Case Study Comparing Co-Workers Against Each Other: Does This Motivate Employees

Using the forced-ranking system allowed the DaVita Dialysis organization to improve upon the method used to evaluate the actual performance of recruiters and recruited employees. This is the second step to the control process, in which the actual performance is measured with enough accuracy to differentiate between the reality and the original plan (Lombardi, 2007). Management must evaluate others on an individual bases and compare the results to the evaluations of other employees (Lombardi, 2007).

FR system was pioneered by Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric in 1981 (Stewart, Gruys, & Storm, 2010). Other companies quickly adopted the workforce management tool, and today as many as 60% of Fortune 500 firms use some type of the practice (Harley, 2013). At General Electric, employees are sorted into three groups: the top 20 percent on whom rewards, promotions and stock options are showered; a “high-performing” middle 70 percent with promising futures; and a bottom 10 percent whose employment is terminated, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Other large employers who use force ranking systems included Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and PepsiCo (Asad & Mahfod, 2015).

This paper will discuss will discuss rating system that judge employees on job performance. The rating systems that will discuss in this paper are the following: forced-ranking, absolute-rating and relative-rating system. The author will discuss weather forced ranking is a good performance management system, the different between the absolute-rating and relative-rating systems, an what would the author rely on as a rating system and can a absolute-rating system be devise that would guarantee differentiation among workers,

It is stated in an online article titled, “HR Magazine: Forced Ranking”, that, “Proponents say that forced ranking is the best way to identify the high-potential employees who should be given training, promotions and financial incentives. In addition, they claim it’s a vital tool to identify the bottom performers who should be helped up or out. Some say forced ranking is not only the best method, but an essential practice to run a struggling company into a market-dominating one.” (Bates, 2003). This approach will bring attention to those individuals who are exceeding expectations, those who are meeting expectations, and those who are below expectations. With locating and indentifying each group, the employer is able to present the employees with opportunities on ways to advance and improve themselves for the future, even if they are already ranked on

Bourouni, A., Hesam Amiri, R., & Jafari, M. (2009). A new framework for selection of the best performance appraisal method. European Journal of Social Sciences. (7)3, 92-100.

There are several ways to evaluate and manage employees. One of these means to evaluate is through forced ranking. Forced ranking places employees into predetermined categories based on their performance (Bethel, 2011). The idea behind forced ranking is to evaluate an employee and determine through that evaluation if they are a performer, need help to develop and have potential, or if the employee is not a performer, in which case the non-performing employee is let go. This process of reviewing employees for their performance gained significant popularity in the 1980’s and quite popular today. There are differing arguments that are for and also against force ranking, but like many other aspects of managing and leading employees, there are pros and cons.

In today's market world many companies use forced ranking as a effective performance management approach. According to Bryars, using this technique encourages a negative impact on productivity, a competitive work environment, dysfunctional staff performance, and no employee engagement as a team effort. Furthermore, when employers rank employees, they lose information. For example, the difference between someone who is ranked at 70% and someone who is ranked at 20% would be minimal information compared. Let's take for example salesmen, the difference between your top performers and your bottom performers is the information needed, this could the difference of a very small percentage. So if employers start making performance decisions based

How much effort would the average employee put in at work if they quality and quantity of work produced, did not have any effect on their annual performance report? Most workers would do the minimum, because there are no incentives to exceed the standard. How can the senior leaders effectively differentiate between employees, to ensure that the correct individuals are being promoted when all the employees receive the highest ratings on their annual performance reports? This is one of the problems with the current performance reports in the United States Air Force today. This paper will begin with a brief background on the current performance report issues, the new performance report, and the effect on the individual perceptions. The paper will continue with how the group is using communication to influence, and finally, how a change in culture is needed for the new system to work.

The best rating and evaluation system cannot be chosen without first understanding the problems of the old and current systems. The introduction described the four primary reasons why a new rating system may be required. Indeed, all four of the reasons existed in the Air Force and warranted leadership to take a look at implementing a new system. The old system utilized a graphic rating scale, it included a list of traits and raters would judge how an Airman performed according to those traits (Brown 2016). Some of the dissatisfaction with the old system comes from approximately 90% of the enlisted members of the Air Force received the highest possible work performance ratings year after year or as the performance

Forced ranking also known as the ‘stacking system’ is a performance rating system that has arguable attracted more attention over the years than any other (Smither & London 2009). While this practice has been widely used by well-known companies such as GE, Sun-Micro Systems and Hewlett-Packard (Grote 2005, cited in Smither & London 2009) it has also been the subject of significant controversy given its rejection by companies such as Xerox and PepsiCo (Olson & Davis 2003). Forced ranking is a performance rating approach synonymous with relative rating (Smither & London 2009). This implies that rather than being appraised independently against a uniform set of performance standards employees are ranked relative to peer performance and slotted into a normal distribution bell curve or a quartile distinction (Grote 2005). This would for example identify employees in the top and bottom 25 per cent (Grote 2005) and enable managers to identify the worst and best performing employees in an organisation. The use of forced ranking as a best practice people management scheme will be evaluated in the sections

Employee stack ranking is a performance measurement system that requires every manager to rank its employees from excellent to poor. Stack ranking was popularized by Jack Welch at General Electric in the 1980’s. Since that time it has become a popular management technique. The use of stack ranking has many demonstrated successes, but many managers and business analysts are beginning to questions its value to an organization. In this paper I will examine from a critical perspective both the good and bad aspects of stack ranking in an attempt to determine its long term viability as an organization behavior.

Some managers were reluctant in differentiating between their employees and allow any unfamiliar person to evaluate them. Because of this true performer might miss his/her rewards and incentives.

Evaluations of job performance that perpetuate a win at all cost environment must be eradicated. Most organizations have some sort of rewards based system which demonstrates to the leaders and employees of an organization how to act,

Motivation is the process of stimulating people to act in ways which serve the needs of the organization providing the stimulus. Simply put, motivation is discovering and applying whatever is needed to get the employee to carry out designated activities in specified ways. However, a clear distinction is made between attitude, which is a state of mind, and behavior, which is a state of action.

Motivation is a process of arousing and sustaining goal-directed behavior induced by the expectation of satisfying individual needs. It is the major determinants of our behaviors. By understand the motives, you can influence staff’s behaviors. Especially with the shift towards a more socially and culturally responsive workforce, ability to motivate your staff is becoming one of the most important assets of an organization.