Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

We have performance reviews at Microsoft.

Soooo many dinosaurs that need to go at this company……

"Employees who are new to a team or learning get Insufficiently Meets"

If you're hiring someone who you'd immediately rate as Insufficiently Meets, you shouldn't be hiring them. Meets -- MINIMUM.

If WF tried to be above the nonsense and treat the topic of roles and responsiblities seriously, it would in turn let people in those roles have freedom to be professionals in their respected professions. One of those professionals is human resources.

Imagine an HR staff given autonomy to do what they are supposed to do? Performance reviews would make more sense and evolve to reflect changing times. HR should be a skill/science that masters sociology and pyschology in any given workplace.

Yet apparently any talk of improving the intanglibles negatively impacts shareholder value. It is preferred to have a miserable and unmotivated workforce.

chatgpt on these posts...
These recent posts surrounding performance management have emphasized the negative consequences of using stack ranking, a practice that evaluates and ranks employees against each other. While the intention behind performance reviews and stack ranking is to drive improvement, these methods often fall short due to several key faults:

Destructive Competition: Stack ranking creates a competitive environment where employees are pitted against each other, leading to a focus on personal advancement rather than collaboration or company success. Employees are driven to outdo their peers rather than focusing on their own growth.

Toxic Work Environment: The use of stack ranking fosters a "survival of the fittest" mentality, breeding distrust and division among colleagues. This unhealthy atmosphere erodes teamwork, leading to a lack of cooperation and shared goals.

Negative Impact on Morale: The fear of being labeled as a low performer and the constant comparison to peers can negatively impact employee morale. Instead of encouraging growth, the practice instills fear and anxiety among employees, ultimately leading to decreased job satisfaction.

Missed Opportunities for Growth: Stack ranking often fails to capture the potential of employees for future growth. The focus on rigid comparisons overlooks the diverse skills and talents each employee brings to the table.

Detrimental Effects on Innovation: Companies using stack ranking risk hindering innovation. Employees, driven by the fear of falling into the bottom percentile, might avoid taking risks or thinking creatively, as failure could lead to negative consequences.

Loss of Collaboration: Employees who are encouraged to compete with one another are less likely to collaborate, share insights, or help each other. This erodes the sense of unity that fosters innovation and productivity.

Leadership Based on Fear: The practice is rooted in fear-based leadership, where employees are motivated by the fear of losing their jobs rather than a sense of purpose or shared goals. This undermines long-term employee commitment and engagement.

Limited Focus on Employee Development: Stack ranking focuses solely on outcomes rather than the process of employee development. This approach ignores the potential for coaching, mentoring, and fostering individual growth.

Inaccuracy and Bias: The ranking process can be influenced by biases and subjectivity, leading to inaccurate evaluations. This can result in high-performing employees being ranked lower or vice versa.

Disincentive for Open Communication: Stack ranking discourages open communication and feedback, as employees might fear sharing information that could potentially put them in a negative light during evaluations.

In light of these pitfalls, organizations are urged to reconsider the use of stack ranking and instead adopt more collaborative, continuous feedback-driven approaches to performance management. Fostering a supportive work environment that focuses on growth, individual development, and shared success is more likely to lead to positive outcomes and sustained employee engagement.

Calibration isn’t about motivation, it’s used for weeding out employees. Jack Welch from GE designed this model in the 1980s, with the intent of sacking the bottom 10% of performers. It works great the first two times, because we all know traditionally there’s people who are detrimental to a team’s overall performance. However, once they’re gone the model will eventually overstay its welcome. Over time it creates a culture that everyone is describing. As it matures, coworkers turn on each other in 360’s where it’s like the Hunger Games.

A long time ago, one manager told me that he enjoyed watching his team members fighting against each other. He said it felt like a Caesar watching his gladiators fighting in a colosseum.

Every risk person I speak to complains about the same things. Their management has created an extremely toxic environment where no one wants to cooperate. Therefore nothing moves forward. They take one step forward and three steps back. Longtime executives have checked-out and are holding out for their packages.

This is spot on what's happening in Risk at WF right now... the last place you'd want to breed distrust and competition between employees. Employees who are new to a team or learning get Insufficiently Meets, and managers nitpick to justify putting a target on 1-2 people's backs. Managers have no incentive to help the Inconsistently Meets employees since they have to give the rating to someone. They spend the rest of the year nitpicking and micromanaging to justify their decision instead of putting that energy into supporting that person's improvement. This didn't happen to me, but it happened to someone close to me who was previously getting Exceeds Expectations every year and switched to Issue Management. Really sad. This drives good employees away from the company and increases risk at the company, ironically. Every person for themselves. And because of annual bonuses, everyone is highly motivated to look the other way.

I don’t think it’s the performance reviews that are the problem. It’s incompetent middle managers that don’t have the first clue about managing resources, motivating people, and developing successful teams that are the problem. Most couldn’t even list a couple of traits of successful leaders! All they know is how to push work down pretend to be an emperor. When was the last time this company provided any of them leadership training or 360 feedback?

Therefore they often don’t add any value and breed inefficiency and hide mistakes in their lousy effort to justify their own existence.

Tell them you want more compliance training.

It’s not performance reviews. It’s the stupid allocation of ratings that impact bonus and merit that are the problem.