Morgan Stanley to Rate Employees With Adjectives, Not Numbers
Morgan Stanley told its staff on Thursday that it was overhauling how employees are assessed in several ways, including discarding a numerical scale that rated them from 1 to 5 in favor of lists of up to five adjectives.
Evaluators will now be asked to list up to five adjectives that describe the employees. The aim is to give more direct feedback and better steer staff members toward areas of improvement.
“It’s about giving people more information and something they can do more with,” Peg Sullivan, Morgan Stanley’s global head of talent management, said. “It’s more candid and memorable.”
“We don’t just think about what they’ve contributed commercially,” she said. “We think more holistically: their risk management, their leadership skills and what they’ve contributed to our culture.”
“While I think the millennials will like it, it wasn’t targeted at them,” Ms. Sullivan said.
The move away from numerical scales toward adjectives was rooted in the practices of James P. Gorman, the firm’s chief executive, who has sought in recent years more effective ways of evaluating prospective and current employees.
His experiment started several years ago, when he began asking job candidates to name five of their positive attributes.
Source: Morgan Stanley to Rate Employees With Adjectives, Not Numbers