Department heads rated nearly all employees as average to avoid singling anyone out

Evidence

Under the present system, Moses reported, most department heads simply gave each of their hundreds of employees “C”—or average—ratings on their “report cards” rather than try to pinpoint outstanding or delinquent workers. To obtain more accurate ratings, he wrote, department heads must be required to give each employee arithmetical grades in dozens of categories. In addition, there must be a complete “reclassification” of the civil service, adding many new levels, to insure that employees would be given the precise salary and authority they deserved. There must be a complete “standardization” of salaries so that employees doing the same type of work would be getting the same pay even if they were working in different departments. The commission should have authority to see that promotions and raises were given strictly on the bases established under the system. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 318

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader literature on grade inflation and managers’ avoidance of differentiating ratings in organizations.