The company's 40-odd employees rate every employee in the firm, including themselves, on how well each satisfies 10 performance statements. A team of employees from all levels developed them in 1989. The team is staffed on a rotating basis, and it meets after each evaluation period to continually refine the program. The peer-evaluation system has been carefully crafted to yield untainted results. Because confidentiality is critical to frank appraisal, the evaluations are prepared on computers using a standard format.
Employees copy their evaluations to disks which are then anonymously returned for compilation.
During the compilation process, an evaluation statement is prepared for each employee. The statement includes the numerical rankings for the employee as judged by the company as a whole. It also includes breakdowns of the evaluations based on the rater's job level. Thus, an employee can see how he or she is viewed by management separately from how he or she is seen by peers. These statements are distributed to each employee with an explanatory memo.