Should Yahoo! bring back the Bell Curve?
by Amaury Dorin-Blanchard
Yahoo! is going to have some complicated times since the implementation of a new policy where managers have to rank employees on a bell curve and then fire the ones who are who would get low scores over two recent quarters.
Workers are obviously very unsatisfied with the managers using this to monitor their performances but Yahoo! feels it is a necessary step in order to lower the size of their workforce. However this bell ranking ranking, which can be categorized as “forced ranking” might not be the best move for the company as this new policy might demotivate the workforce which would cause high-performing workers to become mediocre workers due to the fear of doing something wrong and ending up in the low end of the curve. At the same time the creativity of the workers, and therefore the company’s, would decrease again because of that fear of ending up in the low end of the bell curve, resulting in a potential decrease in productivity from the workers which would likely lead to a decrease in profitability of the Yahoo!. Because of those reasons I disagree with Yahoo using such a policy.
