13/10/2008
In early September, a court handed down the first ever ruling in France against a firm’s employee appraisal system. A Nanterre court held the criteria applied by Dutch publisher Wolters-Kluwers in its French subsidiaries to be “unlawful”.

Company management had recently introduced a brand new US-style staff appraisal system based on six vaguely-worded qualities: “customer focus”, “value creation”, “integrity”, “responsibility”, “innovation”, and “team work”. In all, 1 200 people were affected (journalists, legal writers, sales staff, IT staff, trainers, office and managerial staff).

The court held that these qualities were incomprehensible and subjective, and were based on employees’ personal qualities rather than their performance.

The ruling will set a precedent, because unlike previous decisions on employee appraisal systems, the trade unions who brought the case won on the substance, and not on a technicality.