CP003: Business Intelligence for Masses – Interview with Mike Alexander

15 Responses to “Highlight Employees by Performance Rating – Conditional Formatting Challenge”

1. Stephen says:

   May 18, 2012 at 1:53 pm

   While this might solve the question Shelly asked, there is another option that might be more useful - a pivot table could make a list of people who fall into the various categories, so, if you needed to simply see who got in the top bracket to give them a bonus, you would have that list

   Simply sorting by the rankings would work too, but you would knock them out of alphabetical order. 

   Reply
2. Darin Myers says:

   May 18, 2012 at 2:45 pm

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   The solution I chose makes use of the percentile formula.
    
   The percentile formula returns the value representing the K-th percentile of a range of values. The range of values is the first criteria, and K is the second criteria in the formula.

   I applied Conditional Formatting according to the formulas in the order below:

   5%    =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.95)   Dark Blue
   15%  =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.85)   Light Blue
   65%  =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.1)     Green
   10%  =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.05)   Light Red
   5%    =$C6<PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.05)     Dark Red
    
   The issue I noted with this approach is that Zambi was not highlighted in my solution as it is in the solution provided. Unless I am mistaken, and I very well may be, the 10th percentile for this data set is at 2.21, so Zambi would fall above the 10th percentile with a PR of 2.3.
    
   The first step to this was figuring out the 'buckets'; what scores should fall into each range. In attempting to match the formatting of the spreadsheet, I determined the buckets below.
    
   5% = 95% to 100%
   10% = 90% up to but not including 95%
   65% = 10% up to but not including 90%
   10% = 5% up to but not including 10%
   5% = under 5%
    
   After that, it is a relatively simple matter to plug the necessary values into the conditional formatting formulas as shown above.

   One final consideration is that while the buckets above match the color banding on the spreadsheet, I believe that the original request suggests a different color banding with 6 buckets shown below.
    
   Top 5%    = 95 to 100%    Dark blue
   Top 10%  = 85 up to but not including 95%    Light blue
   Top 65%  = 35 up to but not including 85%    Green

   Bottom 10% = 10% down to but not including 5%   Light Red
   Bottom 5%   = 5% or under    Dark Red
    
   This leaves one final bucket of 10 to 35% (exclusive of both values) that is not highlighted and so would remain white.
    
   Thank you Chandoo and Shelly for an interesting and useful exercise. This is certainly a valuable technique to have in my reporting bag of tricks.
    

   Reply
3. PSG says:

   May 18, 2012 at 6:59 pm

   Use of PERCENTILE is a smarter way of doing it.  Below is my solution.
    
   First 5 % = Apply conditional formatting (Dark Blue) as highlight ">=" =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.95)

   Next 15% = Apply conditional formatting (Lighter Blue) as highlight between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.95)-0.01 and  =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.8)

   Next 65% = Apply conditional formatting as highlight (Olive Green) between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.8)-0.01 and  =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.15)

   Next 10% = Apply conditional formatting as highlight (Lighter Red) between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.15)-0.01 and  =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.05)

   Bottom 5% = Apply conditional formatting (Red) as less than =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.05)

   Reply
   • Shailesh says:

     May 19, 2012 at 4:57 am

     I agree, this is a challenge faced by HR managers every year and use of percentile formulae is the most popular solution which permits further processing like making bell curve, applying increments based on segmentation etc.

     Reply
4. Mayank Bhatia says:

   May 18, 2012 at 7:17 pm

   Hi Chandoo,

   I came at the same solution as yours (not looking at yours first) but I have hard coded the conditions in the conditional formatting. For example:

   =AND($C6>=$D$10,$C6<$D$9)

   I have done the same thing 5 times for each condition.   This makes the formatting independent of the order of specification. I think it will work better across versions of excel.

   To copy the same thing in all sheets, Shelly can copy these formatted cells with format painter and apply it to the relevant cells in next sheet and so on! I know 700 sheets will be difficult but I dont know of any other way to apply conditional formating rules to the whole sheet.

