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Subscribe to RSSIt’s no secret that many employees dread performance reviews. What is surprising, however, is that the very people who help promote them in companies dislike them too.
Nearly half of human resources managers don’t think annual performance reviews are accurate appraisals of employee performance, according to a recently released survey by the Society of Human Resource Management and Globoforce, an employee recognition company.
The poll found that 45 percent of HR leaders thought reviews weren’t good gauges of a worker’s performance, compared to 39 percent last year. The increase points to “a more heightened concern from HR leaders about the shortfalls of traditional performance management,” said Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley. The email survey, taken from December 2011 through January 2012, polled 770 HR professionals who work for companies with 500 or more employees.
“Annual performance reviews continue to be the lightning rod for what’s wrong with traditional performance management,” he added.
The benefits versus the pitfalls of such reviews are part of an ongoing debate in American corporations. But there is no real movement to reassess this often-flawed management tool because it’s been around for years and is so ingrained in the workplace.
Samuel Culbert, author of “Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing--and Focus on What Really Matters,” is calling for the demise of performance reviews.
Culbert, a management professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, is against performance reviews because they can be demoralizing to workers, are not accurate or objective, and they use meaningless metrics.
“If it were God giving me a review that would be fair. But anyone short of God, I don’t think so,” he quipped.
When asked why employers keep administering reviews even though the recent data shows many HR managers aren’t on board, he had a list of reasons.
“Even though they hate getting and giving reviews and know they are bogus, they are comfortable with it,” he explained. “It’s the enemy they know.”
He also believes managers “love the sense of power they get from performance reviews. They like the fact that under the performance review, they are all-knowing. What they say is all that counts. Who doesn’t like that kind of power?”
And in the end, he maintained, it’s the human resources department that gets “much of its power from championing, running and having access to all the reviews. They have a lot of self-interest in preserving this ridiculous, morale-busting and results-damaging practice.”
Globoforce’s Mosley thinks it’s just a matter of habit for most employers, but he said some organizations are looking for alternatives, including “crowdsourcing feedback.”
It’s basically peer-to-peer reviews in real time, he explained. His company provides a web-based solution whereby employees and managers can nominate each other for rewards for a host of things they do at work, everything from helping out on a project to coming up with a new innovation. All that information is documented in a database, and managers can use the data to assess worker performance over a whole year, without forgetting the many contributions employees made, he said.
If crowdsourcing in the review process does catch on, employees will have more than just their boss’ opinion to worry about come review and raise season. It might be time to start playing some office politics.
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I wonder what a "lightening rod" is? I suppose that's a stick that, when waved, makes things weigh less.
Thanks for pointing that out. It's fixed now.
I've never figured out why, but things like that just jump off the page at me. I missed my calling in life - I should have been a proofreader.
If I were your manager I would give you an excellent performance review for that find.
Baron-2652723...I would give YOU 5 stars for that lighting fast comment
Try, however, working somewhere where you never had performance reviews, goal setting, feedback positive or negative from the bosses. I'll tell you, it sucks. You never know where you stand, how you could improve, or what management would like to see you working on. And, when you go to another job interview and they ask "what was the result of your last review" you have to say "I haven't had one in seven years. This is why I want to leave"
I totally agree! I have been with this company as its sole software developer, and I have yet to have an employee review. They are not even sure who I report to around here! I'd rather have SOME idea of where things stand as opposed to being in this limbo...
Annual performance reviews are ridiculous. The manager should be letting their employees know how they are doing on a far more frequent basis. If an employee is not performing up to expectations, that news should not come as a surprise to them at some annual review. I have been through my share of reviews and have conducted many of them as well with those working for me. I found them to be extremely distasteful and an unnecessary source of tension. I have worked at companies where they had rules for the managers regarding these reviews that forced the managers to rate employees on a curve. In other words, you could have the most outstanding team you have ever worked with, but the majority would have to get rated as average. They used a scale of 0-5 and you could not rate more than a certain number of employees above 3. This created a lot of problems when you had a group of high performers working for you. This was particularly true because these review scores were a factor in determining what kind of raise people got. This made it impossible for the manager if they felt that all of their employees deserved equally generous raises. The only way for everyone to get the same percentage increase was to rate everyone as average, which of course meant they would only get average raises, not the generous ones that were deserved for their performance. It was a completely screwed up system.
An employee should know throughout the year how they are doing. If they don't, then their manager is doing a poor job. No manager should ever wait for an annual review to let an employee know they have a problem with their work. On the other side, no manager should ever wait for an annual review to let an employee know they are doing an outstanding job either.
