"Employees are more likely to resort to unethical behavior when they’re rewarded based on how their performance compares to their coworkers, according to research published in the journal Human Resource Management. "
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/the-downside-of-competition-at-work-4750498/
We're only in it for the money ...
@WGraMHB-1obx, That was a fine allegory. Says it all about the state of affairs. I might add there are still plenty of sheep left in the company, and the wolves will keep staying satiated for some more time.
“Democracy has been described as four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” See https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democracy ...
Forced distribution reviews are the wolves “voting” (with their words in general, especially to the boss) on having the sheep for lunch. The wolves are those who will do just about anything to “fence out” their competition. They never engage in real teamwork or training others (with the exception of working with their buddies in the “in group”, to fence out the chosen scapegoat(s)). For them, their own career vastly outranks serving the customer. Engage in only the APPEARANCES of teamwork, and serving the customer.
The sheep are the opposite, and they WILL actually engage in sincere teamwork, and sincere training of others. After years of dog-eat-dog and wolves-eat-sheep and constant layoffs, in the worst departments, there are many wolves and few sheep left.
What it takes is ethical management which is also emotionally intelligent enough to tell the wolves from the sheep, among their direct reports. But those few managers who have all that, are busy fighting off the wolves who are playing the same game against them, at their level. To be a sheep, and to survive, one may have to spend ¼ to 1/3 of one’s time fending off the wolves, in the worst departments. Some of the best managers have lost these battles (at least some wolves among the management have also been laid off, from what I have seen, fortunately).
@WGraMHB-lww is correct in saying that whatever the official (written) policy is, competition for limited rewards is always a reality. And @WGraMHB-uoi is correct in saying (paraphrased) that only time will tell if the policy has REALLY changed… Or is it just a name-change.
Everyone behaving more ethically is the real fix. Written policy can only do so much. It would be symbolically helpful at the very least, to have ½ of your review be based on, are you working well with others, to serve the customers? Or are you serving yourself? But life is complex… The wolves will now try their utter best to look like team players, and to make you look like a non-team-player!
Your line of questioning appears to be manipulative. Something like lawyer speak. It appears you itching for someone to bite so you can say Gotcha.
No one has said a person who has no merits or not put in any efforts deserve to be treated equally as someone who has done so much more during the year. That is where you can do some level of differentiation on salary hikes.
All that was said is for the purposes of bonus, give the same exact percentage across the whole employee population instead of corralling a big chunk of the bonus pool for the upper echelons of management.
Everybody has a job to do with clear expectations of what it means to be performing well. In an ideal world your rating should be based on your performance measured against what the expectations where defined as at your last review or when you started a new job.
The reality is this however, each manager is given a pot of money. At that point the manager must asses everyone’s potential pay out. This is why you get numbers like 2.7% or 1.45% instead of whole numbers.
Yes it s---s working, but It also s---s being a people manager at HPE.
So you are indeed advocating for a system which rewards everyone equally regardless of complete lack of merit or effort. Got it.
The reply above is obviously a trick question. Don't anyone play into this questioner's trap by responding with a yes or no.
Obviously what is needed is a system where everyone's performance is evaluated on one's merits. You do not need a stupid forced distribution needed for a just system. That is the stupid policy this company has adopted for the past 30+ years. Now they are saying they are discontinuing the policy. We have to see what is the new policy is - whether it is old wine in new bottle or if it is truly an employee morale booster.
On a different topic, pre Hurd, HP used to give same bonus percentage for top to bottom. All rank and file was happy with that. Then the greedy Hurd changed it to channel a big chunk of the money to go to the executives and senior managers, and we the rank and file picked up the sc-apings they leave
Would you perhaps prefer a Soviet style system where you got paid the same regardless of performance?