"Study: Thinning herd from bottom helps" WTF!!!

[Career Prole]

"Thinning the f&%king HERD?! We're people! Just like you...no, more human than you, you a$$hole!

Here's one especially disturbing way of boosting that productivity number that Wall Streeters love to see going up and up and up...

New research suggests the common but quiet practice of culling the bottom 5% or 10% of workers improves company performance.

<snip>

Workforce magazine estimates that 1 in 5 large companies use some version of forced rankings, also known as "rank and yank." They require managers to go beyond evaluating workers and to rank them from top to bottom. Some middle managers have balked at putting workers in the bottom 10% if everyone is doing acceptable work.

It's a hard-knuckle approach. But it prevents workplace grade inflation, "where all children are above average," says Dick Grote, a consultant and author of the book Forced Rankings, due out in October. "It's probably the most controversial issue in management today."

<snip>

Companies that fire the bottom 10% rather than 5% get faster and better results, Scullen says. But he stops short of recommending rank and yank because the study does not take into account intangibles such as morale, workplace cooperation, turnover and lawsuits.

<snip>

Grote, a fan of forced rankings, says that he is surprised at how few lawsuits are filed and that judges throw most out.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050314/bs_usatoday/studythinningherdfrombottomhelps

He's surprised at how few lawsuits are filed? Does he really think these workers have the wherewithal to take the corporation to court?

And they scratch their f&%king heads when some poor sap who's seriously behind the eight ball shows up at his old job to shoot his boss because he got canned for making 3 fewer widgets than the guy next to him?

What pisses me off more is that they so casually discuss it, as if we're machinery.

WE NEED A GENERAL STRIKE!
:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[NewHampshireDem]

1. What is wrong with that?

You should read "Straight from the Gut," Jack Welch's autobiography. He talks about a similar system he put in place for managers at GE. He points out that it is better to let someone go than to keep them languishing in a job where they are unlikely to excell. He goes on to emphasize that GE had enough resources that the employee could be redeployed within the company or given a generous severance.

The article doesn't make it clear whether or not the employees are rank and file or management-types.

[NEOBuckeye]

3. But, of course. Jack Welch was the model CEO

And no one could ever be smarter than him. :eyes:

[Name removed]

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[Deja Q]

5. I'll tell you what's wrong with that!

Excell? Or be whipped to death? Society needs to figure this out, fast: MANY workers (50% (or more)) tired of this bullshit existence where people have to be pushed more and more and more and more.

People need LIVES.

People do not need to be whittled down, diminished, worn down, weakened, hurt, threatened, or cajoled, by the excessive, inhuman, unnatural stress jobs bring these days. Something's gonna collapse.

The constant increase in output pressuring will rebound eventually. And 25-year graphs showing how workers aren't getting more pay for more than twice the work while CEOs continue to see profits go up exponentially... you're damn right people are getting angry. I don't blame them. Nobody damn well dare.

[Career Prole]

15. It certainly does make clear the target

"Workforce magazine estimates that 1 in 5 large companies use some version of forced rankings, also known as "rank and yank." They require managers to go beyond evaluating workers and to rank them from top to bottom. Some middle managers have balked at putting workers in the bottom 10% if everyone is doing acceptable work."

[SharonAnn]

22. Jack Welch said that factories should be on barges, and moved

to wherever the cheapest labor was.

What a jerk! I'm so glad his second wife threw him out for commiting adultery and that she cleaned his clock financially.

[Robbien]

2. They are being to see the general US population in the same

way as they see developing nations. Load on the debt, keep people working at low wages to pay the interest, cull the ones who are not productive, and then they live lavishly off the profits.

[NEOBuckeye]

4. Pure Darwinism at it's Finest (or Worst)

Survival of the fittest. The stong survive, and the weak get shoved off the edge into the ravine.

[Deja Q]

7. Darwin can shove firecrackers up his rectum for all I care... or don't I?

And if I believed in Darwinism, I wouldn't care the moment the firecrackers exploded.

Darwin, brilliant for what it's worth, wasn't bright enough to realize that...

Forgive me, but I have this primitive sanctity for life. Darwin and Bush's actions (fuck his words, they're as hollow as empty egg cartons) show they had no sanctity for life.

[rfranklin]

12. Darwin was not the guy who came up with "social Darwinism..."

He was a scientist who formulated a "theory of evolution."

"Social Darwinism is a quasi-philosophical, quasi-religious, quasi-sociological view that came from the mind of Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher in the 19th century. It did not achieve wide acceptance in England or Europe, but flourished in this country, as is true of many ideologies, religions, and philosophies."

http://www.ioa.com/~shermis/socjus/socdar.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. why isn't this done with management ?

Or CEOs? Seems to me that even ones deemed incompetant stay on and on and on. Or if they go they get that golden parachute, made by stealing the pittance they allow their lowest paid workers.

[Deja Q]

8. Reading up on fired execs, they get womb-to-the-tomb severance benefits.

Except they're halfway to the tomb.