I had one time where I changed jobs during the review period. My new manager never wanted to sit down and revise the goals and objectives for the year that had been laid out by my former manager at my previous annual review in my old job. Virtually all of these old goals and objective were not even applicable to my new position so when annual review time came around my manager hands me a review to sign rating my performance as below average for not meeting these goals and objectives. This below average rating was despite the fact that the new job I had moved to was a promotion and had come with a substantial raise because of my high performance. They had been trying to find someone to fill the position for 9 months and asked me to take the job because I was a top performer and one of the few people in the company with the skills to do the job. I tried to point out the absurdity of what the manager was doing but could not get through to her. In this company a below average review caused headaches because when HR got it they would then require the employee and manager to agree to a performance improvement plan, which then had to be reviewed every three months, and if improvement goals were not met the employ could, and likely would be fired. I ended up walking out of the room, refusing to sign off on the review, not wanting to go through this BS and not willing to accept the rating. This gave the manager a problem because an unsigned review going back to HR also triggered all kinds of problems and a VP would get involved, since refusing to sign your review could get you fired as well. Three days later the manager finally came back with a revised review rating me as average. Exasperated with the whole process and fed up with the manager's attitude, I agreed to sign it - I also decided that I was going to leave the company, or at least find a job away from that manager. Three months later I bailed out for a new job and nice raise at another company, leaving the manager with the headache of trying to find someone to replace me. I tell this story because it is unfortunately not a rare occurrence to have idiotic crap like this go on when it comes to the absurd annual performance reviews.
And then there's the case where you have the same lame employee who consistently gets good reviews and raises. Goes golfing with the boss often too.
And another situation where the employee is the most productive employee for the company, at least for a month or two leading up to annual reviews, and the rest of the year is a sub-par performer.
My boss hates performance reviews. When she has to do them she has a book with a bunch of premade phrases, organized by category and job. She just flips through and copies one of the phrases onto the sheet and that's it.
Don't hate the player; hate the game. Politics is an integral part of advancing in mid- and upper-level positions. If you can't schmooze with the brass, you're not going to move up.
Years ago I worked for a place that had very specific performance goals that actually had numbers on how to meet and exceed the standards, i.e., only 1 compaint per quarter or missed deadlines, etc. When I had my annual review where my boss said I "met" the standards, I was able to provide very factual information that showed I had exceeded all the standards on the review sheet. I refused to sign until the review reflected the true rating. Needless to say, I was looking for a new job and luckily found one at double the pay.
An annual review is not worth the time or paper it is written on. Managers should be communicating to the employee how well or not well they are doing all the time.
As a manager, this was easily the worst part of the job. Most people have different jobs so comparing how each is doing is next to impossible. In the end both of you have to set goals and measure performance against those goals.
There is a political component to every job though. Believe it or not, the issue isn't as much boss/worker as it is worker/worker. Some people are a pain to work with so they slow down the whole project. Others are easy to work with and even though they many not be as contributory, they make the overall system work better. How do you compare those two people???
I've had to fire "trouble makers" even though they were clearly creative and productive simply because no one could work with them.
Business is a team sport and even if you have one hardware engineer and one software engineer, they have to be able to get along enough to communicate effectively.
Schmoozing with the boss, playing golf, etc. doesn't hurt but if it lets someone skate by, then it's an incompetent manager that needs to be addressed, not the employee. Managers should know better. It was my experience that the most friendly employees were usually the best performers since I wasn't on their backs constantly about missing schedules, screwing up a design, etc.
I wouldn't doubt one bit if the losers were blaming others schmoozing for their not getting ahead, low performers are rarely willing to accept their own shortcomings.
My experience is that most managers do not know what their job really is. As a manager, my job was to meet the business unit goals and objectives through my employees. The people in the business unit determined if goals and objectives were met - I did not. My job was to keep everyone working toward those goals and objectives - and - not allow upper management to interfere with the unit. The function of a manager is to manage people - not the work being done.
Giving performance reviews was easy for me. I required my employees to write up a brief, one or two paragraph summary every month. That allowed each one to highlight their successes (and excuses for failures) while they were still fresh. At review time all I had to do was assemble the summaries and use them to support my observations for successes, needs for improvement, potential to assume more responsibility. I always found something to celebrate and I always found something that could be an achievable goal for improvement. If someone earned a raise, award, or promotion - I had solid justification.
