What would you replace the ranking system with? What company has a perfect system - show me their company board here on the layoff.com so I can read about how well it works.
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@zlb+17c2ksEd - yes. The only honest boss that I ever had told me that: “The company doesn’t care about you when you’re over 45. They want to promote the early career folks, to keep them motivated.”
This was in EMRE, just before he took early retirement himself ! However, I guess the current situation suggests that even early career employees aren’t as safe as they used to be.
The ranking system is the most demoralizing, inaccurate, and rigged process in all of EM. Always has been. I've participated in countless ranking sessions, and they are truly sickening. It's all about who knows who, who likes who, who can best fill quotas, etc. There is often not a dimes difference in employees ranked at 85 versus those at 55. It is always about which bosses pound the table for their folks, and there are lots of side deals/agreements between managers (you support mine, and I'll support yours). You can (and many will) fall from top quartile to bottom quartile for no reason, maybe your new boss doesn't like you, or maybe you are just approaching age 50+. Until the culture (dog eat dog) changes, and as long as ranking is directly linked to compensation, no system will work at EM.
As with most ExxonMobil concepts, the process itself is not the problem, it’s the people applying it. A “new tool” never solves the real problems at this company.
@hfu+17c2ksEd I am amazed at these claims that women and minorities have it easy at EM. I am a minority woman from a top school and have been dropped in the ranking and given negative feedback for asking technical questions. If you are a smart woman, you are very likely to run into an insecure manager with an inflated ego at some point, who doesn't like it if the girl asks questions or gives technical input. And yes, there are women being promoted, but they are generally not technical. I know women who were forced out or got frustrated and left. I&D is a sham.
Non zero sum ranking
Hunger Games style elimination.
Second the bell curve model mentioned by someone below. It ensures some form of comparative assessment but yet recognizes that not 10% of the workforce "need improvement" each year.
Caps on top and bottom with a large majority being in the middle.
Bonus and increment to have a base and variable component with variable being being driven by some measure of contribution to business performance.
But the mechanic itself is the easy fix. What is harder is HOW people are assessed. We need to move away from this system of patronage / a– kissing.
Replace it with something like an old bingo machine, but with numbers 1-100.
Each employee in a department gets to crank the handle and select a number, numbers 1-10 get fired, 90-100 get the biggest raises.
At least it would be a system that was fair.
But then...Exxon would change it so that minorities and women would get three chances and keep the highest of the three and multiply that number by 2, white males would get one chance and their number would be divided by 2.
The reason for forced ranking is compensation; paying better performers more and lower performers less...If you get rid of forced ranking, then everyone in a rank group gets paid the same. How do you pay and how do you determine who to promote?
Would be interesting for employees to rank each other.....in a group of 20 everyone votes for who they think is best
Person with highest votes is 1st. It follows down from there. Supervisors can look at the list and can’t change unless something seriously wrong.
No one can vote for themselves.....
Forced ranking - as a concept - does make some sense. However, it relies on complete honesty and transparency. We all know people who somehow have a golden touch for the EADS cycle. They appear to do very little, but schmooze senior managers, use all of the right “power words” and clearly must take credit for the work of others. It would make more sense for the list of accomplishments to be written by co-workers, rather than the employee themselves.
Additionally, you can’t have a supervisor in the same CL rank group as their direct reports. What has a supervisor got to claim as an accomplishment other than everything their group has achieved ? No doubt the ranking of those direct reports will suffer as the supervisor claims all of the credit (which happened to me this cycle).
Finally, I agree - eliminate “potential”. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where the HiPo employee has a whistle stop tour across different functions, never staying long enough to actually DO anything constructive (often quite the opposite, as they make unnecessary changes and/or fudge data to make an impression), knowing that they will be ranked high because .... well, they’re high potential. We all know that this is a complete crock of s**t.
OP must be a mo–n manager at XOM for asking this stupid question. Too much kool-aid can dull your brain cells.
I am for the forced ranking. And yes, there are people that need significant improvement that need to be gone because they do not fit, within a few years from starting.
Yet you cannot have MD and Technical people in the same group. You need to have ranking from below -360 is called -, we need to be able to point the people that failed as supervisors and we should make clear that if someone is deemed NSI after 10 years, there are many managers that need to go too because they let this disgrace happen.
And for the love of God, please get rid of that “potential” thing - that does not belong in the 21st century. It reminds me how we used to think the earth is flat. It’s almost like you want to cap somebody’s potential because you believe certain people are superior. We all have unlimited potential in a lot of ways and by using such a stupid name to assign a number to somebody seems so ....”centuries ago”. As an external hire I am amazed how people have gone with the flow at this company with truly id–tic things and they never question them anymore. Can you imagine somebody putting a “potential “ cap on the greatest inventors And scientists in our history
“ "Everybody, everybody has the potentials of genius. The human brain is far more powerfull than a computer and than a supercomputer. It's potential is still not known but everytime we put a boundary on it the brain bashes through that boundary and goes further and further, so brilliance is a potential to everybody.”
Performance isn't equally split across categories/quintiles the way EM seems to think it is. It's generally quite clear who the top folks are, and who needs to get their act together, but for most of the rest around the middle, it's totally subjective. Get rid of the evenly forced distribution in the middle categories and stop trying to make it seem like it's objective and scientific when it's not. Put some limits around numbers on the top (Outstanding) and the bottom (Needs Improvement), but the middle should be more of a bell curve than an even distribution.
Dont put technical people who deliver good results on PIP for subjective "communication &collaboration" problem. They are the ones who actually do the job
team / group ranks against business driven metrics, so you're not competing with others on your team. Individual ranks on a 1-5 scale but not stacked against the entire company. HiPo / Low performers will still be identified but teams with good performers won't be stuck NSI'ing or NI'ing someone. Allow individuals to improve (it actually does happen) without having to sacrifice another good performers rank.
You're welcome Darren.
By the way many companies got rid of this archaic system. I personally worked at a competitor before joining XOM where they did have a forced ranking system similar but it was applied a lot more loosely and leaders even tried to ignore it knowing how it just brings the worst in people as far as teamwork. Exxon seems to think the ranking system is the “law of the land”. You don’t have to be so rigid , so archaic and so out of touch with what actually motivates people... and here’s some more background for you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2018/05/23/are-you-still-using-force-rankings-please-stop/amp/
One factor would involve removing casual dress culture for office workers.
Ties and Heels.
Class-based.
Darren's mannequin style is tops!
We’re not doing your work for you, Darren
Just keep the process but get rid of the forced ranking. All the new HR documents outlining the system are actually good, like providing better feedback, managers owning the outcomes, being transparent etc. get rid of the whole relative aspect and just do accomplishments on an absolute basis. VPs or executives have a budget for raises yearly and they allocate accordingly. If somebody s—s you fire them and you don’t need to wait for a performance assessment for that. Encourage team work and accomplishments and results. Teams with great accomplishments get more bonuses. This company lacks collaboration and sharing so bad and even nice people are so robotic about saying “ let’s not share that”, “ let’s not communicate that yet”. There is really nothing much in this company ( so innovative or so “top secret”) that requires this secretive back stabbing culture. Thanks for asking and hope you’re high level and working on changing things :) lol probably wishful thinking.