Drop the bell

Ever since I was working in the corporate this appraisal was like a ghost waiting to threaten me. Well, it did actually. Goal setting, half year review with the team lead, and finally the destiny. This has, and it is still making me think if the corporates who have been really brilliant in every department, especially from making their employees behave as ‘civilized’ citizens at least while they were inside the premises, why could they not find a better way to motivate their employees. This has been a huge question in my mind.

It is known that a few companies, like KPMG, Accenture has dropped the ‘bell-curve’ appraisal model, which in my terms has seen a lateral shift or a skewed transition from the ‘performance management’ to the ‘performance achievement’ approach, including real time feedback.

What was so wrong with the earlier model that it had to be scrapped after years of being in use?

Many a time, in order to follow the typical bell-curve, team leaders had to re-categorize employees. Often good performers were labelled as average to fit the curve. I have myself seen a lot of arguments within the so-called ‘team’ or ‘family’ or whatever you call it as. This unseen hand of moderation resulted in disgruntled and disengaged employees.

Disgruntled and disengaged maybe on one side, it did create a lot of enmity, ego clashes, rising stress levels, and to my eyes, it was a plain way of showing discrimination in an otherwise, ‘all-are-one’ environment. People kept losing job, my question was, if the manager or the TL who was monitoring the performance of an employee for one whole year, could only say it wasn’t as satisfactory as expected, isn’t looking obvious that they were finding one way to rope in fresh talents? If corporates are talking about employee retention, then the space for learning must be set, not only on paper but in reality as well. While this bell curve gave a lot of incentives for the performers, was it really the performers with their skillset or to those who performed with their human interpersonal skills?

When two employees with the same level of performance with the same level of contribution are to be gauged on a similar scale, 9.5/10 times the employee with the better interpersonal skill and who has a good rapport with the higher ups gets the cake.

Getting back to this Goal setting, while I don’t deny that it is a fantastic model of extracting work from the employees, it is heavily touched upon the individual effort, giving raise to the individual performance, which will fetch the organizational rewards. WOW!

Just sounds so cool, but on the hindsight, corporates also talk about ‘team’ effort, ‘team’ performance. While this gives raise to competition, it brings down the ‘human’ in each employee, who in dark prays that he/she becomes better to get that first bucket in the appraisal. Why? Early promotion and more incentives and pay raise. It is heavily stressed upon vicarious modelling. You, perform better than your colleague by becoming more confident because you see someone else doing the task.

To me, more than this carrot and stick approach, or this expectancy of vicarious modelling working out, verbal persuasion leading to oneness in the team which eventually facilitates more learning, will do a lot of good for the employees. Ultimately it all depends on effective communication with the team members, to assess them on a regular basis rather than keeping them in the dark for an year and creating a scene of whatever they have been doing is correct and misguiding them. This encourages a regular and a healthy learning curve. The whole point of this transition from the bell curve is, the good performers must not be bracketed under the roof of ‘average’ performers and be let to bask under its glory.