Case Study Comparing Co-Workers Against Each Other: Does This Motivate Employees
Week 4 Case Study
Comparing Co-Workers against Each Other: Does this motivate Employees?
Employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that a company's workers bring to their jobs. Motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of human behavior.
These case outlines and expresses the way companies evaluate their employees and how to compare their evaluation to others as well. According to the text, “one third of U.S corporations evaluate employees based on systems that pit them against their colleagues, and some even lead to the firing of low performers”. The case takes an important look at using comparative method to review, evaluate and compare employees and outlines the impact of those methods on productivity, morale and level of motivation.
Force ranking is a performance intervention, which can be defined as an evaluation method of forced distribution where managers are required to distribute ratings for those being evaluated into a pre-specific performance distribution ranking (Cooper and Argiris, 2011). Meisler defines force ranking “as a workforce-management tool based on the premise that in order to develop and thrive, a corporation must identify its best and worst performers, then nurture the former and rehabilitate and/or discard the latter. It's an elixir that in these slow-growth times has proved irresistible to scores of desperate corporate chieftains - but indigestible to a good many employees".
General Electric is the most famous proponent of the practice and trying to be more flexible in the practice of force ranking. The company has adopted force ranking for many years, instigated by its ex CEO Jack Welch who had managers to divide talents into three groups: a top 20 percent, a middle 70 percent and a bottom 10 percent. This process worked well for GE for two years since it strengthens high-level productive employees and eliminates the weak ones. GE is now reminding and encouraging
Comparing Co-Workers against Each Other: Does this motivate Employees?
Employee motivation is the level of energy, commitment, and creativity that a company's workers bring to their jobs. Motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of human behavior.
These case outlines and expresses the way companies evaluate their employees and how to compare their evaluation to others as well. According to the text, “one third of U.S corporations evaluate employees based on systems that pit them against their colleagues, and some even lead to the firing of low performers”. The case takes an important look at using comparative method to review, evaluate and compare employees and outlines the impact of those methods on productivity, morale and level of motivation.
Force ranking is a performance intervention, which can be defined as an evaluation method of forced distribution where managers are required to distribute ratings for those being evaluated into a pre-specific performance distribution ranking (Cooper and Argiris, 2011). Meisler defines force ranking “as a workforce-management tool based on the premise that in order to develop and thrive, a corporation must identify its best and worst performers, then nurture the former and rehabilitate and/or discard the latter. It's an elixir that in these slow-growth times has proved irresistible to scores of desperate corporate chieftains - but indigestible to a good many employees".
General Electric is the most famous proponent of the practice and trying to be more flexible in the practice of force ranking. The company has adopted force ranking for many years, instigated by its ex CEO Jack Welch who had managers to divide talents into three groups: a top 20 percent, a middle 70 percent and a bottom 10 percent. This process worked well for GE for two years since it strengthens high-level productive employees and eliminates the weak ones. GE is now reminding and encouraging