In his heyday, General Electric CEO Jack Welch was such a renowned manager that other corporate giants like Microsoft, Ford, and Conoco rushed to mimic his policies, including Survivor-esque evaluations that guaranteed some workers would be graded as failures.

    The "rank and yank" system that he popularized results in workers being pitted against their peers to avoid being labeled as losers. Those workers who ended up on the wrong side of the ranking curve were penalized, usually by a denial of merit raises or bonuses, and sometimes by losing their job.

    "An employee could only get high ratings if everyone else fails," says Cindy Parker, a management professor at George Mason University School of Management in Virginia.

    While company performance experts frown on such "stacking" evaluations, plenty of organizations, including legal, consulting, and even banking -- not to mention college professors who use grading curves -- employ informal stacking systems, for example, by measuring employee value according to the dollar amounts they bill clients.

    But forcing managers to segregate their workers "does far more harm than good," says Bob Rogers, president of Development Dimensions International, the management development firm, who called out the practice in his book, Realizing the Promise of Performance Management.

    "It causes damage by filtering employees from the bottom, and causes changes in people's behavior, and not to the good," he concludes.

    As far back as the early 2000s, companies ran into trouble with the forced ratings scale, adapted from the military's up-and-out promotions model. Even so, a sizeable chunk of companies continue to use it in all or part of its structure. The most notable company was Microsoft (MSFT), which hung onto it until last week, finally bowing to long-standing criticism that such rigid employee ratings can cripple collaboration and creativity.

    Even as Microsoft was jettisoning the controversial appraisal practice, the beleaguered tech giant Yahoo (YHOO) was adopting it, according to a report from AllThingsD, a technology news site. Yahoo did not confirm its use, but reports indicate that its high-profile leader, Marissa Mayer, is relying on the stack ratings model to winnow out employees and fire them -- the "yank" part of the equation.

    Questions were raised about the Welch approach as far back as the early 2000s, when employees of Goodyear and Ford (F) challenged the rankings as discriminatory. Employees at both companies claimed they were singled out because of their age and, in 2002, Ford paid $10.5 million to settle two class actions suits. Both companies later dropped the evaluation system.

    Microsoft also settled lawsuits with employees who claimed the forced ratings led to racial discrimination by "predominantly white male" managers, and Conoco (COP) settled a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department that accused the Houston-based company of using the appraisals to favor cheaper foreign workers over U.S. Citizens.

    Although GE (GE) faced its own lawsuits alleging age and race discrimination, Welch has defended the grading, claiming it's necessary to weed out bottom performers and that it's kinder to eliminate employees before they hit the middle of their careers, when it is much tougher to change jobs. Critics feel otherwise and companies are steadily dropping the system, instead allowing managers to measure employees against broader company standards, not against their peers in a small section or division.

    作为一位杰出的管理者，通用电气公司(General Electric )CEO杰克•韦尔奇在鼎盛时期拥有至高无上的声誉，就连微软(Microsoft)、福特( Ford)和康菲(Conoco)这样的业界大佬也争相效仿他的管理政策，其中就包括一些员工注定会被评为失败者的《幸存者》(Survivor)式评价体系。

    他推广的这套“评级和封杀”体系(rank and yank)致使员工相互竞争，以避免被贴上失败者的标签。一些员工因为最终落在排名曲线的错误一边而受到惩处，他们通常被排斥在绩效加薪或奖金发放计划之外，有些人甚至因此丢了饭碗。

    弗吉尼亚州乔治•梅森大学(George Mason University)管理学院管理学教授辛迪•帕克说：“只有其他所有人都被视为失败者的情况下，才会有某一位员工能够获得高评级。”

    虽然公司绩效管理专家不赞成这种“堆垛式”评估体系，但许多组织——包括律师事务所、咨询公司、银行，使用分级曲线的大学教授就更不必说了——都在使用非正式的堆垛式评价体系，比如根据员工向客户收取的款项数目衡量员工的价值。

    但迫使管理者把员工分隔开来是一种“弊远大于利的政策，”美国智睿咨询有限公司(Development Dimensions International)总裁鲍勃•罗杰斯在其著作《实现绩效管理的承诺》(Realizing the Promise of Performance Management)一书中这样评价这种管理实践。

    他总结说：“这种末位淘汰制往往会造成损害，同时导致人们的行为发生变化，但不是朝着好的方向。”

    早在21世纪初，一些公司就因强制式评级量表(改编自军队的“不上就出局”晋升政策

    )而遭遇麻烦。即便如此，依然有大量公司在全部或部分组织架构中继续沿用这项政策。其中最引人瞩目者当属微软公司。但就在上周，旷日持久的批评浪潮终于迫使这家软件巨头低下了头。许多有识之士认为，这种僵硬的评级方式往往会削弱员工的协作精神和创造力。

    根据科技新闻网站AllThingsD发布的一份报告，甚至就在微软准备抛弃这种备受争议的评估策略之际，处于困境的另一家科技巨头雅虎公司(Yahoo)依然在采用。虽然雅虎并没有确认这一点，但大量报道显示，这家公司行事高调的掌门人玛丽莎•梅耶尔正在依靠堆垛式评级模型筛除、解雇一些员工——这一评估方程式的“封杀”部分。

