績效考核如何跟上時代

Dana Minbaeva does not know how her careerappraisal will turn out this year — or whether it willeven take place. Her organisation has freed teamleaders to experiment before deciding whether tochange its performance management.

達納•明巴耶娃(Dana Minbaeva)不知道今年她的職業(yè)評估將會是什么樣子——甚至不知道是否會進行評估。她所在的組織讓團隊負責人自由試驗，然后決定是否改變其績效考核方式。

Appropriately enough, Prof Minbaeva studiesappraisals and staff feedback for Copenhagen Business School.

這再合適不過了，因為明巴耶娃教授正在為哥本哈根商學院(Copenhagen Business School)研究績效評估和員工反饋問題。

Hers is not the only employer tinkering with staff ratings and reviews. In the past three years,General Electric, Microsoft, Deloitte, Accenture and Cisco Systems are among many that haveannounced reform of, or actually reformed, their performance systems.

她的雇主并非唯一對員工評級和評估體系修修改改的雇主。過去3年里，許多企業(yè)宣布改革(或者已經(jīng)改革了)它們的績效考核系統(tǒng)，其中包括通用電氣(General Electric)、微軟(Microsoft)、德勤(Deloitte)、埃森哲(Accenture)和思科系統(tǒng)(Cisco Systems)。

Ratings are in the line of fire. Staff have long complained that they lead to a “rank and yank”process, where people rated lowest on a bell curve get forced out. In turn, that can drive teammembers into vicious competition with their colleagues. “People responsible for [software]features will openly sabotage other people’s efforts,” one Microsoft engineer told Vanity Fair in2012. Microsoft ditched forced ranking a year later.

評級制度首當其沖。員工早就抱怨稱，它們導致了“評級然后解雇”過程——在鐘形曲線上評分最低的人將被迫走人。它們進而還會使得團隊成員與同事陷入惡性競爭。微軟的一位工程師在2012年告訴《名利場》(VanityFair)：“負責(軟件)功能的人將會公開破壞其他人的努力。”微軟在一年后放棄了強制評級制度。

When not toxic, ranking systems can be baffling. One team leader at a UK consultancy says heis asked to rate staff on three dimensions, “two of which I’ve frankly never understood, howevermany times I’ve discussed it with human resources”.

即便沒有“毒性”，評級體系也可能令人困惑。英國一家咨詢公司的一位團隊負責人表示，他被要求從3個方面給員工評級。“坦率說，其中兩個方面我從未弄明白，無論我與人力資源部門討論過多少次”。

If such crude rankings are dying, though, employers are still unclear what will replace them.They fret about how to gather enough information to decide on pay and promotion.

然而，即便此類粗糙的評級制度行將消亡，但雇主仍不清楚哪種制度能取代它們。他們發(fā)愁的是，如何收集足夠信息來決定薪酬和擢升事宜?

The future of performance management as a whole is only slightly easier to predict, but theannual career appraisal is fast disappearing. Where it survives, it is transforming into a processof constant feedback. The inspiration, in many cases, is bottom-up “Agile” productdevelopment, in which progress towards goals is regularly reassessed.

績效管理的整體未來還略微容易預測一些，但年度職業(yè)評估正在快速消失。即便它存活下來，也在轉變?yōu)橐惶壮掷m(xù)反饋的流程。在許多情況下，這其中的靈感來自自下而上的“敏捷”產(chǎn)品開發(fā)，其間定期評估朝著目標的進展情況。

Ashley Goodall, who started to introduce a new system at Deloitte before moving to Cisco tolead a similar project, says companies are no longer asking: “Do you have five ratings or sevenratings on a scale, or annual reviews? They’re looking at the whole edifice.” For a while Ciscoran with no traditional process: “You can just stop doing it and it turns out that the skydoesn’t fall.”

阿什利•古多爾(Ashley Goodall)最初在德勤推出一項新制度，后來去了思科牽頭實施類似項目。他表示，公司不再質問：“你們有5檔評級還是7檔評級，或者是年度評估?他們看的是整個體系。”思科一度沒有任何傳統(tǒng)流程：“你可以干脆不這么做，結果天沒有塌下來。”

One reason for change is that form-filling and bell-curve analysing are hugely inefficient. MikePreston, Deloitte’s chief talent officer, says: “We were spending so many hours proposing arating, debating a rating, communicating a rating, that we really didn’t spend time developingpeople.”

