One of the challenges I will be focusing for Intel in my project is the focal review process. Using online sources, my professor who worked for Intel a long time ago, and other sources, I wanted to know if this is an accurate explanation of the focal R& R. Would love your comments and feedback on it. Let me know if something is wrong or no longer valid because I did somewhere that they are always updating the focal process but wasn't sure how accurate the source was. Would love Intel employees to jump in with their comments about this. Again, my project is about finding challenges or problems Intel might be facing, understanding the technical issues, etc. After much research, I realized that I didn't want to state that management was the issue, rather I found certain processes were the root causes of problems. Hence, why I decided to write on focal. Please feel free to comment, the more, the better this way I know if I am on the right track or not. Below is the rough, rough draft I have.
" Focal Performance Review: Rating and Ranking
Ranking and Rating Consists of a process with a panel of managers. One manager collects information from the employee, peers, or even stakeholders. A written assessment is done using the information given to them and their observations of the employee. Job function and the manager then group employees into “Rank Groups that usually consists of 20 people for five managers”. Afterward, the managers representing each employee in the rank group share the written evaluations within each other in a meeting. Once all the evaluations have been read, managers must rank people from largest contributor to the lower. Employees usually fall into the following sections; Outstanding, Successful, Equal, Needs Improvement. Individuals who fall in the bottom aren’t necessarily considered bad employees, it simply many means that they are a junior about others in the rank group and would be expected to be in the bottom portion. Employee compensation is determined by how well employees performed about their peers in similar roles and at similar pay amounts. The people who ranked higher would prompt questions of why others underperformed below their peers. In theory, this seems like an accurate way to measure performance but not an arbitrary measure. There are several drawbacks to this method because it can reward and prompt bad behavior from certain managers. Another pitfall is if you work with people who are workaholics and overachieving geniuses, it’s going to be harder for you to compete with their high skill level versus competing with individuals who are focused more on a work/life balance or don’t have a computer type of mind. Intel has a target distribution in mind for the rank groups with a certain percent on the top and some in the bottom. The focal process has become political with some managers looking at it as an opportunity to improve their CYA network by showing favoritism to their own, but there are enough managers who focus on a more fair process. This has changed in recent years. The 360 feedback from peers has certain drawbacks. The conflict is that those who are ranking your group are expected to give some of that feedback. Lately, the process has become even more complicated as an employee’s manager is supposed to rank and rate you alone with minimum co-manager discussion taking place. Sometimes good workers are tagged in the bottom due to a percent of quota that has to be met. Although this does eliminate the issue of managers from other departments focusing on their team, it still does not take away the potential favoritism that may arise. Managers are often focused on hitting their distribution targets in focal. Each manager that doesn’t have enough poor performers must, unfortunately, transfer people into that rank by placing undeserving employees in the bottom. Sometimes pinpointing the individual who is a poor performer isn’t a difficult task but in a smaller group, you might not have anyone deserving the title of the underperformer. "
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