Latest BT performance rating data ‘encouraging’

BT

Hopes are rising that BT’s notoriously resilient performance management (PM) demons are firmly in check following detailed CWU analysis of the company’s latest employee rating data.

It’s now three years since the current annualised performance scoring system was introduced under which every member of staff is labelled wither ‘Brilliant’, ‘Good Work’ or ‘Work To Do’. Starting in October 2017, these three categories replaced the five former PM bands – notably including the discredited ‘development needed’ label which the union had long argued was being massively over-applied.

Prior to the launch of the new system both company and union negotiators were in broad agreement that, in order to shift deep-seated perceptions that PM in BT was fundamentally unfair, the number of employees placed in the new ‘Work To Do’ category needed to be a tiny fraction of the number hitherto placed in the bottom two categories that it effectively replaced.

Following mixed results in 2017 – which saw significant improvements across much of BT Group, but the ‘Work To Do’ figures remaining disappointingly high in Openreach and Consumer – progress has been consistent.

This year’s performance ratings, published in October, continue that positive trend – reinforcing the impression that an issue that has twice brought BT Group to the brink of an industrial action ballot has been brought substantially under control.

Assistant secretary Dave Jukes explains: “Things are certainly moving in the right direction. Compared to the situation that existed just a few years ago I’m receiving very few PM escalations these days – and that goes across all lines of business.

“In every division the number of people in the ’Work To Do’ category is really low now – with the overwhelming majority of employees across the whole of BT Group either rated ‘Brilliant’ or ‘Good Work’.
“It’s particularly encouraging that in every division the number of people in the ‘Brilliant’ category is now significantly higher than the number in the ‘Work To Do’ category, as that indicates how far we’ve moved away from the forced distribution imposed by the performance management bell curve.”

As well as monitoring the overall distribution of ratings in every line of business, the CWU has also been forensically drilling down into the statistics to check whether ratings are being applied consistently across the board.

Dave explains: “We’ve asked for, and been given, data which includes breakdowns for gender, ethnicity, age and disability, because we wanted to check whether there were any patterns as to how ratings were distributed.

“To date no definitive skewing of ratings involving the different groups have been positively identified – though at our last meeting there was some discussion as to whether women may be statistically less likely to receive the highest rating than their male counterparts. This is something we’re continuing to monitor.”

One of the things most pointedly highlighted by BT’s Equality and Diversity data for the last six months, however, is the scale of the challenge BT faces to address deficiencies in its staff gender balance, given that women currently account for just 22 per cent of all employees across BT Group.

This issue – along with questions with regards to ethnicity ratios, age profiles and the percentage of employees with declared disabilities –will be discussed in detail at a special branch forum at CWU Headquarters in Wimbledon on January 16.