Understanding rankings and comparisons
Managers have to make a lot of decisions, such as who gets a raise or promotion, or who wins a particular award. To make these types of decisions, they often employ some form of ranking or comparison. When used correctly, these approaches can also be used for developmental purposes within the employee review process, because they allow employees to know where they stand in comparison to their peers. To make a decision about a promotion or an award, a simple comparison might work well. That is, instead of comparing people against defined standards, you're comparing them against each other, to make a judgment about who's the best.
However, for the purposes of employee appraisals, telling someone where they stand relative to others, is a topic that deserves to be treated with a little more care. Which, unfortunately, is not always case. You might recall one somewhat legendary use of rankings that attracted a lot of attention in the business press. I'm referring to the so called rank and yank practices at General Electric, several years ago, under fabled leader, Jack Welsh.Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/performance-review-foundations/understanding-rankings-and-comparisons