改變的一個理由是，填表和鐘型曲線分析的效率極低。德勤的首席人才官邁克•普雷斯頓(Mike Preston)表示：“我們花這么多時間提議、辯論和溝通一個評級，以至于我們真的沒有時間開發(fā)人才。”

Accenture’s chief executive set off a wave of approval last year when he said the consultancywould “get rid of 90 per cent of what we did in the past”. Its staff were spending 21 hours each, 8m hours in total every year, on performance management. Sixteen of those hours weredevoted just to process.

埃森哲首席執(zhí)行官去年引發(fā)一波贊賞，當時他表示，這家咨詢公司“將取消90%過去所做的事情”。每年其員工每人有21個小時、公司總計有800萬個小時投入績效管理。其中有16個小時只是在履行流程。

Companies are not, however, trying to recover all the wasted hours. They want to redeploythem. Janice Semper, a performance management expert at GE, says the industrial group’smanagers now devote more time to “coaching and pushing decision-making down in theorganisation” — a big change from Jack Welch, then chief executive, urging them to draw a“vitality curve” and force out the worst-performing 10 per cent in any team.

然而，企業(yè)并沒有試圖收回全部浪費的時間。他們希望重新配置這些時間。通用電氣(GE)的績效管理專家賈尼絲•森佩爾(Janice Semper)表示，這家工業(yè)集團的管理人員現(xiàn)在花更多時間“指導并推動組織內部的決策下行”——這與前首席執(zhí)行官杰克•韋爾奇(Jack Welch)相比有很大的變化，后者曾敦促管理人員繪制“活力曲線”，并迫使任何團隊中表現(xiàn)最差的10%員工走人。

Reformers believe younger workers are happier measuring and updating performance andtargets regularly using mobile apps than they are waiting 12 months. “Imagine if Fitbit [thewearable fitness tracker] only sent you an email at the end of the year,” argues Kris Duggan,founder of BetterWorks, which sells goal-setting software.

改革者相信，較為年輕的員工更樂意定期使用移動APP來衡量和更新績效和目標，而不是等上12個月。銷售目標設定軟件的BetterWorks的創(chuàng)始人克里斯•達根(Kris Duggan)辯稱：“想象一下，如果Fitbit(可穿戴健身追蹤器)只是在年末給你發(fā)郵件的話。”

In the programmes being rolled out at Deloitte and Cisco, based on an ap-proach developed byconsultancy Marcus Buckingham, managers use a combination of regular “check-ins”, backedup by instant staff engagement surveys and quarterly performance snapshots. GE calls itsregular discussions “touchpoints”; its informal feedback sessions are known as “insights”.

德勤和思科基于咨詢公司馬庫斯·白金漢(Marcus Buckingham)開發(fā)的方法出臺了績效考核項目，在這些項目中，經(jīng)理們采用一套組合方式，包括定期“登記”，快速員工參與度調查，以及季度績效“快照”。通用電氣將定期討論稱為“觸點”;非正式反饋會議稱為“洞察力”。

Transparency is another element common to the latest appraisal methods. Accenture, whichhopes to have implemented a change for all 373,000 employees by midyear, asks teams toshare strengths, agree priorities and adjust them based on open assessments of how the work isgoing.

透明度是最新評估方法常見的另一個元素。埃森哲希望到今年年中對其37.3萬名員工作出一次全面調整，要求各團隊分享優(yōu)勢、商定工作重點，并根據(jù)對工作進展情況的公開評估進行調整。

Companies are also trying to devolve responsibility for feedback and performance reviews tosmaller units, in the belief peers are better at identifying laggards quickly and dealing withthem.

公司也在試圖將反饋和績效評估責任下放到較小單位，相信同僚更善于迅速發(fā)現(xiàn)后進者，并做出應對。

Accenture has a pilot scheme to delegate pay decisions to individual teams, some with as fewas 30 members. “This was the area I was a little nervous about, because we don’t want rewardsto bec-ome a free-for-all,” admits Ellyn Shook, the group’s chief leadership and humanresources officer.

埃森哲推出一項試點項目，把薪資決定權交給各個團隊，其中一些團隊只有30人。該集團首席領導力和人力資源官埃琳•舒克(Ellyn Shook)承認：“這是我以前感到有些緊張的地方，因為我們不想讓獎酬變得毫無規(guī)則可循。”

Critics question whether the reforms are even focusing on the right problem, since the fact thathumans love feedback and hate ratings is not exactly new. W Edwards Deming, the USmanagement expert who revolutionised Japan-ese manufacturing quality, wrote in the 1980sthat rating “nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear,demolishes teamwork, nourishes rivalry and politics”.

