績效排名制度是管理之惡？
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2013/11/22
2013-11-18 Web only 作者：經濟學人
依照「活力曲線」評量員工績效，然後開除表現最差的員工，其實是非常殘酷的管理方式。這種所謂的「評等淘汰」制度，盛行於1980以及1990年代。然而自從安隆醜聞案發生後，這種制度漸漸不受歡迎。但近日，卻又成了頭條新聞的熱門議題。
11月8日，科技新聞網站All Things Digital報導，雅虎員工對於執行長瑪莉莎‧梅爾去年開始推行季績效評估的制度，愈來愈不滿。最近幾星期內，因為新的績效制度，導致600人被開除。
雅虎新聞曝光之後4天，微軟宣布廢除這種不受歡迎的績效評量制度。微軟的人力資源主管麗莎‧布魯梅爾在寫給員工的備忘錄中提到，不再有「分級」，也不會有「活力曲線」。未來公司將採行「全新方法」，建立以鼓勵團隊合作為目的的績效制度。
許多公司，從亞馬遜到PwC，仍採行管理理論學家稱為「強迫排名」的績效制度，篩選出真正優秀的頂尖人才。然而，相較於微軟或雅虎，這些公司的做法比較彈性。即使是在傑克‧威爾許任內率先採行活力曲線制度的奇異公司，也已經對這項制度有所改良。
但是，這種排名制度之所以沒有完全消失的原因在於，企業「仍必須找到方法，公平地評量員工的表現，並作為獎酬差異化的基礎，」哈佛商學院教授羅伯特‧凱普蘭說道，特別是當表現最優秀的員工和其他員工的獎酬有巨大落差時。為了避免遭受歧視對待的指控，公司必須建立明確的機制，作為薪資和紅利發放的標準。
評等淘汰制度較適合投資銀行、法律事務所、會計事務所和顧問公司，因為這些企業的營運模式便是雇用大量資淺的員工，然後以「成為合夥人」作為誘因，鼓勵這些菜鳥努力工作，當然最終僅有極少數人可以成為合夥人。至於其他類型的企業，如果目的是為了淘汰不適任的員工，評等淘汰制度或許會有效果。但長期下來，效果會逐漸遞減，甚至會出現反效果。
如果大多數的員工認為這樣的制度不合理，擔憂自己會被評等為「績效不佳」，便會想辦法在被淘汰之前，就先跳槽，如此一來員工流動率便會提高。更糟的是，員工可能會因此操弄制度，就如同安隆案的例子，員工為了獎金虛報業績數字。（吳凱琳譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
The Economist
Motivating
workers
Ranked and yanked
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: November 18, 2013
Nov 16th 2013 | NEW YORK |From the
print edition
Firms that keep grading their staff
ruthlessly may not get the best from them.
IT IS a brutal management technique in
which bosses grade their employees' performance along a "vitality
curve" and sack those who fall into the lowest category. Known as
"ranking and yanking", it had its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. In
America its popularity faded somewhat after it was seen to have contributed to
the fall of Enron. Now it is back in the headlines.
On November 8th All Things D, a
tech-industry website, reported that Yahoo staff are increasingly unhappy about
a quarterly performance review introduced last year by the new boss, Marissa
Mayer. The grading exercise is said to have cost 600 of them their jobs in
recent weeks.
Four days later, Microsoft announced
that its own, equally unpopular system was being scrapped. In a memo, Lisa Brummel,
Microsoft's head of human resources, said there would be "no more
ratings" and "no more curve". The firm would implement a
"fundamentally new approach", designed to encourage teamwork and
collaboration.
Many firms, from Amazon to PwC, still
use some version of what management theorists also call "stack
ranking" to sort the sheep from the goats in their workforce. However,
many of them enforce it more flexibly than seems to have been the case at
Microsoft or Yahoo. Even General Electric, which pioneered the technique during
the uncompromising reign of "Neutron Jack" Welch (GE's boss from 1981
to 2001), has since softened its approach.
The reason such gradings have not died
out entirely is because employers still "need to find ways to fairly
evaluate their employees and have a basis for compensation differences,"
says Robert Kaplan of Harvard Business School. This is especially true when
there is a wide gap between the remuneration of top performers and the rest. To
avoid lawsuits claiming unfair discrimination, firms need to be able to show
they have a clear basis for decisions on pay and bonuses.
Ranking and yanking is more logical in
investment banks, law and accountancy firms and big consultancies: their
business model is, in a sense, built on recruiting large numbers of junior
staff and motivating them with the prospect of becoming a partner, even though
in practice only a few of them can ever make it. In other types of business,
the evidence suggests that it may work at first, if a firm needs to cut away
dead wood (as Ms Mayer seems to think necessary at Yahoo). But the benefit can
disappear and turn into a cost if the ranking and yanking is done repeatedly,
says Denise Rousseau of Carnegie Mellon University. "You can quickly end
up with the people in the bottom quartile being average performers rather than
poor performers," she notes. "There is nothing wrong with being
average in an above-average workforce. A lot of good work is done by average
people."
If a large proportion of the workforce
doubt the fairness of the grading system, and fear being among an arbitrarily
imposed quota of "underperformers", many may try to jump before they
are pushed: staff turnover may thus be higher than is desirable. Worse,
employees may look for ways to game the system, as happened at Enron, where
workers conspired to inflate their results to secure their bonuses or escape
the axe. That is not the sort of teamwork and collaboration that is wanted.
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
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