     

   Reply
5. Sameer Srivastava says:

   May 19, 2012 at 5:12 am

   First i have used percentile formula in the next column of "percentile Threshold" where E5, E6.. is input to colour code.
   The idea behind doing this is to replicate the formula for any range and any threshold

   =PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E5)

   =PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E6)

   =PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E7)

   =PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E8)

   =PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E9)

   Now i have given logic to different employee by applying "if Formula"

   =+IF(J3>=$G$5,1,IF(J3>=$G$6,2,IF(J3>=$G$7,3,IF(J3>=$G$8,4,5))))

   where 'J"  referes to PR and "G" refers to percentile derived from above mentioned formula.
   once again it is replicable (just change reference points)

   Now comes the major part of Conditional Formatting, i have used "use a formula to determine which cells to be formatted" 
   Formula =$j=5, format "required colour" Applies to "$I$3:$J$30" 
   plus put tick on stop if true

   This solves the query, important point that this is repeatable and can be done for n number of departments

   Thanks !

   Reply
6. Deepa says:

   May 21, 2012 at 5:01 am

   I had done some reading on it and in Excel 2010 a new function has been introduced, percentile.exc. Attaching a video which also talks why the old percentile function shouldn't be used as it acts erroneous at times. Might be worth a watch Chandoo,
   http://www.itechtalk.com/thread10579.html

   Reply
   • Hui... says:

     May 21, 2012 at 5:59 am

     @Deepa

     Quit correct.

     Where ever you use statistical spreadsheet functions and are using excel 2010 you should use the new versions of the functions as MS did a lot of work to speed up and fix errors in the old functions.

     Warning: If you use the new Excel 2010 statistical functions in Named Formulas most of them will crash excel so do keep that in mind.

     Reply
7. Kishore says:

   May 22, 2012 at 10:23 am

   Hello Chandoo,
   When i first read the challenge file, i thought, the color that need to be applied for a given rule, also need to be picked dynamically as given in rule set. But in the solution file, i found that color is hard Coded. So in case, someone has same data, but wants different colors, he/she needs to goto manage rules and change colors.
   Let me know if my understanding is correct, and if yes, can we also make the color to be applied dynamic?
    
   Thanks
   Kishore

   Reply
8. Roger L Moreno says:

   May 22, 2012 at 8:30 pm

   HI I ALSO USED THE PERCENTILE FUNCTION. HOWEVER, I WENT A STEP FURTHER AND USING THE SMALL() FUNCTION I SORTED THE DATA BY PERCENTILE SO THE COLOSCHEME WOULD BE GROUPED BASED ON THE VALUE. THIS WAY IT IS BETTER AND EASIER TO VIEW.

   Reply
9. How to use Excel to highlight Employee Performance Rating | XL Ninja says:

   June 28, 2012 at 4:15 am

   [...] recently posted a challenge to help a reader with a [...]

   Reply
   • Balraj says:

     April 10, 2013 at 5:24 pm

     Hi, i have got doubt regarding to the percentages that has been put in chandoo's spreadsheet, i cant understadn how he put directly. can some one please explain how chandoo put the percetages straight way that i stated below..

     5%

     15%

     60%

     10%

     5%

     Reply
10. Aldo Mencaraglia says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:17 am

    I have stumbled on this post as the solution has been already given so I have taken the liberty to record a video where I show the implementation of it as well as adding a filtering feature which I hope can prove to be useful.

    Thank you

    http://www.xlninja.com/2012/06/28/how-to-use-excel-to-highlight-employee-performance-rating/  

    Reply
11. De la challenge la o noua formula – PERCENTILE | Invatam Excel says:

    July 18, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    [...] scriu nici macar un cuvant din urmatorul articol. Astazi mi-am citit mailul si hopa challenge de la Chandoo. Cum puteam sa refuz asa ceva si m-am apucat de citit, iar dupa 5 min i-am spus sotului ca pe asta [...]

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12. Yves S says:

    November 30, 2017 at 6:53 pm

    Question for Chandoo:
    I came to your site late but am totally loving these challenges 🙂

    I guess it all boils down to how the bins are set up.
    I agree with the PERCENTILE.INC function.

    pls help me understand where I am wrong.

    I have determined following the bins:

    bottom 5% <=2.00 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.05))
    lower 15% (5+10) <= 2.40 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.15))
    lower 80% (5+10+65) <=3.46 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.80))
    lower 95% (5+10+65+15) <=4.00 (F6:F33 =PERCENTILE(range,.95))
    top 5% <=4.20 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,1.00))

    I find that only Tom is highest scorer and unique top 5% achiever.

    I notice that Chandoo has included Christy and Daniel in top 5% achievers. How can there be 3 people in top 5% out of a population of 28 (5% of 28 = 1.4, i.e. only one person can achieve that status)?

    I tried different ways but cannot get to that distribution.

    Rest of the work is simply organizing the conditional formatting rules with Stop If True box checked.

    Thanks for your insights

    Reply

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