Thread regarding Cummins Inc. layoffs

You can’t fight it. The calibration meeting has nothing to do with how well you performed. It has everything to do with how well your manager can argue on your behalf. When I worked at Cummins nobody outside of my manager knew how well I performed that year. How can the other managers rank you. I’d have to give my manager bullet points so she had data to back up my work. Ridiculous, but that’s the system they like. As mentioned by others, it gives Cummins a way to weed out people they don’t like.

Also it becoming sharp weapon to eliminate disliked reportees. From last couple of years Cummins managers are "empowered" to take decision and allocate appraisals percentage (with guided bands of course) from there allocated budget and hence they have started behaving like masters and treating employees like slaves.
But wont continue too long, as good talents are moving out of cummins.

Forced ranking was never more than a smoke screen so that management could eliminate higher paid employees and reduce the workforce into compliant fools. Short term monetary gains are possible when companies can milk old products but eventually the company will die due to management incompetence and a spineless workforce - witness GE. It is very telling that Cummins is committed to this path and it won’t end well.

Take some solace that odds are you did nothing wrong. Your boss likely has a "golden boy" (not you) he wanted to give a 1, and because NORMAL DISTRIBUTION, had to balance it out. That, or your boss is a beta and threw you under the bus to let another manager give his golden boy a 1. You were just a sacrificial lamb. Expect to be put on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), which is HR's way of screwing you out of unemployment benefits. "We gave him the chance to improve, but he's a loser, so we fired him for incompetence. No unemployment bennies for you." Start looking outside the company, son.

If you are asking others if they think you should be looking outside Cummins, you already know the answer.

I was ranked a 3 for my performance last year and I have no idea whatsoever what I did wrong. My manager gave me lame excuses why he had to flunk me. Should I be looking for a new job outside the company? Am I the only one sick of these sh–ty performance reviews? Will my bad review from 2019 come back to haunt me in 2021 should there be a RIF?

Cummins is copying the same page from Disney’s playbook:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/lawsuit-claims-disney-colluded-to-replace-us-workers-with-immigrants.html

The “Performance” metrics is instead “Diversity” metrics. I scored a 1 for several years in a row, and applied for an open role. Interview went well, fully qualified, several upper management referrals, but HR decided that they needed to diversify the team. Everyone on the team was white, and they brought in a minority from out-of-state to fill the role. I was already in the office, everyone knew me, my performance and likelihood to succeed on their team. Instead, HR (in a totally different building who didn’t know anyone on the team; only the race metrics) decided to override and bring in a stranger, less qualified, to fulfill the role. Likewise, I witnessed another fully qualified candidate apply for a role, he had scored 1’s for several years, in the building, and everyone knew him and his impact. Again, the team was all white. HR decided to relocate someone from China to fill the role. HR brought this person into the US, and put that person in charge of the existing team. I witnessed this dynamic several times in my 15 year tenure.

It's a holdover from when Cummins implemented Jack Welch's famous yank and rank from GE. The Tom Linebarger took over he said we would no longer do forced rankings. There is still a calibration process and its only done within your team, so maybe you have a team of high performers. They could have been recruited for a special project, then your performance distribution is still expected to be normal and fall into a few are 1's. mosts are 2's and some are 3's. But that's just not always the truth. Then that person will be replaced maybe by a college hire or someone off the street, that doesn't mean they will perform better than the person that you had to make a 3 and either PIP or exit.

Yep. Been that way for years. In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway either. I was a 1 multiple times, NEVER a 3, and was let go the same year I was ranked a 1 and nominated/interviewed for a Senior executive position!🙄