A Knowledge@Wharton article questions the use of rankings and tables when measuring individual employee performance. Organisations introduce them on the assumption that employees work harder, either to pull up a bad rating or to maintain a high one, but a Wharton study reveals that this assumption is incorrect.
The management professor in charge of the study explained that managers believe comparing performance makes employees more competitive. However, he argues that the exact oppositite happens. Employees who are at the top tend to become complacent while those at the bottom become depressed and give up trying to do a good job.
The study presented respondents with a series of tasks at varying rates of pay using the established Mechanical Turk platform. The rate of pay per task was the same regardless of how well people performed the work but one phase offered feedback on accuracy while the other phase didn’t. The initial result was that the phase without the feedback was more popular, contrary to the expectation that the feedback would be more welcome. In the second part of the research, workers were split into two groups – a control group that received no rating and a treatment group that received feedback with a ranking.
In the control group, 66% returned for more work, while only 42% in the treatment group came back. In addition, productivity was 22% poorer among the people in the treatment group who did return for more tasks.
However, the study isn’t intended to dismiss ranking employees completely. It acknowledges that contests where rankings are tied to prizes or bonuses can inspire higher productivity and performance. The suggestion is that employers must consider how an individual employee might react to feedback and the prospect of their performance information being shared.
