WHY THIS GRADING SCHEME IS WRONG
Big firms like Microsoft has stopped doing ANNUAL performance reviews. They do it at frequent intervals. But that is not the issue here
A school with 100s of students who are doing the SAME WORK - assignments and tests - and grading them on a curve makes a lot of sense. They are running towards the same goal , solving the same problem and producing reports on the same subject
Whereas here we DO NOT DO THE SAME WORK .. In a department individuals have different roles and different responsibilities and COLLECTIVELY they achieve their targets. One cannot trivialize it by saying NUMBER OF JIRA TICKETS processed or activity on JIRA tickets. A problem from a client may be responding to a simple report request where as another problem may need a deep dive to isolate the issue before even providing a satisfactory response.
Same with technology Not everyone is writing the same piece of code or solving the same problem How can a manager normalize that and provide a quantitative way of "MEASURING" performance - It is nearly impossible , in my opinion.
I personally know a few of my colleagues work a long period of time to come up with solutions and delivery - from a management view point they have NOT DELIVERED anything where as another person who closes 1000s of tickets or works on them in a year. Both are valuable but where does a manager put a value when it comes to scoring them on a curve?
So it becomes a personal decision based on his/her relationship with the manager and not the actual work. Quantity or Quality. How can he/she can run the department if he is going to lose a wheel on his delivery vehicle ?
This is why the grading does not work here.. If this is so simple how come these managers who are highly "educated" and from "reputed schools with big name degrees" are not able to comprehend and address this.
The whole performance review methodology is wrong let alone the way we conduct it in terms of setting goals when we are ready to write the review .. Yes most of the goals land on us just before the self-assessment is due and is applied retroactively.
MANAGERS are to be blamed. Without constant feedback a person cannot course-correct and align to the expectations. So the employees are SET UP TO FAIL
We know the system is flawed and we have to work to be on the other side - be a Senior manager say as an MD - to address this. The problem is the moment one of the employees become a Director or Managing Director they change color and become ONE OF THEM :)