Bell Curve Fever - HR's Curse !

It’s Performance appraisal time at the IT services companies and for quite couple of days I am hearing my friends cribbing about the Human Resources Department for the ineffective bell curve appraisal method.

During the college days, Students were comfortable with whatever they are being offered in terms of Salary, Place of work, domain etc. In fact it’s notable that IT services companies were not forced to change their entry level salary for the past of 7 – 8 years owing to the huge number of engineering graduates churned out from the engineering colleges and lack of employment / employability skills.

But in College, nobody cribs about being a Computer Science Engineer or any other engineer not getting into a core Industry of their engineering specialization. Why aren’t Computer Engineers not getting into Product Companies which pay them well ? It’s pretty simple that it demands higher level of competencies compared to working in IT companies.

After spending one or two years at IT services companies then comes the rat race for performance appraisals and promotions. First I wish to highlight, Performance appraisal is not a stand-alone tool in IT services industry, there are indeed a gamut of offerings like Promotions, Onsite Opportunities, Location transfers, Project assignments of choice, Career planning options available in the company

Putting into perspective the HR Challenges, IT services industries are the largest private employers in India and the IT landscape in which we are operating is pretty challenging to have predefined goals and monitor due to its dynamism in terms of stability of the environment and complexity in operations model. Even then we have been doing its best in terms of compensation and employee engagement reflected through Industry attrition of 13 % (NASSCOM estimates) well lesser against the Banking sector. Also Tata Consultancy Solutions  and Cognizant, two major players have been consistently rated as the Best Employers during last two years.

Even then IT Industries HR fraternity is vigilant in terms of keeping people engaged by providing with learning opportunities during their initial entry level stage and by the end of two or three years they are provided with gamut of options from which they can choose , but only pain point is the employees want it all ! Isn’t a certain trade off  required ?

But on the other hand, I don’t agree with some companies who have a clause saying that who gets 1^st rating twice would be promoted first as I personally feel under this clause the basic fundamental of “Appraise for performance and promote for potential” fails and at times even the rationale of performance appraisal is lost because of the trade-off with other options.

I have listened to so many people saying , this time I got promotion so I was rate less even though I performed well and on the other hand one of my friend told I will be given an onsite opportunity so I have been rated less. So Is’nt the rationale behind appraisals which is primarily a feedback and developmental tool is lost?

I feel it’s high time the organizations use the performance appraisals as a developmental tool and base promotion policies out of competency based management systems. Use motivation tools like onsite opportunities and other career planning as allied engagement options. Trading off Performance appraisal with others might be a serious trouble. !

You are views and critics on this subject / article are most welcome !