To Cull or Not to Cull Bottom Perfomers...

[Judy McLeish]

At the Employee Factor, we thought we should ask - should you "cull or not cull" your bottom performers.

“If you’ve got 16 employees, at least two are turkeys.” Jack Welch

Jack Welch famously advocated firing the bottom-performing 10 per cent of staff every year. So did Steve Ballmer in April 2006, who admitted to culling one in every 15 employees every year and suggested that all businesses, large and small, would benefit from such an approach. The question – what should companies do to manage their low performers? Low performers are said to make up one tenth of a company’s workforce. In addition to implementing a clear process to handle poor performers, there is another very controversial method to manage the bottom 10 per cent…implement an annual quota for removing underperforming staff.

The latest research from Hudson Recruitment shows that UK business leaders do want to dismiss an annual quota of underperforming staff. The findings reveal that 61% of senior UK bosses believe that a fixed target for annual staff dismissal is healthy.

According to the study, British business leaders acknowledged that there were distinct advantages to deliberately releasing average or below-average performers.

• Ensuring strong team members do not carry weaker ones was cited as the main advantage (60%) of deliberately releasing average or below average performers.
• Allowing underperforming staff to pursue a fresh challenge more suited to their abilities (50%).
• Bottom-line improvement (36%).
• Ensuring that training is spent on those that will really benefit (35%).
• Increasing productivity (33%) also rated highly.

But the risks inherent to this strategy were also highlighted:

• 75% of respondents cited ‘introducing a culture of fear’ as a deterrent to a dismissal quota.
• 61% felt pursuing such a dismissal policy would lower morale within the workplace.
• Just over 10% think that it will decrease motivation in the workplace.

While it was agreed that there are risks to this strategy, the problems associated with inaction may outweigh the risks.

Are you in favor of culling? Let us know your thoughts.