Microsoft's new chief human resources officer, Amy Coleman, sent an email to the company's managers outlining "new and improved tools to help accelerate high performance and quickly address low performance."
Microsoft's new chief human resources officer, Amy Coleman, sent an email to the company's managers outlining "new and improved tools to help accelerate high performance and quickly address low performance."
Business Insider reviewed this letter and published its full contents.
Microsoft will change its approach to firing those who perform poorly, and will also ban such employees from being transferred within the company or hired for two years.
Many technology companies have become tougher on their employees over the past year.
For example, Mark Zuckerberg targeted low-performing employees when he cut thousands of jobs at Meta earlier this year . And, similar to Microsoft's new policy, Meta is blacklisting laid-off employees to prevent them from being rehired by the company.
Earlier this year, Microsoft laid off 2,000 employees it deemed incompetent without severance pay. Managers spent months evaluating employees all the way down to the executive level.
“This year, we will provide greater transparency and clarity to the compensation process for managers, including additional guidance for each compensation outcome and disclosure of payout percentages to help you make decisions that meet our expectations for high performance. More details on compensation will be communicated by the end of the month,” the letter states.
If managers observe that subordinates are losing productivity, they can offer them a “Performance Improvement Plan ” (PIP), which is valid for a whole year. The employee can accept the improvement plan or leave the company by taking advantage of the Global Voluntary Severance Agreement (GVSA) offer.
In addition, employees involved in PIP are not eligible for internal transfers within the company . Also, specialists with compensation from zero to 60% do not have this right - these are employees with low indicators in Microsoft's performance assessments.
Also, former employees who were laid off with zero or 60% of their benefits or during/after PIP will not be eligible for re-employment until two years have passed since the date of layoff.
Recall that the company uses a scale from 0 to 200, which affects the amount of compensation in the form of shares and cash bonuses.
“In addition, in the coming months, we will launch several initiatives aimed at improving the way we measure, manage, and motivate teams to deliver results for our clients. You will have access to AI-powered, scenario-based tools that will help you prepare for constructive or challenging conversations by practicing in an interactive environment,” the executive development initiative states.