Performance reviews are just a tool. Performance reviews are a means to tell employees what expectations are, allow honest mistakes to be acknowledged and not 'punished', provide guidance for improvement, celebrate successes, and provide justification for earned advancement. Employees are happy if the process is done fairly and honestly. And happy employees are very productive employees.
For a manager, it is a lot of work. But that is the job ...
There is a big difference between a performance review and the computer-generated pap that most major companies indulge in. I never had a pr that required anything more than for me to check the box in the prereview or for my boss to check the other boxes in his review of me.
Having outstanding performance reviews year after year and not having a raise in seven years is worse. You do fantastic job, but we don't care! If you don't like it, don't let the door hit you on the a$$ on the way out. We can hire 5 idiots in India for the same salary.
The problem with reviews are not the reviews themselves, but the fact that there are more management positions than there are effective managers.
What good is a review when your senior leadership is corrupt (i.e. Politics over people, no customer focus, only care about quarterly numbers instead of the big picture, etc. etc.).
Some companies call them 360's reviews when in reality, they're only 180's because the employees never get to review their bosses.
Best thing I ever did was leave the corporate world and go into business for myself. And I only hire contractors so I can get rid of them easily if they don't do their job.
In some of my previous jobs I always brought up in performance reviews and goals meetings that I was told "We have policies for a reason. Do not violate them." and then I'm asked to set goals for what I'll do this year. It's almost like a trick question to see if you're a drone yet or not. I usually ask my manager to fill it out since I wasn't aware of any changes in policy that I could deviate from.
The best companies I worked for allowed for anonymous reviews of management. My current job is like that and even has anonymous reporting tools for troublemakers @ work. Everyone seems very happy here and I got lucky getting my foot in the door. This was the first time I ever got to fill out my goals and actually have "stuff" on it I could accomplish and change.
Culbert is obviously clueless about this subject and certainly wrong. I handled HR & other depts in a major Defence Co for many years, designed reviews and taught many mgrs how to administer them. Not perfect, as all other things, but certainly valuable if done right. They provide mutual goal-setting opportunities, clarity of responsibilities and an assessment of performance and conduct. They are very important documentation in pay increases,layoff selections, discharges and/or promotion selections . It takes a consistent, determined effort to get the benefit from reviews but w/out them there is no real current and documented measurement of perf/conduct. I have participated in peer reviews and find them valuable as well, esp w. mgrs.
Hey, not having them at all would be a blessing compared to the crap of having them, but with them meaning NOTHING, as there are no evaluations on how you actually WORK, plus the dimwits haven't given raises to MANY, MANY people in 8-10 years, from what they've said. Just use to job to fund looking for a new job.
The reality is the corporate office has already budgeted for salary adjustments the prior year. Reviews today are really just documentation in the event you need to go down the road of termination. The larger the company the more fluff and it is just an exercise that does nothing for the employee.
And we wonder why everyone hates them and we keep doing the same thing over and over.....
Bingo!! In my company, except for a handful of people who really have lousy reviews they have absolutely no bearing on salary adjustments.
One question I've been asked by some of the folks I supervise is why they are never asked for any feedback on supervisors' performance.
I took HR in college and came across a paper where boss's were asked if they thought a person with a cluttered desk was the same, better or worse than a person with a clean, well-organized desk. The answer of course was they thought the person with the clean desk was more productive, despite being able to give examples of the exact opposite situation.
Humans can be rather fickle at times.
All those HR people need to justify their existence somehow.
The only people who crap on HR are people who aren't in management. They may be a pain in the ass when it comes to paperwork, but they're your best friend when it comes to dealing with nightmare employees.
Redwizard - you have no idea what you are talking about. The company you work for has probably saved millions of dollars by employing competent HR professionals. The amount of education and knowledge we need to have in HR is unbelievable, and we get paid peanuts compared to your sales or finance people, because we are not a "profit-generating" function. The paperwork is not something we DELIGHT in, but rather something your federal, state, and local governments have made a requirement. You think I like pushing paper all day? No, I'd rather be handling more important issues, but idiots like you don't know how to bring in a form of ID for the I-9 or sign off on a W-4 correctly. I challenge you to find a company without a HR person that has been successful. You'll be hard pressed, I am sure.
Finance people...whaat? In my experience, finance people are not paid that well either for the same reason. Never mind that they make sure that everyone gets paid on time, and that costs are managed effectively to ensure profitability.
Chris, RIGHT ON! HR is a great resource, and a lifesaver when dealing with a difficult employee.
