Dear Friend
I consider you just heard of Bell Curve system of appraisal' but never had exposed to. It needs first to understand what is Bell Curve by you properly, then only you may be able to educate the employee. It is a good move by you but stay alert to reply all the querries that may asked by the employee.
Advantages of The Bell Curve System:
Identify Top Performers Through The Bell Curve Grading
The forced ranking compels managers to make decisions and differentiate between different employees. Those who are identified as high-top performers are rewarded: they feel motivated and work harder to grow in the company. Their growth and career plans can be developed suitably, and initiatives taken to retain them within the company. This not only helps retain the top talent but also builds succession pipelines.
Manage Lenient And Strict Ratings Of Managers:
The bell curve is perhaps the only method that can be used by the organization to manage leniency and strictness of managers’ ratings. Lenient scores mean a larger cluster of employees in a high-rating group (a right-skewed bell-curve), and strict scores mean large numbers of employees in a low-rating group (a left-skewed bell curve). These unbalanced scoring may demotivate high performers and retain mediocre employees. The average manager tends to rate on a lenient scale.
Identify Suitability Of Employees In A Job Position
An underperforming employee may be more suited for another position in the company. The forced ranking with adequate analysis and HR intervention can identify other positions for employees. By digging deeper into the competencies, strengths and career plans of employees and placing them in positions which map better to their capabilities, HR can play a key role in employee development.
Manage Training Needs
The training management talks about the importance of the correct allocation of training to employees. The bell curve graph can help identify the training that is most applicable to different categories of employees.
Disadvantages Of The Bell Curve
Too Rigid
Using the bell curve model in performance management may be considered a rigid approach for rating employees. Sometimes managers need to put employees in specific gradients just for the sake of bell curve requirements. This happens more often when the manager’s teams are small.
Loss Of Morale
The bell curve appraisal creates doubts in the mind of both managers and employees, who may worry about the possibility of an exit during tough job market conditions. This may lead to a loss of morale and further deterioration of job performance.
Not Suitable For Small Companies
The performance review in bell curve is not suitable for small companies where the number of employees is less than 300. With fewer employees, the categorization cannot be done properly, and the results are mostly erroneous.
While there is an ongoing debate on the bell curve based normalization methodology, an additional 360 feedback may help ease some of these doubts. Employees’ desired and actual performance can be viewed through a bell curve in Empxtrack’s Appraisal dashboards. The bell curve can be normalized or used to view the performance gaps of employees.
average qualification ofaware of looking out for articles, white papers, videos and other related content on how to educate employees on the Bell Curve.