https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/workplace-well-being/index.html
84% of respondents said their workplace conditions had contributed to at least one mental health challenge.
81% of workers reported that they will be looking for workplaces that support mental health in the future.
"After we've come through the pandemic... Many workers are going through a reckoning... Asking themselves what they want out of work and what they're willing to sacrifice for work. It turns out when we invest in the mental health and wellbeing of our workers, two things happen. Our workers are better off but also the organizations are better off. Productivity, retention, creativity all go up so it's a win-win to focus on mental health in the workplace" - US Surgeon General interview https://youtu.be/KSH75oXHwT0
1 of the 5 framework essentials is Mattering at Work which rests on the human needs of dignity and meaning. Dignity is sense of being respected and valued.
Imo, XOM has some great policies that address this framework essential. Unfortunately it utterly undercuts any sense of respect and value by sticking with the relative ranking into performance buckets with mandated distribution percentages.
Mandated distributions are not aligned with XOM's goal being a meritocracy. Period.
Ranking supervisors with mid and late career individual contributors ("ICs") means the individual contributors crowd the bottom half. This tells the majority of the ICs they aren't valued in the most fundamental way, through their pay raises (or lack thereof). Supervisors look for excuses to justify the ICs low ranking results further devaluing the employee. Saavy ICs don't offer negative (constructive) feedback bc of this. Or worse, they do in a dog eat dog effort to sink a peer's ranking so they end up higher.
If you're an early career IC used to making straight A's, take heed that you understand what your future relative ranking experience will be like. Maybe you'll be one of the few exceptions that gets to be ranked among the supervisors and enjoy a sense of being valued. But odds are not in your favor. It doesn't matter how many smart and talented ppl we hire, someone has to be in the bottom so the supervisor functions can be in the top. You'll get to sit in feedback sessions where someone less experienced makes excuses for how you need to improve when in fact you're getting the actual work done.
Look XOM (and all companies) are going to prop up the false idea that supervisors contribute more. At least they could stop telling ICs we suck and aren't cutting it multiple times a year when in fact we're doing great on an absolute basis and our experience is highly valued.
Then we can talk about how much more supervisors (and executives) make relative to the average employee salary. We're human, we often need incentives to reach for more. How big those incentives should be is something we can and should debate.
But the method for providing the incentives doesn't have to be a devaluing zero sum exercise. The surgeon general indicates the mental health and financial benefits are win win if we're smart and humane enough to see it.
I'm no HR expert, but I don't see why we can't just tell people they're doing great here's avg pay raise. Set aside certain amount to recognize ppl that had step out contributions that year. Those raises can decay back toward reference salary over time.
Let's go DW. We want to be a kick a-s place to work that promotes retention of priceless XOM workforce experience, creativity and productivity.
And if we need to downsize, lets be honest about that and call it like it is letting our people leave with dignity.