Why Companies Can't Quit Jack Welch's Much-Hated Employee-Ranking System
A manager at video-game maker Activision Blizzard left after he protested the firm’s performance evaluation policy, which can pit employees against each other
Activision Blizzard headquarters in Santa Monica, California.
Photographer: Bing Guan/BloombergWorkers have plenty to fret about these days — layoffs, return to office mandates, annual evaluations. But there’s another concern lurking, one that’s rooted in the bygone era of Ronald Reagan and oversized blazers: Stacked performance rankings.
Popularized by General Electric Co.’s former Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch in the 1980s, this evaluation process requires managers to grade staff on a bell curve and give low ratings to a certain share of them. It’s relevant again after a manager at video game developer Blizzard Entertainment departed for refusing to give a low evaluation to an employee that he felt didn’t deserve it in order to fill a quota. Blizzard, a unit of Activision Blizzard Inc., says the process was designed to facilitate honest feedback and improved performance.