In every company I worked for, employee reviews were done first, and the budget for raises was determined from that. HR would make sure our average reimbursements were commensurate with other firms in the area and the review process determined who got what. It was NEVER an autopilot function.
BTW, we managers had job reviews also!!!!! :<O
One nice thing about the electronics field, and others I'm sure, is when I got hired, I'd bring many of my team with me, all high performers. As a consequence I always got great reviews. If you are a great employee it pays to schmooze, it gets you a job when others are being turned away.
Anyone discussing employment will invariably talk about the importance of networking. Getting in with the bosses, kept me working even through the tech bubble crash when much of San Jose looked like a ghost town and I was in my 50's at the time.
Exactly. A friend of mine is in management at a BIG corporation. Here was the review process - all the managers got together in a big room and talked about the different employees. There was very little talk about performance, but mostly talk about the budget. The HR rep said up front that very few would get a rating of "highly effective" this year because the associated raise wasn't in the budget. So, stellar employees that busted their butt all year got a "meets expectations" rating. Employees that did their job as expected got a "apporaches expectations". However, the loser who constantly made mistakes but was buddy-buddy with the boss got a "highly effective".
Regarding HR, they have a place in the world. I understand the need to protect the company from bad employees, especially in the sue-happy world we live in today. However, HR people can also be enablers for the DIRTY behavior of mangement. If the company has a culture of corruption and abuse of employees, usually HR is part of the problem. Hence, at the heart of every truly evil corporation is an even eviler HR department.
Reviews have always been bogus and subject to your bosses' whims. They are just a way for companies and bosses to extract pain on those they deem as non-players. To date there are no ways to make this fair. Should be abolished and another system put in its place to ensure fairness and uniformity.
Boy do you telegraph your performance! Under-performers almost never want to accept their shortcomings.
I completely disagree with most of you on this...annual evaluations, if done properly, are an extremely effective tool to measure an employee's overall performance and should be considered for determining raises, potential for promotion, etc.
The military has been using annual evaluations for decades...promotions, some billet assignments, and advanced education opportunities are based 100% on annual evaluations (for Navy - me - they are called fitness reports). I've been in the Navy - active and reserves - for a total of 23 yrs and as a senior officer, have been evaluated by seniors and have evaluated my juniors. The evaluation process is fair and objective. Now, as a member of corporate America in my civilian career, I can tell you that the problem is not the evaluation process...it's a lack of LEADERSHIP! Corporate America may have good MANAGERS but they have, in general, terrible LEADERS! Leaders are objective and thorough in evaluating subordinates, managers are expeditious and biased. Leaders also do a self-evaluation and look to constantly improve themselves as leaders; managers are either dictatorial or so wishy-washy that they bend to the prevailing winds. Also, employees should never be evaluated against their colleagues - each has different responsibilities and skill sets. Rather, they should be evaluated against their specific roles and responsibilities and their boss' expectations of their performance. And as someone already stated, your annual evaluation should NEVER be a surprise. An effective LEADER will provide feedback throughout the year and the evaluation needs to reflect performance throughout the year...in other words, one screw up in that 12 months shouldn't cause the evaluation to be negative - it should be mentioned, of course, but the evaluation needs to reflect OVERALL performance throughout the year. If you fear periodic evaluations, maybe the problem lies with you!
Years ago the performance review really did help determine the raise process. 4 and 5 star performers generally received a higher percetange raise. But these days they are just a ridiculous tool. too many top performers are seeing that setting goals, meeting those goals and implementing the right strategies are no more important to managers than the 2 and three star performers. My best friend is an amazing person. He's increased revenues, hit every target he set, is dependendable and efficient and the poor guy was told that it didn't really matter because EVERYONE in his firm was going the get the same 2% increase. I asked him when his company went union and forgot to tell him. The message he was sent is it's better to not perform than it is to perform because regardless of your ability and quantitative results, you will not be treated any better for it nor will you be penalized. For the record, the investment firm he works for is one of the largest and most profitable ones in our country. Go figure.
M-356362-
If that's the way it used to work for you, congrats. I served 8 years in one company that fully subscribed with a wink and several nods to Management By Objective. The Objective for Management was to keep the parent company happy By keeping costs low. Performance reviews were tailored to that year's available raise pool, a too-apparent case of placing poorly laden carts in front of the beasts of burden who propelled the profits, but the company always did praise itself for being ahead of the curve. If it was the learning curve, then -- as your post indicates -- that was probably true. If it was the bell curve, they were ahead of that, as well, if "ahead" is defined as the left-hand side.
