With the talk about another round of layoffs in February and then another after that in March, I'm starting to wonder if this will ever end. It looks more and more like we are doomed to continuous layoffs that might stop only when nobody with more than two years with the company is left standing.
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Much like everything UHG does, stack ranking was started by Welsh @ GE. UHG loves the GE model... six sigma.. run healthcare like a manufacturing plant. Stack ranking doesn't work if your manager plays favorites, and we all know they do. Here's a good article regarding how it's not working out for newer, competitive companies. https://www.perdoo.com/blog/stack-ranking/
By all accounts, the stacked ranking system was widely disparaged by employees, and was blamed for Microsoft's cutthroat culture, which pitted workers and teams against one another. According to outside analysts, the competitive climate often limited or slowed Microsoft's inability to innovate, or even to keep pace with rivals like Google and Apple in areas such as search and tablets, because more energy was spent on in-fighting with other teams – or even actively sabotaging their efforts – than in moving Microsoft forward.
Can confirm that “stack ranking” is a thing and it’s used to determine merit level as well as bonus. It’s a forced bell curve like distribution and each department does it a slightly different way. My understanding is that layoffs have targeted both high wage earners/top performers and the bottom end of the stack rank. If you’re in the middle of the pack you may be okay. Not trying to scare anyone but the reality is that things are already in motion and even if we knew what was going to happen, we can’t change the outcome. Keep doing the best you can and find time to work on your resume over this holiday weekend if you can.
Lowest ranking like LIFO. What if the people you work with are slackers? Have more experience than your superiors in incompetence and credibility? They really need to look at the qualifications of people because titles don’t mean anything
Definitely layoffs coming the week of Feb 3, but don't know the impact. Unfortunately, complaining here isn't going to help. It's time that Sr. Leaders of this organization here our voices. We have a huge workforce. Can you imagine if even 1/4 of our 300k employees start speaking up and sharing our concerns? Wichmann needs to know we are not going to tolerate what he is doing to this company. Anyone who has been here a long time knows this is not what the company was before he became our leader. The raise and bonus budget for this year is nothing, but yet we are reporting billions and billions in profit. Start speaking up. Write reviews on Glassdoor. Comment on the HUB article sharing Wichmann's email about how well we performed. Be heard and it might finally stop!
We're hearing week of 2/3 as well and also hearing rumors of the force rank or whatever. Also hearing about another round in early March as well. Been seeing our HR pattern around our department A LOT. Get your resumes up to date and know what your severance would look like.
Weary Employee: Some call it force rank. Each manager is asked to force rank their team members on value and performance. Criteria - dependent upon roles within the department, value of those roles in getting the job done, and in available metrics. Managers have been told to 'drop everything' to turn it around within an hour....In some cases where there are managers of managers, this has to be done at a higher level without consulting the direct managers. Choices of how many and when are then made at higher levels and appear to be driven by percentages given by finance or HR for each department.
What is stack rank? How do they pick that?
Not happening in our department, but thanks for heads up.
Week of Feb 3 is what I’ve been told. Your direct managers will start getting involved because they have to stack rank the team and HR takes the lowest ranking people.