With apologies up front to those who will undoubtedly be offended, I offer this observation:
HR departments are worse than utterly worthless--they are a cancer on a business.
I made a cameo appearance at our weekly staff meeting today, my first in about two months.
During this meeting, our manager explained to us a new employee rating tool, given to them by our hard-working geniuses in HR. It is a box divided into nine sections. Along the Y axis is 'Performance', with positive movement associated with increasingly better employee performance. Along the X axis (but at the top of the box, instead of the bottom where all graph axis that I've ever seen are located) is 'Behavior', with movement in the negative direction indicating more desirable employee behavior. So, the upper left box is the spot to describe superior employees.
So far, so good. I can deal with this.
Then it is revealed that our resident HR geniuses did not invent this masterpiece; they stole it from GE. Fine--So far, I don't care what these benign cube-dwellers do in their waking moments.
Then it is laid on us that it is decreed that the distribution along the Performance axis shall be 20% superior employess, 70% average, and 10% substandard. The 10% will be put on report, and if improvement is not detected within a year--out the door. Courtesy of The Company That Cares.
The boss tells us that they have spent considerable time complying with this edict, placing everyone in the organization into their proper place in The Box, and notes (with some apparent glee) that "eighty percent of you will be unhappy with your ranking."
At that point I asked, "Did you bother to rank your people BEFORE someone who works at GE TOLD you how they would be distributed, and see how your numbers compared to a TOTAL STRANGER'S assessment of YOUR people?" Of course, the answer was no.
Sorry, but I've had it. Up til now, I considered HR to be something similar to an ugly mole on a concealed body part--Worthless, but more trouble to get rid of that it's worth.
Now I consider them the workplace equivalent of melanoma.
I haven't worked it out yet, but I think, using this formula, it may be nearly impossible for a young person to make it to retirement using this 10% per year reduction, assuming the quality of new hires is the same or better than the existing workforce.
edit: had to take out some stuff, for fear it might get printed out and laid on boss's desk.
HR departments are worse than utterly worthless--they are a cancer on a business.
I made a cameo appearance at our weekly staff meeting today, my first in about two months.
During this meeting, our manager explained to us a new employee rating tool, given to them by our hard-working geniuses in HR. It is a box divided into nine sections. Along the Y axis is 'Performance', with positive movement associated with increasingly better employee performance. Along the X axis (but at the top of the box, instead of the bottom where all graph axis that I've ever seen are located) is 'Behavior', with movement in the negative direction indicating more desirable employee behavior. So, the upper left box is the spot to describe superior employees.
So far, so good. I can deal with this.
Then it is revealed that our resident HR geniuses did not invent this masterpiece; they stole it from GE. Fine--So far, I don't care what these benign cube-dwellers do in their waking moments.
Then it is laid on us that it is decreed that the distribution along the Performance axis shall be 20% superior employess, 70% average, and 10% substandard. The 10% will be put on report, and if improvement is not detected within a year--out the door. Courtesy of The Company That Cares.
The boss tells us that they have spent considerable time complying with this edict, placing everyone in the organization into their proper place in The Box, and notes (with some apparent glee) that "eighty percent of you will be unhappy with your ranking."
At that point I asked, "Did you bother to rank your people BEFORE someone who works at GE TOLD you how they would be distributed, and see how your numbers compared to a TOTAL STRANGER'S assessment of YOUR people?" Of course, the answer was no.
Sorry, but I've had it. Up til now, I considered HR to be something similar to an ugly mole on a concealed body part--Worthless, but more trouble to get rid of that it's worth.
Now I consider them the workplace equivalent of melanoma.
I haven't worked it out yet, but I think, using this formula, it may be nearly impossible for a young person to make it to retirement using this 10% per year reduction, assuming the quality of new hires is the same or better than the existing workforce.
edit: had to take out some stuff, for fear it might get printed out and laid on boss's desk.