In these times it's used to tell you why you didn't get that raise. I noticed that performance reviews have gotten worse for myself and my fellow employees. Complain? Be thankful you've got a job and deal with it.
The entire point of the process is an excuse to not give anyone a descent raise.
Performance reviews are little more than CYA exercises for the company. Got to have documentation showing shortcomings of every employee in the event that sometime in the future the employee is terminated and/or sues the company.
I know the real reason bosses don't want to give up reviews. They get to hold off on doing them because they claim they are too busy to put them together so they can keep your raise on hold until the cows come home.
It's also not an accurate measurement of what you've done all year. At the last minute before the review you could make a big mistake. And guess what? That one mistake goes on your review like you'd been performing like that all year.
Very true. That's known as the concept of recency. See comment 2.4 above.
A big reason that bosses hate doing annual performance reviews is that they know they are unfair and useless. Continuous feedback is a better process and I always tried to make the annual review (required) a conversation by getting information from the employee prior to the meeting about what he/she thought they did well during the year, what they needed to improve and what they thought would help them do that (training, education, mentoring etc.) Still not a perfect process but better than just handing someone a sterile rating sheet. I never issued a rating until after the meeting.
Nonetheless, the annual performance review is necessary because if there is not written record about performance, then later employment actions that can be challenged (discipline, termination, promoting one person over another) can end up in grievance, arbitration or lawsuits and there has to be documentation that supports an action.
Crowdsourcing however is just an opportunity in many organizations to allow the most vocal, dominant employees among a group of peers to exert influence out of proportion to their position and overwhelm their less confident or experienced coworkers. Crowdsourcing and similar peer rating systems assume all employees are equally vocal, assertive, invested in the success of the group rather than an individual etc. I'm not a fan of that type of evaluation system either.
had mine yesterday. miserable. "you're great, but . . . ." so subjective.
No, not really. If a performance review is being done correctly, it will typically adhere to SMART objectives (basically measurable goals with timetables and quantifiable results). A correctly executed performance review is completely objective and data-driven.
But, then again, if your company is bushleague or you have a crappy manager, I suppose reviews could get pretty petty. Be thankful you even got a "you're great".
@Chris
I am retired but I have been a company owner and a manager at various times in other companies. My experience is at odds with yours - I have yet to find an objective performance review scheme. I am not disappointed at this at all ... having both received reviews and given them, I know there is a great deal of subjectivity which cannot be easily excised with acronyms or data points.
I suppose the situation might be different if one were evaluating someone who worked as a picker for Amazon, however, I am certain that even in positions in which job duties are more routine and well-defined that there is a surprising amount of subjectivity to performance reviews even there.
As surely as cream rises to the top, it seems that the best (albeit not perfect) judge of performance is that the subjective performance reviews converge over time.
Unfortunately, it only takes a bad manager to stop a talented person's advance dead in its tracks.
Every human endeavour can be considered subjective on some level. That doesn't mean it is automatically unfair or wrong. As you said, when reviews by different managers converge over time, it becomes clear who the performers are, who the trouble makers are, and who the slackers are.
Also, the longer you are in management, the easier it is to spot the winners and losers.
You are right though, one bad manager can really screw an otherwise great employee. In companies I've worked for, when this was spotted, the employee was moved to a different team. I was the recipient of a guy that was being screwed by his former boss, he turned out to be great! Just a personality clash I guess.
Performance reviews are there to document companies issues with employees. They use them to use a a means of management to underscore how easily it is to fire an employee without recourse. If management wishes to fire somebody, they will find a reason in performance reviews. Even a stellar review does not protect you from a decision to find fault and fire somebody. This is highlighted by an episode where I worked for a national firm with the greatest online time, the best customer reviews and perfect attendance . I was called into the office one day and told to take home my personal items. I was not told I was fired. I was not told anything. To leave is the only thing I was told in the meeting. To this day the company does not offer an explanation or reason. They continue to keep their mouth shut as they cannot justify the firing without notice and are wary of their company being under scrutiny. Personnel is just a tool for management to track their employees. The management have and maintain them for their purposes and not for the benefit of employees. They track pay, benefits and production. It doesn't matter that they like tracking employees as they are a tool of management.
Performance Review: Barry F-
Performance Reviews are nothing but documentation thought up by company lawyers to give better protection to the company. Without stuff like this, people would sue companies and the jury would believe the poor mishandled employee.
