Elle wrote:Personal Development Assessments
Anyone else get these at work?
Welcome to my world...
Every 3 months we have them.... 3 months ! Performance Management they call it, and there are a number of managers who's job it is just to run it.
I've been in Comms all my life, it comes pretty easy to me so I'm lucky I don't have to spend weeks training to pick stuff up. I've climbed my way up successes ladder, and got to a point where I was managing a team of well trained, professional and extremely capable enigineers, every one of them could do their job blindefolded. One or two were wanted more, most were happy to do the job, take the pay and enjoy life.
My company (and it's a well known one)
don't have a bell curve that everyone
doesn't fit into - so we don't have a small number of weak staff, large number of average staff and a small number of strong staff. So my team has to fit into this spread of capabilities (that doesn't exist). Now while statistics may show that companies have a spread of staff, fitting staff into that spread for performance purposes struck me as , well, not quite legal. So it doesn't exist, but we must look at staff carefully to see how they are really doing....
The below average mark is a development mark, it means the person needs to improve, and were are told it is not punitive, but for staff development... Only two of these marks in succession will put you on a development plan with HR and the first step into the departure lounge. This is what Performance Management is really about, managing under performers out of the company, or streamlining staff numbers without the need to pay redundancy.
Back to my team, every one of them is a better engineer than most other teams - yet, I have to distribute marks over the range, so the guys at the bottom of the scoring (who are better than many others in the company) are being prodded and poked for no real valid reason, other than complying with a statistical curve.
Sounds fair, doesn't it...... No it's utterly vile.
If I were not to 'fairly' distribute the markings, it's my head on the block. So self preservation dictates I do what I have to, grow a thick skin and get on with it. In practice what happens, is everyone of the team take it in turns to get a down mark, and a strong mark, so everyone ends up equal, but the guys who do a really great job get nothing more. It stinks, and I hated it (notice the change in tense)
I took a sideways move in the same company, so now I have no staff, but I still have the same Performance Management crap to deal with. It's a game invented by HR staff to justify their own positions, after all HR are a liability to any company, they bring in no income and cost £££, all they can do is be seen to save ££££, by shedding staff - it is the only real purpose of HR, because they sure as hell don't support them...
I'm allot happier now, out of the management crap, but I use what I learned to keep my marks in the average band. As I say, it's a game and you either move on (but in all likelihood this system will catch you up) or learn the rules and get on with it.
In short, your manager may well be a t.....t but he is under pressure too, and he may not be strong enough to stand up to his manager(s).
For my part, I now ask some customers (with grand sounding job titles) to write to my manager thanking me (especially Americans, they love this stuff) - sounds cheesy, yes it is, but the same managers think it's pure gold. One 2Hr simple job a few months ago, followed up by an email from the customer got me a £50 reward from my company - OK it's only £50 but it paid for a meal out for me and the missus, and got me a good marking last quarter.
As I say, It's a crock of steaming exit fumes, but it looks like it's here to stay for a while, so learn the rules, do the least you can to comply, take advantage of the cheesy loopholes and then get back to your day job.
