Forced Ranking

cdf

I'm interested in hearing if anyone has experience with forced ranking of performance, and if so, what has been your experience? Positives, challenges, recommendations? Conducted with entire employee group or just select positions?

Sharon McKnight SPHR

I've used ranking as a tool to help supervisors during the annual performance appraisal process. Having them rank the employees in their group first helps them to make sure that the performance scores they issue across their group are appropriate. Otherwise, when they are writing the appraisals, they sometimes would score some employees higher or lower than they would have if they hadn't gone through the ranking exercise. Ranking gives the supervisor an overall snapshot of their group and helps them to assign scores that are more reflective of performance.

Hope this helps.

ACU Frank

Having come from an organization that implemented forced rankings, I have mixed feelings about it. Yes, it does hold back 'grade inflation' and ensure that managers are putting more thought into reviews. On the other hand, if the rankings are 'forced' on a departmental or sub-group basis, you may end up with inequities in the organization. For example, the 'worst' employee in Group A may be a much better performer than the worst employee in Group B. If the rankings are affecting their pay increases, this can lead to a lot of resentment and unfairness.

Sharon McKnight SPHR

[quote=ACU Frank;717256]Having come from an organization that implemented forced rankings, I have mixed feelings about it. Yes, it does hold back 'grade inflation' and ensure that managers are putting more thought into reviews. On the other hand, if the rankings are 'forced' on a departmental or sub-group basis, you may end up with inequities in the organization. For example, the 'worst' employee in Group A may be a much better performer than the worst employee in Group B. If the rankings are affecting their pay increases, this can lead to a lot of resentment and unfairness.[/quote]

It worked for us because after department managers ranked their employees HR and senior management reviewed them at that department level and then we reviewed them across the company to prevent inequity. If there was an issue, HR and the senior management for that area coached the manager(s) on how to appropriately rank and review employees.