For the purpose of granting raises and promotions, there just isn't any truly fair way to administer performance reviews beyond a single manager and a few employees. The bigger the company, the worse it gets, especially when the company thinks that everybody with completely different jobs can be judged by a single computerized goal based system. One size doesn't fit all! The performance reviews true function is to provide the mechanism for documenting somebody that you want to terminate. First comes the decision to terminate, then comes the performance review to justify that decision.
The problem with performance reviews is simply that managers and HR don't want to measure the same things. Managers care about results, not methods; they care about loyalty to THEM, not necessarily the company; and most importantly they don't pay close enough attention to their direct reports to evaluate them anyway. The most important function HR could perform is to design a system that predicts future success on the criteria that the review measures. In my experience, the HR department contains the least capable people in any organization except the CEOs and their staff. So managers don't really want to be bothered by it and HR is too busy trying to convince everyone that they have a purpose; sounds like Congress to me. And they are just as effective and well liked.
The company I used to work for applied a really nasty twist to performance reviews..
The employees were required to write THEIR OWN review, which was then commented on and graded by their manager/supervisor.
When that company laid me off (after 31 year with them) I was devastated. But now that I've gotten over it and I'm happily retired, I don't miss their bull$hit in the least!
Human Resources......change it to living resources because there is rarely anything human about corporate policies. Its all about money....not being human. They act like they care but the are only acting within corporate budgeting. its a joke.
At a performance review, the supervisor had nothing but praise for my production, teamwork, etc., said how great the presentations/displays I made were, no other branch did anything like it -- and then rated me "average". When I pointed that out, he did change it to "superior." This supervisor rated virtually everyone average, and I'm sure there were many who did not challenge their rating.
actually i loved the reviews because it gave me a perfect opportunity to point out the massive failures of management. in fact every time i was rated down i was able to direct hr to the exact step where management failed to supervise, communicate, demonstrate what was needed or failed to provide the enviorment, tools or the time to accomplish what they needed done and failed to understand the time requred to do the job.
actually hr tried to end my review meetings early but i had to either keep extending the time or request further follow up time and to request the supervisors presence in the additional meetings
My company has had a freeze on raises for four years. In addition our 401k matching was just reduced by 70% for the next two years. Our department head has told HR that there will be no reviews written until raises are reinstated.
We have the same type of reviews that #16 Steve R. wrote about.
As a manager for over 25 years, I found reviews to be pretty useless, except to document some slacker or unacceptable worker. In that time, I only laid off one person and that was for a very bad breach in procedures that everyone knew about.
after 45 yrs ive found most companies like to use the carrot and stick method unfortunately they would show me the carrot and id tell them to stick it
retired now and living quite well
I recently retired, but in my experience, performance reviews are akin to mission statements: full of BS and meaningless jargon.
Every year I would have to come up with 3 goals for the coming year. I would just put down: "Still working."
BTW, what in the hell is "crowdsourcing feedback"? That's the kind of crap that I am talking about.
I worked for a company for 17 years, the last 6 years I was with this company I requested documentation from my supervisors on discrepancy items in my evaluations or I wouldn't sign it. Most of the times they just took it out but also informed me that it wouldn't matter on how much I got as far as a raise because they were already told by HR who was getting the raises. Total BS!!!!
I have my immidate supervisor(a boss gets respect)come in once a year so I can sign my PA. That is the only time I see his so he is completely guessing everything. I complained once to a boss and he said these PA are just for show and don't really affect my job. The "supervisor" and I had problems before he got his move up so he will give lower marks because we didn't get along. This guy would withhold jobs from customers till late in the day, because "Otherwise they will expect that kind of service all the time". I started calling customers right away and that started it between us. He believed in power over the customer and I believe in getting it done so the customer can get on with their job. Our old boss had him in his office twice for arguing with customers and if it happened again he was fired. Old boss died and this guy a$$ kissed the new boss to get promoted. This guy and new boss seem very similar, a real good ol' boys club. Everybody in the shop hates this guy and nobody trusts upper management. Moral is crap and they don't care. These PA are a lie and this guy is getting paid to do them. Several people have quit because he was getting promoted past them with no experience because of his being buddies with the boss.
I call annual reviews the "annual ass whipping, whether you need it or not." I hate having to justify my existence in this way every year. "You're great, but you suck" annual reviews are the ones I really detest. I've had a 1-2 page narrative about how great I am, then have one sentence that makes me sound like I'm the worst. Glad my former boss is now my former boss. So stressful. So subjective. So unnecessary.