Workplace Democracy

Have any experiments in large-scale work-place democracy been tried? If not, what about incremental steps like having underlings evaluate bosses, and having some of that affect their evaluation (or at least "areas of improvement").

Semi-Democracy via Weights

I don't expect that peons like me will have a significant influence if orgs do start such, but it would be nice to have some say-so. A rank-based weighting approach can be used for voting.

Here is one approach to assigning weights based on rank. This example has 3 levels.

 1. Lowest rank
 2. Medium rank
 3. Top rank

 p = total points = 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 (rank level quantity x 2)

 Vote Allocations (weights):

 Lowest rank = 1 / p =~ 0.1667
 Medium rank = 2 / p =~ 0.3333
 Top rank    = 3 / p =~ 0.5

 Note total of weighting factors adds up to 1.0

Two-way Feedback

It would be helpful if underlings could at least identify "areas needing improvement" in a given manager which the next higher manager sees during the evaluation. The manager him/herself wouldn't see the statements to avoid retaliation. Often managers have a few very annoying traits that keep them from being tolerable. There is often very little career pressure for them to correct these problem spots because they hide them from their superiors, so the traits remain year after year unchecked, driving underlings crazy.

Possible evaluation form from "underlings", may be ranked on a number scale:

Is respectful to you. Treats you with sufficient patience and dignity.
Is fair; that is, doesn't apply favoritism based on friendships and personal favors.
Listens to and evaluates your opinions and suggestions with thoughtfulness.
Assigns you meaningful work that's relevant to your position.
Offers help, useful tips, and challenges to help you improve your work and career.
Is sufficiently clear and consistent about expectations and goals.
Priorities and schedules given are clear, meaningful, and realistic.
Explains the purpose of your work in terms of the organization's goals
Other (written comment)

The results given to the manager should probably be anonymous and averaged.

CategoryEmployment, CategoryManagement

Other search terms: management evaluation