Around this time of year, most of us are either in the middle of our annual employee performance appraisal process, or gearing up for the start of our process early next year. I don’t know about you, but it always makes me stop and ask if we’re doing things the best way. I find myself paying closer attention to articles, blogs, books and other reference materials on performance appraisals and managing employee performance.

One question that seems to come up again and again is whether you should use profiling or stack ranking to force distribution of scores across your rating scale, and take action to deal with all those who fall in the top and bottom 10%. In some companies, that means starting action to dismiss the bottom 10% of performers.

It’s a thorny question. The approach has been touted by many as an industry best practice, with several large, successful companies using it. But there are also a number of very successful, high-performing companies who don’t.

This is one of the issues that the experts in the HR’s Raging Debates addressed and provide some insight into this issue. You can read input from 10 HR experts here, then add your voice to the discussion by weighing in on the topic. 

If you’d like to explore the topic a bit more, we’ve just published a new reference article on our web site called: The Benefits and Challenges of Profiling or Stack Ranking Employee Performance. It looks at the pros and cons of forced ranking and considers some alternate techniques you can use to achieve the same benefits.

What do you think? Does your company used forced distribution for employee performance review scores? How do you deal with things like “grade creep” and staff motivation? Pop over to HR’s Raging Debates to share your ideas.