• Yahoo's Latest HR Disaster: Workers forced to rank each other on a Bell Curve
    13 replies, posted
[img]http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-11-12/1112-yahoo-mayer-630x420.jpg[/img] [quote] If Marissa Mayer is as good at identifying winning startups as she is at embracing contentious human resources practices, Yahoo! (YHOO) is going to be just fine. Several months after the great work-at-home kerfuffle of 2013, Yahoo employees were up in arms about a new policy that forces managers to rank employees on a bell curve, then fire those at the low end. According to AllThingsD, Marissa Mayer reportedly told Yahoo workers that the rankings weren’t mandatory, but many people disagree. The company hasn’t responded to a request for comment. With its embrace of rankings, Yahoo has waded into the “third rail of human resource management.” Forcing managers to rank their employees along a bell curve was popularized in the 1980s (thanks, Jack Welch), but lately it has fallen out of favor. The Institute of Corporate Productivity says the number of companies using either a forced ranking system or some softer facsimile is down significantly from previous years. Companies performing well were less likely to be using forced ranking systems than those that weren’t. Just over 5 percent of high-performing companies used a forced ranking system in 2011, down from almost 20 percent two years earlier. Basically, many people have lost faith that ranking employees works, and some research suggests that employee performance doesn’t follow a bell curve at all. Instead, most people are slightly worse than average (PDF), with a few superstars. And while a bit of pressure can motivate people, constantly pitting employees against one another is terrible for morale. In a company that is going through layoffs, this gets worse over time (PDF), wrote several MIT professors in a study of forced rankings in 2006. “As the company shrinks, the rigid distribution of the bell-curve forces managers to label a high performer as a mediocre. A high performer, unmotivated by such artificial demotion, behaves like a mediocre.”[/quote] [url]http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-12/yahoos-latest-hr-disaster-ranking-workers-on-a-curve[/url] Surprisingly their stocks aren't falling, but it's only a matter of time people stop using Yahoo.
i still use it for mail. can't believe they bought out tumblr.
Stupid thing to do really. Frankly there's no call for doing so at present, or at all for that matter.
I forget Yahoo! exists sometimes. How have they not gone belly up yet?
I don't know...most people I know who use Yahoo really only care about how it works for their email. Apparently it gets changed up from time to time so it bugs some people. But really, the people I know who use Yahoo probably could care less about this. As long as it still works for them when it comes to email, then they are all set.
that'd completely stress workers out the fuck are they thinking
Yahoo is a fucking terrible company. For the amount of money they make, their website is fucking amature hour. Their entire front page news system is based around the concept of click baiting. If theres ever a school shooting or a devastating event their front page title will be something like "Another school rampage!, click here to find out where!". My fucking adblock blocks around 12-14 ads on their frontpage alone. Compared to 0 on google.
[QUOTE=Untouch;42842402]that'd completely stress workers out the fuck are they thinking[/QUOTE] Marissa Mayer does some controversial things from time to time.
Yahoo fucking sucks and it sucks that they've bought some good stuff (Flickr).
What a fucking nightmare to work for. This is why we need labor unions, people, without them every employer will function exactly like these assholes.
[QUOTE=lintz;42841805]i still use it for mail. can't believe they bought out tumblr.[/QUOTE] Surprised they didn't ban the porn.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;42841874]I forget Yahoo! exists sometimes. How have they not gone belly up yet?[/QUOTE] asia
For some reason, I read that as "Workers forced to wank each other on a bell curve"
[QUOTE=Chjaren;42844842]For some reason, I read that as "Workers forced to wank each other on a bell curve"[/QUOTE] Well, the corporate level usually is a giant circlejerk, so I can see why you might read it that way.
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