My heart sank. I was speaking with a coaching client and they said that there was a new instruction from HR on their Performance Evaluation System – each team manager was to mark 10% of their team as a poor performer and in need of improvement.

Aaarrrhh! Whilst I understand why such an instruction could have been sent out edicts like this rarely work in practice!

Research shows that on average, across a company, 10 – 25% of staff at any one time are in need of feedback in order to improve their performance. So if you, as HR, look over the Performance Evaluation Reports submitted by your line managers and discover that they rate everyone as doing fine – you know you have a problem! (more…)