批評者質疑這些改革是否聚焦于正確的問題，因為人類喜歡反饋而憎惡評級的事實并不新鮮。當年推動日本制造業(yè)質量發(fā)生革命性轉變的美國管理專家威廉•愛德華茲•德明(W. Edwards Deming)在上世紀80年代就寫道，評級“培育了短期業(yè)績，搞砸了長期規(guī)劃，滋生了不安、摧毀了團隊合作，助長了對立和政治”。

His followers believe companies should fix faulty ways of working, not obsess about individualperformance, which is bound to vary. Formal ratings should be dropped, Kelly Allan, aconsultant and adviser to The Deming Institute, says: “Once you hear you’re a three out of fiveyou can’t hear anything else.”

德明的追隨者相信，公司應該糾正有問題的工作方式，而不是糾結于注定各有不同的個人表現(xiàn)。咨詢師、TheDeming Institute顧問凱利•艾倫(Kelly Allan)表示，應該取消正式的評級制度，他說：“一旦你聽到自己在總分五分的尺度上得到三分，你就聽不到其他東西了。”

GE is collecting views from 30,000 staff who have been trying out a world without ratings. MsSemper says there is “a lot of momentum” behind its new performance “conversations” andan understanding that ratings may detract from that process. Under GE’s approach, shebelieves team leaders will have more data with which to reward people appropriately. The samephilosophy informs the Cisco and Deloitte programmes, which generate a scatter chart ofteam performance, rather than a single number, allowing managers to spot outliers andassess how individuals are doing more fairly and accurately.

通用電氣正在收集3萬名員工的看法，這些員工近期嘗試了一個沒有評級的世界。森佩爾表示，其新的績效談話“動量巨大”，大家認為評級可能損害這一過程。按照通用的做法，她相信團隊負責人將有更多恰當獎勵員工所需的數(shù)據(jù)。同樣的理念啟迪著思科和德勤的項目，這些項目產(chǎn)生有關團隊業(yè)績的散點圖表，而非單個數(shù)字，讓經(jīng)理們發(fā)現(xiàn)異常值，并且更為公平、準確地評估個人表現(xiàn)。

Old habits may be hard to kick, though. Accenture’s feedback shows team leaders still want aframework, which Ms Shook calls “guardrails”, to help them assign pay.

然而，人們可能很難改變舊日的習慣。埃森哲的反饋表明，團隊負責人仍想要一個框架幫助他們分配薪酬，舒克將這種框架稱為“圍欄”。

Some team leaders, brought up on the old system, may resist the change. An HR executive atone big European company says managers set in the old ways simply use new continuous-feedback tools to record the traditional annual appraisal. Steve Hunt of SAP SuccessFactors,which supplies such tools, says one company had trouble restructuring staff after it ditched itsrating system. “They ended up asking ‘Can we use compensation increases as a proxy [forindividual performance]?’” he says. “That’s crazy.”

一些團隊負責人在舊制度下長大，他們可能抵制這種變化。歐洲某家大型公司的一位人事高管表示，習慣于舊制度的經(jīng)理們只是使用新的持續(xù)反饋工具來記錄傳統(tǒng)的年度評估。供應此類工具的SAP SuccessFactors的史蒂夫•亨特(Steve Hunt)表示，有一家公司在廢除評級體系后在重組員工方面陷入了困境。他說：“他們最終問道‘我們可以用薪酬增加作為(個人業(yè)績的)代表嗎?’這簡直是瘋了。”

Prof Minbaeva says that as long as performance management schemes fit corporate strategyand everyone agrees with them, their precise structure may not matter. She points out thatDanish managers already use MUS, an acronym for the Danish term meaning “employeedevelopment conversation”. When they saw the multinationals’ reform plans, “they shruggedtheir shoulders and said: what’s new?”. As for her business school’s experiments withperformance management, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they come back with a system that’sonly slightly different”.

明巴耶娃教授表示，只要績效管理機制符合企業(yè)戰(zhàn)略，而且每個人都認可，那么它們的具體結構并不重要。她指出，丹麥經(jīng)理已經(jīng)使用MUS——丹麥語“員工發(fā)展談話”的縮寫——這種結構。當他們看到跨國公司的改革計劃時，“他們聳聳肩說道：有什么新東西嗎?”。對于她在商學院進行的績效管理實驗，“如果他們最終確定采用一套只是略有不同的制度，我不會感到意外”。