Saturday, September 15, 2007

Could it be Jack Welch's 20-70-10 model?

My company is hiring a new in-house HR Consultant. She is a personal friend of the owners and rumored to be good. In the past, our company's HR duties were split amongst the employees in my department. None of us are degreed in HR and most feel these activities to be time consuming and a burden to our department. So why does the anticipation of this new hire bother us.

Could it be Jack Welch's 20-70-10 model? In case you didn't know, Jack Welch used to be the Chairman and CEO of General Electric. During his tenure he developed a model which determined that 10% of his workforce was slackers, 70% were average, and 20% were top performers. Each year he would fire the bottom 10%, leave the 20% alone to do their thing and groom the middle 70% to become the next top performers. Over time his employees would shift into new categories. After the bottom workers were let go and the top performers left the company, a new group would move into the bottom 10% and the top 20%.

So that explains it, as this new hire with a stellar reputation joins our company she may just knock some of us out of the top 20% or worse yet push some of us into the bottom 10%.

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