentages defined for the bell curve based on organizational performance a few years back “Is the bell really tolling”. However, what we are witnessing today is the complete junking of the annual appraisal process and renewed focus towards quarterly discussions and the hope that these will be more productive and lead to greater employee motivation as well as developmental input. While some organizations (like Infosys) will still retain the ratings (eliminating the strict %s for the bell curve), others like Microsoft have chosen to follow a completely new system for evaluation of employees.

While this is a fresh new perspective on the way of looking at performance management, it does rely heavily on the maturity of the managers conducting these discussions. The role of HR here becomes even more important here as the onus of maintaining a system which is perceived to be unbiased falls completely on them. Evaluating managers will have to be constantly goaded and trained on the sensitivity of the discussions and a need to showcase unbiased performance orientation in all their decisions (whether it is of promoting someone, or deciding the pay for others). However, this is easier said than done. And hence the need for HR to be present in all performance discussions till the time this process stabilizes and gets institutionalized. We need to get answers to two basic questions from the assessing managers, albeit, in a sensitive manner:

·         Would you want the employee in question as part of your team going forward?

·         Is he / she ready for the next step towards greater job responsibility?

The answers to these will give us valuable data which can then be used to take other employee decisions in the performance management process.

This is a fresh change and we are hoping that this gives us what we have been vying for all these years through the use of the bell curve – employee performance orientation and clear differentiation. 

Employee Engagement – Not all Song n’ Dance

A few days back, I came across this graphic which shows Engagement of Employees as blocks of a house. Being in the Real Estate sector, this obviously aroused my curiosity.

What is interesting is that the foundation of employee engagement is the Organizational Culture and the Values being espoused at the workplace. This in turn shapes the job / organizational content for an employee. This content might include everything from the nature of the job, the work conditions, the associated rewards, the perceived value of the job, the attitude of the management towards the role, the person, and expectations along with a feeling of contributing to the success of the organization. All these factors in place, one can expect a great attitude from each employee, thereby leading to what is fancily called Organizational Citizenship.

However, this is a long list of expectations to be fulfilled, especially in the millennial workforce where the average job tenure is starting to be counted in months rather than years.  Hence, HR managers of today have to focus on what is most relevant to the workforce and what will have maximum impact in the shortest time.

Now what’s relevant might differ from one employee to another. Here the HR team has to do some legwork in identifying areas of concern / impact for employees to show to employees that the organization cares. I’ve seen an organization where the average age of the workforce was below 30 and they tweaked the compensation structure to maximize the take-home for the younger lot. The relatively senior ones were still given the option to safeguard or maximize their retirals. Small change, but high impact.

Some obvious quick-wins visible in the graphic:

·     Communication – I have seen examples of leaders / top management who go out of the way to make sure that the employees stay ahead of the rumor mills. Employees love such leaders. It gives the impression that the top management is accessible and human and makes the employees feel involved in the longer term vision.

·    Happy Workplace – As  Jack Welch famously said a happy workplace gives us happy customers, leading to better cashflows. Small things like impromptu public recognition meetings, go a long way in sustaining the morale of employees. Elaborate song n’ dance routines are effective if it is ensured that the involvement is from the larger workforce, and not restricted to the HR / Marketing teams. The process is more important than the end result.

·     Flexibility – Treating employees as humans. The line between ‘work’ and ‘life has become blurred. So practice it both ways. Not only work time encroaching into ‘family’ time. Give some flexibility in letting it work the other way. And see the results for yourself.

These in no way should take one away from the fact that the biggest X factor in employee engagement is the immediate manager. Most other factors impacting this metric are the responsibility of the immediate manger. Hence, a more longer-term ongoing imperative is training managers to become human and treat their team members as humans. The message has to be that in the longer term, only the creative and agile organizations will survive. And creativity is fostered in a positive environment only. So trust the team and treat them like you would want to be treated yourself.

Do we trust our employees!!

We all have seen elaborate HR manuals and policy documents specifying strict rules / procedures / systems around what an employee should do or not. Enormous amounts of time, money, and human resources are being used to set these systems in place and to efficient execution and strict adherence. But do we really need these?

Can we not ‘trust’ the people we hire?  If that’s the case, are we hiring the right set of people? And if either is not true, then why waste humongous resources to act like watchdogs over them.

Some simple examples:

• Leave – Most organizations have a standard range of Privilege Leave, Casual Leave, Sick Leave, Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, Study Leave, etc etc. Why not treat your employees as mature adults and let them decide when and for what they want to take leave?

• Work Hours – Does this concept exist anymore? With technology and mail-on-the-go, the ‘seven day weekend’ can also be read as the ‘seven day work-week’. With almost all of us being available for office work during our waking hours, and work interspersed with our personal lives, are we not eligible for time-off during the so-called work hours. Are your mature and adult team members not smart enough to figure what and when something is important and needs to be completed?

• Attendance – Organizations have evolved biometrics, mobile check-ins, swipe cards, and lots of ‘sophisticated’ technology to track this. Why not have the default as the employee being ‘present’, and have systems to let employees inform only if they are absent.

• Travel & Stay – All Policy manuals have specific limits defined as per the level in the organization. Why not have the employees themselves decide how they want to travel and where they want to stay.

• Performance – Months and months of employee time is spent on assessing the performance and documentation of the results. Most of the times, the results are in your face and everyone knows where they are in the ‘normalized’ curve. Should this not be an ongoing exercise and a developmental one rather than focusing on the ‘rating’ and the related increment / promotion.

I admit that you will have 5-10% of the population taking advantage if you do not have the ‘watchdog’ systems in place. But I’m sure these 5-10% employees will be visible to everyone over a period of time. Does it then warrant subjecting the other 90% to painful approval processes and impediments for simple things? Is it fair to not ‘trust’ them? Think for yourself.