    早在21世纪初，就有人对韦尔奇的做法提出过质疑。当时，固特异公司(Goodyear)和福特公司的员工率先发难。这两家公司的员工声称，各自公司的排名体系带有歧视性，他们之所以被筛除是因为年龄问题。2002年，福特公司支付1,050万美元，终结了两项集体诉讼案。这两家公司后来都放弃了这套评价体系。

    微软也与提起诉讼的员工达成了和解。这些员工声称，“以白人男性为主的”微软管理层实施的强制排名体系引发了种族歧视问题。此外，康菲公司也选择以庭外和解的方式解决了美国司法部提起的诉讼，后者指控这家位于休斯敦的石油公司使用了一种偏袒外国廉价工人、但不利于美国公民的评价体系。

    尽管通用电气公司自身也惹上了与年龄和种族歧视有关的官司，但韦尔奇辩护称，淘汰业绩垫底的员工是必要的举措；让员工在步入很难变换工作的职业生涯中期之前离职，是一种更人性的做法。批评者则认为根本就不是那么回事。目前，许多公司正在稳步放弃这套体系，转而允许管理者以更广泛的公司标准（而不是以他们在一个小区域或部门的同事作为基准）来衡量员工。

    Clifford Stevenson, lead management researcher for the Institute for Corporate Productivity, a Seattle research firm, said his organization's 2011 survey found a decline in the number of companies, especially those that are high-performing, using the approach.

    "The percentage of companies reporting that they used a forced-ranking system declined from 42% to 14%," he says.

    "The majority of organizations surveyed, about 57%, calibrate pay and performance outcomes for the entire organization, while smaller percentages calibrate at the division, department, team, or geographic level instead," he says.

    That flexibility allows managers, he says, to exercise more discretion in assigning ratings, but it also places "an increased burden on managers to make subjective decisions on employee performance."

    ”

    There are variations by company, but forced rankings typically require managers to divide their employees, sorting a fixed percentage of workers into the bottom 10% or so as underperforming, the middle 50-60% as passing, and the rest as superior or top-performing. The stars receive raises, promotions, training, and education opportunities.

    When managers are forced to rate their employees, personal factors come into play -- like favorites and personalities -- and managers and employees spend more time networking and currying favor to highlight their accomplishments than actually achieving them. But the unhealthiest result, experts say, is the fact that someone on the work team will be pigeonholed as a failure.

    Microsoft, whose competitive momentum, critics argue, has been hindered by lack of idea-sharing, is going to focus on teamwork and collaboration and developing its employees, according to an announcement by its human rights director Lisa Brummel.

    She has said there will be "no more curve" at Microsoft, and that managers will have the discretion to reward individual employees.

    While forced ratings systems have considerable downsides, there can be a place for them at companies, argues Brooks Holtom, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

    "The ratings can be arbitrary, and they can have serious effects on creativity and team-sharing, but they can have the benefit of helping cut the deadwood," he says. "But, typically speaking, forced rankings can work in the first year or two, so it's only a short-term strategy."        

    西雅图企业生产力研究所(Institute for Corporate Productivity)首席研究员克利福德•史蒂文森表示，根据2011年的一项调查，采用韦尔奇式评估体系的公司数量正在下降，尤其值得注意的是，一些业绩领先的公司已经放弃了这种做法。

    他说：“声称使用强制排名体系的公司占比已经从42％下降到了14％。”

    他说：“受访的大多数公司（大约57%）以整个组织的薪酬和绩效作为员工评价基准，还有一些所占比重较低的公司则采用分公司、部门、团队或区域水平作为标准。”

    就员工评级而言，这种灵活性给予了管理者更大的自由裁量权，但它也“增加了管理者的负担，因为他们需要对员工业绩做出主观判断。”

    强制排名体系因公司而异，但这种评价方式通常都要求管理者把员工划分为“三六九等”：一部分员工必须被作为表现不佳者，列入最底层的10%；一部分员工作为合格者，列入中间的50-60%；剩余的员工则属于业绩优秀者。明星员工将获得加薪、晋升、培训和教育机会。

    管理者被迫评估员工时，个人因素（比如最喜欢的员工类型和个性）会不可避免地发挥作用。有鉴于此，管理者和员工常常花费更多时间来营造关系网络，讨好上级，以彰显自己实际上可能并未获取的成就。但专家们表示，最不健康的结果是，工作团队的某位成员被评为失败者。

    批评者认为，微软公司近些年来竞争力的退化与员工之间缺乏创意分享有莫大的关系。这家公司的人力资源部主管丽萨•布鲁梅尔表示，微软将着重打造团队协作精神，同时开发员工的潜能。

    她说，微软公司将“不再绘制评级曲线”，管理者将获得奖励员工个人的酌情权。

    乔治敦大学(Georgetown University)麦克多诺商学院(McDonough School of Business)教授布鲁克斯•霍尔特姆声称，虽然强制评级体系存在相当大的缺点，但在工商界中，它或许还有一席之地。

    “这种评价方式或许带有武断的成分，也可能会对创造力和团队共享产生严重的负面影响，但它或许具有优胜劣汰的作用，”他说。“不过，通常来说，强制排名体系只能在头一两年发挥作用，所以说，它只是一项短期战略。”（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