Yahoo Mui's new book reveals the evils of the employee rankings system

Business Insider's chief correspondent, Nicholas Carlson, recently had a book to publish, which is related to the crazy shopping in recent years, named "Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!". In an effort to make a new book, Carlson extracts some of the content published on Bi. From what we can see, some critics believe that MUI's biggest mistake in running Yahoo is not that it didn't buy a successful transition, but that it adopted an employee ranking system with a bad rating.

The name of the system, "Quarterly configured Reviews (QPR)", is a system that she borrowed from Google's Okr assessment in September 2012. In short, QPR is every quarter to the performance of the staff according to the High and low rating (5 points, 1 divided into poor, 2 points occasionally poor, 3 points, 4 points over the standard, 5 points significantly exceeded), the distribution of points must be in line with the bell curve (normal distribution) standard. In other words, regardless of whether the person is really completed the target, the total need for someone to be positioned as the lowest, the specific proportion of 5 points accounted for 10%, 4 accounted for 25%, 3 points accounted for 50%, 2 of the poor accounted for 10%, 1 accounted for 5%. Then based on the assessment results to determine the remuneration of each individual, or even decide whether to continue to hire. We must be familiar with this practice, in the eyes of some people, QPR the "clock" is a death knell (the elimination system).

Carlson says the employee ranking system has problems theoretically and psychologically. It intensifies competition, makes employees negative, hinders teamwork, and leads to arbitrary decision rankings, rather than actual performance differences. Of course, the manager is also not good, because they are forced to make even they do not believe the rankings.

Carlson says the employee ranking system has problems theoretically and psychologically. It intensifies competition, makes employees negative, hinders teamwork, and leads to arbitrary decision rankings, rather than actual performance differences. Of course, the manager is also not good, because they are forced to make even they do not believe the rankings.

After MUI agreed to answer the anonymous question, the employee's discontent reached its apex and the most complained about QPR was the following:

I was forced to give my employees "occasional poor" evaluations, which I felt very uncomfortable. I was forced to discuss the QPR meeting now. The reason I feel so uncomfortable is that in order to cater to the bell curve, I have to tell my employees that they are poor, if they don't believe me. Of course, I understand that we're doing this to get rid of some of the wrong people or those who fail to achieve their goals, but that's a concern. I don't want to lose this man. How can this be done?

The other reply also received more than 1000 votes:

In my experience, I do not feel that this process has been properly implemented or that I have been treated fairly. My former manager did not give me feedback or guidance, but repeated the figures decided by my superiors, without anything of his own. Given the importance of these rankings, can we not have a reasonable appeal process?

Both of these sentiments reflect a core issue of the employee ranking system. It is certainly necessary for employees to be responsible for their goals and performance, but the performance of individuals and teams may not always conform to certain curves naturally. Why must there be a few poor people? Can't everyone be good? Forcing the designation of this distribution will only result in more arbitrariness and is not conducive to the achievement of the overall goal. Companies need to rethink this practice. Is it the same with your company?