HR WORD: Bell Curve

Bell curves, also called Gaussian distributions and normal distributions, are so-called because the line resembles a bell. Bell curves are underpinned by the theory that if you map people’s performance, most will fall into a specific range. Bell curves represent the standard distribution of a rating, result or test score in that the top of the ‘bell’ is the most likely event, with other possible events evenly distributed around the most likely event on both sides.

• It helps easily identify top performing employees.
• The suitability of the employee for a particular job position can be identified.
• Proper allocation of training needs for each employee can be identified.

Bell curves are normal curves that are important to identify financial and economic trends and are widely used to draw a variety of statistics. In the HR domain, they are a tool to measure employee performance and for performance appraisal. The peak of the bell curve depicts the mean, median, and mode of a certain set of data.