[killermosquito]

How can I explain this?

[bigtoona]

my company has done it this way for years and it sucks. if you are on a team of rock stars, somebody has to get the shaft every year even though you are all performing at a very high level.

[dragnet2]

Performance evaluations were created to eliminate any raises you might think you deserve.

Just settle for some cheap prizes or trinket in lieu of raises. Maybe some unobtainable commissions or incentives.

Just shut up, and work harder for less and you’ll be A-OK.

[SteelTrap]

Welcome to the NWO, where they only hire the top 10% then endeavor to fire them at the rate of 10%. Rank and yank. Enron pionneered this.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth

[Secret Agent Man]

i understood it.

your evaluations are personal, not group comparison rankings. it’s not a classroom. evaluations are how well you hit personal goals for the year, how you grew/got better on any issues you had to work on.

this is utter pc bullsh1t.

this is what companies’do to get rid of people they have no real cause to get rid of, but don’t have the balls to just come out and do it. generally white men who are highly productive but not into the company’s pc diversity bullcrap.

[yetidog]

This is a fundamental element of performance appraisal systems. It is based on the statistical model of a bell-shaped distribution. First do your evaluations and plot the results of each employee to see if they fit this model and if not, make whatever adjustments (within reason) to see if you can adapt your evaluation decisions to meet the expectations of this model.

[asinclair]

A performance review is not a popularity contest, or a zero-sum game. A competent HR department, in concert with each manager, will define for each job position the objective metrics against which each employee is measured. In the yearly evaluation, what I'm used to seeing is this scoring: 4=above and beyond, 3=meets the objective, 2=meets the objective most of the time, 1=needs work, 0=unsatisfactory.

The final score is the average of all metrics. Some metrics may be weighted more heavily than others, depending on the needs and requirements of the particular job.

There should be no "wiggle room" in the evaluation -- the intent is to accurately measure how the employee is performing, and identify what areas need improvement. If an employee falls below a specific red line, it's grounds for probation; fail probation and s/he's fired for cause.

The problem is finding competent HR people, willing to work with the managers to set REASONABLE expectations and goals. Some companies like to "go with the gut" -- usually with disastrous results. IF you are in one of those companies, may God have mercy on your soul.

[logi_cal869]

My prior job as General Manager of a small firm included being told ‘we need to institute performance reviews’ and I was to come up with something.

I was resolute in my belief that instituting performance reviews without a system of bonuses would destroy morale and harm services. Worse, management (the owners) were suffering from some serious internal conflicts resulting in issues the whole company both knew about and the core causes. Had I instituted performance reviews, it would have improved nothing.

I no longer work for that company. Just before my leaving they instituted a system of ‘procedures’ for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in a bid to ‘fix the problems’.

Nothing has changed. Had my role had any teeth, simple management would have resolved the whole issue. The principle problem with performance reviews being the issue of providing employees something measurable to work toward with consequent (and consistent) reward.

‘Grading staff’ with a 1-4 is a a simpleton’s approach to justifying a job or fulfilling another simpleton’s perceived control of their employees.

Alas, a warning to be finding another job before you’re laid off (as I was)...

[blueunicorn6]

“Ummmm, could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure! What’s on your mind?”

“Well, you rated me as a zero. What does that mean?”

“No, that’s not a zero. That’s an O for Outstanding.”

[driftdiver]

It’s the Jack Welch school of mismanagement. Push 10% of your staff out each year using this method.

[SamAdams76]

My company is merit-based. We want all employees to perform at a high level because it translates into revenues and profits as well as customer retention and market share.

To place productive employees at the bottom of a bell curve - because somebody needs to be at the bottom - is wrong. An analogy to this is a baseball team that has every player batting .400 or above. You will not want to penalize a player for batting .404 because other players are batting .445.

However, this rarely happens. Most companies have deadweight and low performers that fall below the standards.

[DariusBane]

Thank Jack Welch.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Everyone should be held to an attainable standard. How they compare to everyone else is irrelevant. How they compare to the stated goals and standards for their specific job should e all that matters.

If everyone is rated on how they compare, on averages, it pits people against each other and is an enemy of teamwork. I think the trend has moved away from teamwork and toward competition. Competition has its place between companies. But within a company I think it is more harmful than helpful. Some may thrive in that environment but many valuable people will not.

[bigbob]

It’s simple - this is how big companies (at least) reduce salary cost increases while not violating EEOC law. If you legitimately have a group of high-performers, you should reward them with substantial merit increases that reflect their ability. However that would result in an increase in salary cost for your group, and thus for the company unless there was an equal number of under-performers who’d be getting salary cuts. And since that opens the company up for EEO complaints (on the likelihood that some of those losers might be members of a “protected class”), the simplest alternative is to “grade on the curve” and force first-line managers to solve the problem. Plus, what company is ever going to admit it’s got a bunch of overpaid underperformers drawing a paycheck?

So, you get crap like this, 9-blockers, etc - all kinds of HR-Bulls#it rationalizations for doing stupid stuff.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Would seem to depend on where one set the baseline - if it included the range of possible employees in the entire population, the curve wold probably be truncated on the left, or poorer employee side, since poor employees probably wouldn’t stay around the company very long - if the range included all employees who actually worked at the company, then it would seem reasonable to assume that there were some really good ones and some really poor ones, with a more or less “normal” distribution in between - how to evaluate each employee along the continuum accurately is another story....

[Terry L Smith]

Performance evaluations is another management item imported from Japan, when the total quality management, aka TQM, was introduced into America, by a failed American manager. This is where, as in the OP's case, it is 0 to 4, or as in the guv'mint, 1 to 5, are the ratings, with <<3>> being the easiest one for the evaluator to justify, i.e., no attached paperwork to justify a 1 or 2, or, 4 or 5. You can exist at your station, do a ho-hum job, and lo and behold, you get a '3'. Later, the other part of the management tool was brought out, as someone wrote, where it is THE TEAM that gets rated, and each member is rated against the other, and THEN put a value, for the team effort. (and we wonder where the schoolyard sports got their 'no winners/no losers' mantra?)

[xjcsa]

We each have different rolls and expectations.

Whoever brings the best rolls to work gets to keep their job? I recommend cinnamon.

[Usagi_yo]

Every year we got 5 reviews written about us from 5 other employees. Come review time, we individually sat in with our manager as we went through the reviews together. We got to pick some of the reviewers, the manager picked the rest. He was very smart about it too. He would go through your weekly status reports and pick names from reoccurring relationships

There was always a large disparity between reviews.

[jaydee770]

I'm familiar with those blatantly incompetent micro-management types. They really have no idea how to fix it, but feel too superior to seek/ask for help. So they flail about by (seemingly) googling management ideas and experimenting.

Though it's usually a page or two of rambling, I've had them tell me, (condensed versions) "Rate yourself so I'll know how to rate you", and "tell me how you do your job so I can tell you how to do your job", because they have no idea how I do what I do, nor do they have any idea how to tell if I'm doing it well or not and they never, ever see or witness my work before, during or after.

Like the old saying, they are "Lowering The Fences". The fences get gradually lowered enough (by "lead-from-behind" micro-managers) that the best horses start jumping over to greener pastures. Eventually, all they are left with are the low-speed, minimum-effort nags.

Micro-Managers... You can't live with 'em and you can't shoot 'em in the head and bury them under the landfill when they so desperately need it (or something like that).

[EVO X]

It would seem to me that people wouldn’t have knowingly been hired on as a 0 or 1. To be ranked that low; the person would need to be unreliable, failure to keep skills sets current, have a toxic personality or some combination thereof..