What Competition and Ranking at Work does?
What Competition and Ranking at Work does?
By: Arlene Gentallan
Does competition at work inspire you excel? How would you like being compared to your colleagues at work? How will you react if you know you're better than that guy or worse than the other?
Let's use forced ranking--an evaluation tool used by companies to rank employees into 3 categories:
If you're an "A" player, you're one of the top performers who are valuable to the company. You deserve a promotion or reward. How about an out of town vacation with full expense paid by the company...sounds exciting! If you're a "B" player, I'll still be generous and give you a little something (congratulations, you can keep your job!). If you're unfortunate enough to be one of button 20 percent of this company's workforce, you're a "C" player, which means you're not good enough for the company so there's plenty of room for you outside the company premises. Sounds fare, aye?
Besides, what could be more motivating than good ol' competition?
Ideally, forced ranking should increase productivity, income, and motivate employees to excel. But let's face it, when you're competing with someone sitting next to you to keep your top rank or defend your position, things can get pretty nasty. Don't even argue about ethics and good ol' teamwork, let's remove distraction and focus on the task at hand. There are plenty of tricks to get on top. One more thing, don't tell your secret ingredient that keeps you on top. We can't collaborate while competing!
Are you fired up?
Forced ranking: a historic failure?
To give you an idea of the extent of forced ranking's damage, here's a quote from the website Glassdoor about the ranking system's disadvantage to Microsoft:
The long-held workplace tradition where employees are ranked against each other as part of the annual performance appraisal has become a tradition in workplace, yet has been abandoned by giant companies like Microsoft, Dell, For, Adobe, Accenture, and even General Electric (it's former CEO Jack Welch popularized it's use).
By: Arlene Gentallan
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| What Competition and Ranking at Work does? |
Does competition at work inspire you excel? How would you like being compared to your colleagues at work? How will you react if you know you're better than that guy or worse than the other?
Let's use forced ranking--an evaluation tool used by companies to rank employees into 3 categories:
- the top 20% are the "A" players
- the middle 70% are the "B" players
- the bottom 10% are the "C" players
If you're an "A" player, you're one of the top performers who are valuable to the company. You deserve a promotion or reward. How about an out of town vacation with full expense paid by the company...sounds exciting! If you're a "B" player, I'll still be generous and give you a little something (congratulations, you can keep your job!). If you're unfortunate enough to be one of button 20 percent of this company's workforce, you're a "C" player, which means you're not good enough for the company so there's plenty of room for you outside the company premises. Sounds fare, aye?
Besides, what could be more motivating than good ol' competition?
Ideally, forced ranking should increase productivity, income, and motivate employees to excel. But let's face it, when you're competing with someone sitting next to you to keep your top rank or defend your position, things can get pretty nasty. Don't even argue about ethics and good ol' teamwork, let's remove distraction and focus on the task at hand. There are plenty of tricks to get on top. One more thing, don't tell your secret ingredient that keeps you on top. We can't collaborate while competing!
Are you fired up?
Forced ranking: a historic failure?
To give you an idea of the extent of forced ranking's damage, here's a quote from the website Glassdoor about the ranking system's disadvantage to Microsoft:
"Stack ranking (where employees are compared to each other in their level every few months and forced into a curve distribution) is brutal. If you are a developer here, you don't feel like you are competing with the other companies to deliver a better product , instead you are competing with your coworker. Coworkers will not help each other, instead will backstab each other so that they finish higher in the curve."
The long-held workplace tradition where employees are ranked against each other as part of the annual performance appraisal has become a tradition in workplace, yet has been abandoned by giant companies like Microsoft, Dell, For, Adobe, Accenture, and even General Electric (it's former CEO Jack Welch popularized it's use).
The Feedback
Even when a person is not threatened with employment termination, there are cases when evaluating and ranking employees may turn out to be a bad idea:
A research by Iwan Barankay entitled "Rankings and Social Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment" found that when participants are informed about their raking and given feedback about their performance at work (with no consequent increase or decrease in pay), they are 30% less likely to go back to work. If they do show up for work, they are 20% less proactive. Basically, telling employees their rank reduces their performance when not accompanied by monetary incentive.
In this study participants were gathered by means of the website Mechanical Turk in which they are offered online work. They are paid based on the number of images they analyzed, not on the accuracy of their analysis. When researcher posted the same job on the website, one job posting offered to give feedback while the other posting did not. 254 people participated in the job where no feedback is given, while only 76 people were attracted to work in job that offered to give feedback.
Even when a person is not threatened with employment termination, there are cases when evaluating and ranking employees may turn out to be a bad idea:
A research by Iwan Barankay entitled "Rankings and Social Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment" found that when participants are informed about their raking and given feedback about their performance at work (with no consequent increase or decrease in pay), they are 30% less likely to go back to work. If they do show up for work, they are 20% less proactive. Basically, telling employees their rank reduces their performance when not accompanied by monetary incentive.
In this study participants were gathered by means of the website Mechanical Turk in which they are offered online work. They are paid based on the number of images they analyzed, not on the accuracy of their analysis. When researcher posted the same job on the website, one job posting offered to give feedback while the other posting did not. 254 people participated in the job where no feedback is given, while only 76 people were attracted to work in job that offered to give feedback.