$20-million can more than feed one person from womb to the tomb.

I don't know. Except that many humans are inhuman.

[Career Prole]

17. Why,? Because it's "management's" brilliant idea.

The more draconian measures are reserved for the "herd".
:grr: :grr: :grr:

[Walt Starr]

9. This has been standard corporate practice for decades

It's nothing new at all.

[Career Prole]

16. Cite? I really don't think so and I doubt anyone here is more cynical

than I when it comes to korporate "thinking".
What they're talking about with "rank and yank" is ranking your employees from 1 to N and firing the bottom 10%, whether or not their performance is adequate! Hell, their performance could be excellent, but if it's not as excellent as the top 90% they get fired.
That has not been standard practice for decades. Firings based on performance ratings, absolutely...but not firing the bottom percentage of a forced ranking without regard to the quality/quantity of their work.

[mcscajun]

20. All depends on your corporate experience, I guess.

I worked for a multi-national bank in NYC for 32 years. Back in the early 80's managers were told to rank their staff, but they were NOT told what would happen with the rankings. They went nuts when they lost the bottom 10% of their staff without recourse. This happened in all departments across the retail bank; I can't speak for the entire corporation.

It didn't happen again for a few years, but eventually, it became standard practice across the bank; now, with the managers knowing the outcome. The percentages might vary anywhere between 10-20%, in some cases the bottom group would be denied raises and encouraged to go elsewhere; in others, they would be put on warning and let go in time.

A small work area filled with high-performers would find themselves having to cut one or two of their staff to meet arbitrary performance percentages. People were now fungible commodities, for certain.

It's a horrifying thing when you're pitted against your co-workers to see who survives.

Jack Welch and the 'continuous improvement' bunch have much to answer for.

[Career Prole]

23. Good lord!

In the eighties?! Oh, yeah...Reagan. He loved the workforce as if they were his own livestock too.
I didn't see it in the eighties in the defense industry, but then that was California, and I had a union. :(

Edit to add that if they'd called us a "herd" back then we'd have gotten an apology because the press would've been on our side.
:shrug:

[Warpy]

10. The only new thing about this is that they fire the bottom 10%

Management books before now suggested firing long term employees after assigning them to teams so that the team would absorb their superior way of doing things. Long term employees were seen as costing the company much more money that hiring somebody new and green and training them for six months.

[Lone_Wolf]

13. Could you imagine the unemployment rate if all companies did this shit?

There would be a lot of unemployed people... which would also keep wages artificially depressed. No wonder the cheap labor conservatives are fawning over it.

[Crandor]

14. But if you fire the lowest 10% of workers...

then a new 10% will become the lowest, so you'll have to fire them too, and so on until only 9 people are left :p

[mcscajun]

21. Nah...'cause there's always some new blood coming in to keep

the competition heated.

Of course, they're younger and their salaries are lower. Another "plus"

[ConservativeDemocrat]

18. It doesn't work in the long run...

Companies that fire the bottom 10% rather than 5% get faster and better results, Scullen says. But he stops short of recommending rank and yank because the study does not take into account intangibles such as morale, workplace cooperation, turnover and lawsuits.

There are plenty of long term success stories about companies that are good to their workers. Ideally, you can create a virtuous circle, where the best workers are attracted to your corporate culture, which turns into business success, which in turn allows you to provide more benefits to those workers. Google, and their motto: "Don't be evil", is a classic example.

But the reverse is seldom true. Those "intangibles" are hardly "intangible". Rank and yank systems only work when you have a company which is growing sales at such a clip that you can pay people enough to compensate for their lack of job security.

Intel was one company that was able to get away with that for over a decade. But when the PC market started to level off slightly, talented engineers fled the company in droves. The result was that AMD was (and is) able to run technical circles around them. They're now in business only because of corporate/sales-channel inertia. And there are many engineers who wouldn't work for them no matter what the price - even after they've changed policy.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

p.s. Publicity is often more effective than lawsuits. Go to Face Intel for an example.

[Career Prole]

19. Thanks for that link...it's encouraging.

Unfortunately, you and Face Intel saying it doesn't work is up against Grote's spiffy new book due out in October...

It's a hard-knuckle approach. But it prevents workplace grade inflation, "where all children are above average," says Dick Grote, a consultant and author of the book Forced Rankings, due out in October. "It's probably the most controversial issue in management today."

...and this "study"...

The lead author of the new study, Steve Scullen, an associate management professor at Drake University, says his mathematical model found that a typical company has the potential for a 16% annual improvement in productivity the first two years. Additional improvements fall off steeply the fourth year and beyond.

Do you realize how many managers, beleaguered from trying to do more with less, will seize on that "potential for a 16% annual improvement in productivity" and start counting heads?
I suspect a sharp up-tick in this odious practice is in the offing.
:shrug:

[Career Prole]

24. So how's the herd this morning? Got the cud going

and not particularly worried whether or not you've made enough milk this time out to dodge the knackers again?