Dear ReWorker,
Performance ratings are due soon, so I filled out the forms and rated my employees based on their performance throughout the year. I gave one employee an outstanding rating as I really think she has met those criteria.
I gave her the performance review and the rating, and she was thrilled. Now, my boss is coming back saying I need to adjust the review downward. Why are they asking me to do this, and what can I say to my employee?
Sincerely,
Blindsided
To read the answer, click here: Why Am I Being Forced to Change a Performance Rating?
“I’m sorry, at this company we have no outstanding employees, so noone should ever get rated as outstanding. Your employee is at best mediocre. Tell your employee that you made a mistake, she’s really not that good and the review gets adjusted downwards”
TRANSLATION: “I’m sorry, at this company we have no outstanding managers, and we allow no one to outshine them. Get a clue.”
OR: “Bonuses and pay increases are for the big boys, not the peons.”
Can you post the link to this article? Thanks.
You would think I wouldn’t repeatedly make this mistake, but you’d be wrong. Link is now up.
I once worked for a manager that just flat out told us that no one on his team would ever receive “exceeds expectation” on their review, because whatever we did and however much we did was, well, what he expected us to do.
Yep, I worked for one of those. But his pet worker always got “exceeds” and all the $$ for raises went to him.
Ms. Lucas–
Does this manager want to keep the outstanding employee? Because downgrading her would be a good way to get her to start job searching. First, changing the rating downward is insulting. Second, it destroys any trust this good employee would have with the letter writer. And third, it demonstrates that the letter writer won’t stick up for people below.
It sounds as though upper management wasn’t clear on what they wanted. But shafting good employees is a terrible solution. The letter writer needs to push back first.
5 percent outstanding
40 percent above average
40 percent average
10 percent below average
5 percent unacceptable
I understand why they do this but it is not mathematically possible. If 40 percent are average, then you would expect 30 percent to be above and 30 percent to be below. I once heard a manager say, “we only hire above average people.”
Obviously within only one group, only half can be above average and half below, but I’m assuming this is assuming that they’re evaluating THEIR employees in comparison to ALL employees everywhere. In which case, if you hire carefully and fire people that aren’t up to par, you can honestly expect to have everyone be “above average” for the population in general. So it’s not as disingenuous as, say, 80% of drivers feeling they are above average. 🙂
Absolutely true if the firm is truly hiring only exceptional people. How many firms do you know that actually succeed at that? I don’t think I know any myself.
I was just pointing out it isn’t actually bad math IF they do successfully hire 5% of people who are outstanding (when compared to the overall population, not just the company itself), and 40% who are above average (when compared to the overall population, not just the company itself), etc. etc. etc. But I do agree that forcing any population into a pre-determined curve is a bad idea. The whole point of bell curves is that that’s how populations tend to naturally fall out. Not that they should be prescribed to do so.
Only true if “average” means “median”, not “mean”, or you’re making assumptions about population distribution (r.g., you assume it’s Normal). But if 99 employees are perfect and 1 is terrible, 99% are above the mean and 1% below.
If 5% are unacceptable, why are they still on the payroll?
This whole system reeks. The key to scoring better next time is to help your boss hire poor employees and to screw over others so they take up the lower slots.
-d
The letter writer’s manager could be my boss, a former teacher who “never gives an A paper.” Which was just discouraging. You’re basically telling me that no matter how hard I work, you’ll never be satisfied.
And this is why I started a new job.
The bell curve is supposed to be based on large populations. Most companies do not have enough people to use it at all. Any time you see a small sample size, particularly when the people involved are especially selected to do certain things, you have a far higher probability that the curve does not work. It’s supposed to work on random selection.
If you hire people, you’re looking for people on the higher end of the curve, at worst a little better than the middle. If you’re hiring people who belong in the low end of the curve and they’re not apprentices, special trainees, or possibly developmentally or otherwise disabled under a special contract where you get a financial break by hiring them and training them, there should be NO ONE on the low end. If there are, they shouldn’t be there .
I don’t think we’re discussing the normal distribution (bell curve) here. Even if we were, when you sample from a population with a normal distribution, the distribution of sample means remains normal even for small sample sizes.
There is another possibility. The boss could be wrong. So if I were the manager, I would ask my boss why she believes this person does not deserve the given rating, and ask for specific examples. The boss may not have a good view of the employee’s behavior (because they don’t work closely together) and formed an impression based on hearsay or based on one incident/mistake. Then talk to the employee about the one event or issue, but don’t go back and change the review. And in the future, get the boss’ feedback before finalizing the review. But the manager has the responsibility and authority to grade this person. I would not give that up willingly.
If you do the work you definitely do the mistake that’s why I don’t like the performance rating. If you appreciate your employee work he surely gives his 100%.