I heard some 2024 rank groups included CL 20-29.
- Are supervisors and their direct reports assessed in the same group?
- If so, how does this play out in the ranking meeting?
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Rank groups aren’t the same across the corp so it varies by location and team.
HR looks for equal distribution of CL in each quintile...Same with male female, minority to test for bias. I think it is too broad...20 to 25 and 26 to 29, 30 to 32
But if the supervisor is a hi-po, they will always get O so the career can progress
This is meritocracy.
Yes, an assessment session can expand from 20-29, including supervisors, managers, tier 2s. As one might expect, supervisors will be assessed very well. I have seen supervisors assessed at E to O, despite a majority of their subordinates assessed NSI or NI. On the flip side, if subordinates assess very well, supervisors will be assessed O to OWD, because of their “superior” leadership/coaching skills, when in reality, they just hit the jackpot.
We were experts in EMTEC 08801, spending millions on projects that would never be commercialized,
Mobil Oil Corporation would rank supervisors on many factors including the CTO's top two items for new managers/supervisors.
First, if you wanted to be in a management position, you needed to demonstrate to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) that you could sunset bad ideas quickly before Research and Engineering spent $10 million on a bad idea only to put it on the shelf.
Second, if you wanted to continue as a manager you would need to look outside before reinventing the wheel internally. If there was a third-party technology or engineering company that provided a "me to" solution, license or buy it before spending $10 million of internal $$$ on a product that you could license for 1/10th the cost.
The commentary around more weight and responsibility may be true but why not rank supervisors amongst themselves. There are enough across the company with similar job duties to form adequately sized rank groups. Assess apples against apples.
Supervisors are typically in the top 1/3 for each CL level. That is the reward for volunteering to be a "manager" but not necessarily a "leader"
A supervisor is typically ranked higher than an individual contributor (IC) because they are responsible for their team’s overall performance. Even when an IC is a top performer, their success often reflects positively on their supervisor.
Supervisors are expected to manage, strategize, and ensure work gets done. If the team performs well, it is usually attributed to effective leadership. If the team struggles, the supervisor remains accountable, but unless they are actively failing, they are unlikely to be ranked lower than their team members.
A supervisor might be ranked lower than an IC only if they have seriously underperformed, the company is eliminating management roles, or leadership is restructuring to reduce layers of management. Otherwise, a supervisor’s role naturally carries more weight and more responsibility.
Supervisors are getting protected. Got it.
If your CL is higher than your direct supervisor, who represents you in the meeting?
Yes some groups have been putting CL20-29 all together. This is extremely flawed approach and doesn’t meet the intent of the process. In some cases there is even enough people to further sub divide into 2 but managers/VPs still lump the CL groups together (minimum required for assessment group is typically ~30 people but in some cases are being lumped together to get 70-80 instead). While some people will justify by saying there are HR ‘bias checks’ run on the results, there is no mandated distribution by CL (or age). Add in the fact that most supervisors don’t have adequate skills to even compare (unknown) people within a similar CL group.
Also in these cases, the managers/VPs (involved in the assessment) try to avoid telling their employees this fact on the group composition. This just further indicates it is a very questionable decision. So make sure you ask about the CL grouping and why.
And to your specific questions, note that supervisor and employee in same group happen all the time in a narrow group (e.g. CL26-27 assessment group or 28-29). For example if you are a Cl 27 supervisor then you would only be in beginning part of the meeting to represent your employees, then those applicable supervisors leave and their names are added to the list and discussed. Final adjustments are then made to assigned assessment categories.
Lower cl assessors only attend part of the assessment meeting. After the lower cls are assessed the middle level assessors leave and then those middle assessors are assessed by high CL assessors.