“The first grade I got was a 4 out of 5, from a developer who is my son’s age: he criticized me for not being there the day the app launched, says Olivier Charbonnier, founder of Sept – a name predestined to give notes. There was a misunderstanding, he didn’t know I had taken a day to breathe, so I was able to tell him. “
For two weeks, the employees of this collective of three human resources consulting agencies experienced a “star wars” to observe the impact of corporate ratings: every evening, thirteen volunteer employees (out of twenty-seven) rated the colleagues with whom they had work interactions during the day out of five stars, on an application co-built beforehand. The next day at 8 o’clock, everyone discovered their score.
Popularized with the emergence of platforms like Uber or Airbnb, the ways of evaluating its employees or managers have multiplied, and the annual interview is no longer the only way to judge performance.
If there are platforms where employees rate their company, such as Glassdoor, it is now between employees that ratings appear to easily, quickly and more regularly gauge the professional skills of each. This is the case with the 5Feedback application, which 80,000 people use in around ten large companies (Crédit Agricole, Safran, etc.): each volunteer is graded on four aspects of their behavior at work.
An obligation of transparency
The experience du Sept is based on a 360-degree assessment, a management tool where everyone rates everyone, regardless of hierarchical link. “The evaluation is successful because it responds to the illusion that it will reveal to us to ourselves, explains psychoanalyst Bénédicte Vidaillet. We expect the Other, in the sense of the company, to tell us something deeper about oneself. “
Within the framework of their experience, the employees of the agencies were destabilized by this all-out assessment, especially since the boss had access to all of the notes issued. “I had the feeling that I was opening each other’s mail, but there is also some regulation to be made if someone gives 2 out of 5 to everyone and sets a rotten atmosphere”, justifies Olivier Charbonnier.
In companies, the rating of employees is authorized provided it is transparent, says the law. An employer has the right to assess his employees on condition of consulting the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) and informing the personnel concerned. “The evaluation methods and techniques must always be relevant to the purpose pursued. The criteria must be pre-established, precise, adapted and known to the employees ”, sums up lawyer Yann Decroix.
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