CSC rating 40% of the employees as not fully meeting expectations

I posted this in bizjouinal comments on the story about CSC rating 40% of the employees as not fully meeting expectations.   http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2014/04/what-csc-s-bell-curve-for-rating-employees-means.html
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I have a problem with politically incorrect wording here... "...40 percent of employees evaluated to not fully meet their job expectations."  means that CSC considers 40% of their employees to not be doing the job they are paid for and to not be worth keeping.  To me that speaks badly of management.

When such large numbers of employees are under performing I have to think that management cannot motivate the people that are working for them.  A large part of the worker population can be expected to simply do their job and this part is necessary for the company success.  I am talking about jobs such as  existing long term projects where people are deeply immersed in the particular custom technology or people in operations doing backups and just keeping the same unexciting but necessary processes running.

This approach is short sighted.  It builds unsustainable growth followed by a crash.  GE also has an A, B, C rating system where C players are required to improve or expected to leave.  This drove GE stock value to new highs in the 1990's, followed by a crash they still have not recovered from.  People that were good at switching departments and networking stayed, regardless of their real technical or business competence.  People that stayed in the same job for a long time got weeded out even if they were really good at what they were doing.

Manager don't want to admit they made a mistake when they hired someone new.  They need to give them "a little more time" and won't give a low rating to the new person.  In a quota system that means an old timer getting their work done gets low rated.  If a manager admits to making mistakes they are not "A" managers.

This also smacks of very little carrot and a LOT of stick.  If managers don't know how to nurture, grow and motivate their employees then the managers are incompetent.

Instead of down rating and insulting large numbers of employees I think CSC should institute an intense management training program.  Managers should be required to take graded employee management, motivation and telework management classes and pass with an A.  (I will leave it to the managers to argue whether class grades should be on a curve or an absolute scale.)

I do not work for CSC.  I did in the 1990's and thought highly of the company and still have CSC stock in a 401K.