After years of using a performance appraisal system in which managers were forced to bell-curve their departments and assess a minimum proportion of their employees as under-performing, Microsoft has decided to eliminate the system, after years of discontent over the political competition that the system fostered(http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303460004579193951987616572).

In the case of a tech company requiring innovation of its employees, this type of appraisal system would create an atmosphere of fear not conducive to collaboration and creativity. Whereas such a system might be deemed acceptable to sales representatives, who work mostly individually on their own accounts, and where heavy competitive office politics would be seen as a positive driver of performance, in the case of technology development such a policy would destabilize employees and disincentivize teamwork. As well, managers would lose incentive to coach and develop their current employees, instead preparing to simply fire low performers instead.

This said, bell curving can be useful in many other environments. University grade bell curving creates consistency of marks, and the removal of low-performers reduces the resource strain on the institution. Bell curving of assembly line workers would ensure that slow workers are regularly removed and replaced by potentially younger, faster workers. A careful analysis of the impact of such a destabilizing human resource policy should be undertaken in each differing workplace.

In economics class, it is regularly taught that beyond public protection and basic research, governments, because of the deadweight losses caused by taxation, can best promote economic prosperity by leaving the market alone and only intervening if threats to a competitive market (such as monopoloies) devleop.

However, in this recent TED talk: Mariana Mazzucato: Government — investor, risk-taker, innovator, the speaker points out that whereas scientists working in R&D for corporations such as in pharamceuticals and engineering do come up with great innovations, researchers at universities and in the military do too. And many technologies used commercially today were not necessarily thought of as having a commercial application when they were developed; thus, that research would be best seen as a public good which would not have existed with the market economy alone. This important recognition for government funding of research helps us realize that we need the strategic contribution of government to generate advanced development, instead of the attitude of simply reducing government, because companies will not generate everything on their own.

Large entreprise-wide IT projects are large investments with high risks, when considering the cost of development, the costs of training, and lost productivity when systems go down.

BC public schools use BCeSIS for grading. Introduced 8 years ago, the system’s cost has come to 6 times original projections. And although generally functional, the single-server system’s slow response times and significant downtime (such as multi-day maintenance immediately before my HIstory teacher’s report card deadline) has angered many. Now, the government is going to start over, with a new ConnectEdBC (http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/11/05/ConnectEdBC-to-replace-beleaguered-BCeSIS/).

UBC’s Connect system for messaging and secure assignment dropboxing has also frustrated students and professors alike, due to frequent unscheduled outages particularly at high demand times (http://ubyssey.ca/news/ubc-connect-disruptions-352/) Some professors are instead posting entirely on simple course websites.

Translink’s new Compass farecard system is due to roll out shortly. Recently, beta testing with 10000 users was conducted (http://www.theprovince.com/TransLink+busiest+compass+card+tapping+cent+testers+still+fail/8994621/story.html), and it seems the system held up, though many bugs were found. Extensive testing is a positive step which will help engineers refine the system and ensure that large failures (and the great scandals and grief of managers and politicians) are prevented. Of course, 10000 users is a very small part of the total that will be using the new system daily, so only when the system is finally released will we know whether the IT team has succeeded.

During the recent class on HR practices, higher wages and benefits were cited as an effective way to improve employee motivation and productivity. The notion of making cuts to drive performance seemed to be frowned upon, as illustrated by poorly paid call centre workers with highly proceduralized and repetitive work. However, reducing hours and pay are also frequently used when performance is below par. This lead me to attempt to see if any formal support of such an approach has been articulated.

In this article (http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ICS/InsightsAndConvenings/upload/research-for-the-real-world-03-11.pdf), the author mentions the “delayed payment” model, in which wages are deflated for entry level, and inflated for senior level personnel, in an attempt to make employees work harder towards the inflated higher wage. The model seems to be well used in environments in which employees are closely supervised and thus performance-linked pay can be effectively implemented.

Thus, this model seems to justify lower probationary pay. However, the theory requires the existence of higher pay in senior positions in the balance. It seems that an overall across-the-board wage cut, thought to reduce costs while creating a need for people to work more, does not create the wanted motivation.

While my manager at work was joking around about light teasing in the workplace, another one reminded him that the law was now going to take it much more seriously.

Bullying in the workplace can be extremely harmful, not only impacting productivity and turnover, but more importantly hurting the victim in a long-term way. Many felt that companies have a responsibility to ensure inappropriate political behaviour does not go too far. But now, the provincial workers compensation board has explicitly mandated this responsibility, by making it possible for claims to made against employers for inadequate protection against harassment.

Under the new policies effective Nov 1st, employers now must, among other things, develop policy statements, and procedures for processing complaints, and conduct bullying prevention training.

This extension of health and safety regulations is an important step in pushing employers to create a more positive work environment, for the sake of society as a whole. Of course, in terms of enforcement, assessing whether the efforts made are adequate will be difficult, but this regulation presents a worthy attempt.

Details on the new regulation can be found at:

http://www2.worksafebc.com/PDFs/bullying/bullyingHarassmentBackgrounder.pdf