Claude Lewis — At least three of America's largest companies now face lawsuits by employees charging management with discrimination. The complaints are aimed at a new method of ranking managers, professionals as well as entry-level workers.
Under the new employee evaluation system, gaining more and more acceptance at large companies, workers are given "grades" of A, B or C. As it was in school, an A is good. If you get a B or a C, it can hit you and your career hard. Grades affect the size of pay increases and promotions; they even affect job security.
That's why some employees at Microsoft, Ford, Conoco and other large companies have gone to court. They are charging that some groups of employees are favored over others. Some workers have alleged that white men are favored over women and blacks, and that young workers are valued more than older workers. Others insist that foreign citizens are often classified at higher levels than Americans.
The thinking among many company executives today, however, is that under the new grading system, also called "forced" rankings or distributions, managers are more honest in evaluating workers. In addition, the new system calls on managers to make clearer distinctions among workers and to single out poor performers. It is these poor performers who are most likely to be laid off when the economy slows down.
The truth is that while the new system of evaluation has created fear and anxiety among many employees, companies even if they don't publicize it have always graded their workers. It seems to me the process is simply being formalized.
But in the long run, the new grading system could hurt employers now facing lawsuits. They've created a system that lawyers can more easily point to as discriminatory. That's because any evaluation of workers involves some subjective judgment and in the presence of subjectivity, some employees inevitably will come to believe that they are victims of job discrimination. No matter how often employers insist that their decisions about their workers have nothing to do with color, gender, age, sexual orientation or any other of the factors that so easily lend themselves to charges of bias, many workers don't believe them.
Microsoft, Ford, General Electric and other companies are in court defending the new system. Women, minorities and older white men have filed many of the lawsuits.
At one of the largest retail companies in the world one that has not yet been slapped with a lawsuit based on its evaluation techniques a spokesman told me there is no discrimination against any of its employees.
"We're a high-profile company, and we give high marks to workers who go that extra mile for customers," I was told. "We have managers who are white, black, Asian and Hispanic. We hire males and females, young people and older workers. It's about attitude, not a person's status. Some of our older workers do a terrific job.
"Regardless of how we evaluate a worker, if an employee is fair they'll respond to our evaluation or they will leave us," the spokesman said. "Whatever the case, we wish them well. Under our grading system we urge all our employees, even the best ones, to attempt to improve their performance. If they do, we're happy; if they don't, nobody's happy."
Some have charged that the new rating system permits managers, who are predominantly white males, to rate employees based on personal biases rather than on merit. Some have charged that many managers discriminate to favor their friends. Well, of course: I can't imagine that anyone is going to reward those with whom they have strong political, philosophical or personal disagreements. That's the way the workplace has always operated.
It'll be interesting to see how the whole thing shakes out over the next few years. Maybe a more rigorous system of school-type "grading" is at least a little better than the old casual evaluations but judging by the number of lawsuits pending, we'll have to wait and see.
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