Responding to a performance appraisal - Pls advise

[hisathish]

Dear all,

I need your advise.

It's that time and I just received my performance appraisal for the year; I'm not happy with it; I'm surprised by the rating I received.

I'm surprised because there was no indication of this, when I was discussing our work with my superiors, until a few weeks back. After a detailed one-on-one chat with my boss (after the formal meeting), I feel that my boss has not communicated clearly his expectations with me. But why? Did he not know it himself? Is he being forced to assign a rating and defend it? I don't want to sound presumptous (that I'm good!), but there has been absolutely no indication of this coming! In fact, the vibes were slightly in the opposite direction, unless I misinterpreted them.

My question to you all is: what are the dynamics involved in this process? how should I respond to this? should I leave comments at all, before signing off on the dotted line? what are the implications? I work in an academic setting.

Many thanks for your help.

[Ace Novice]

I am assuming you were ranked to your dissatisfaction in some areas (as opposed to all the areas). Unless your vibes early on were based on an explicit conversation regarding your performance with the evaluator in question, I doubt you can expect to see everything in accordance with your expectations (read "vibes"). In other words, there is a possibility that implied messages were misinterpreted.

Nevertheless, unless you have no use for this evaluator in the present or future, you have two courses of action that I can visualize at this late hour (in other words, a less than intelligent approach I may advocate is to be blamed on the clock):

i) if you plan to quit, politely disagree with anecdotes/ evidence of performance to the contrary

ii) if you plan to stick around, invite the evaluator's attention and comments to those attributes rated adversely and ask for his views, interpretation, and assessment of anecdotes/ evidence of performance to the contrary

During the course of (ii) expect the evaluator to be defensive and/ or vague when substantiating the comments. Remember that not all are good performance evaluators. Likewise, I hope the evaluator will make allowances for any displeasure you may convey.

Once the review is conducted, the key is to focus on arriving at clearly understood (and mutually acceptable) performance goals and evaluation criteria. Again, this is worthwhile only if you opt for (ii). Once this is in place, request quarterly meetings to track progress.

[hisathish]

Thanks very much Ace Novice. I've done pretty much what you said, and let's see how this goes.

I am assuming you were ranked to your dissatisfaction in some areas (as opposed to all the areas). Unless your vibes early on were based on an explicit conversation regarding your performance with the evaluator in question, I doubt you can expect to see everything in accordance with your expectations (read "vibes"). In other words, there is a possibility that implied messages were misinterpreted.

Nevertheless, unless you have no use for this evaluator in the present or future, you have two courses of action that I can visualize at this late hour (in other words, a less than intelligent approach I may advocate is to be blamed on the clock):

i) if you plan to quit, politely disagree with anecdotes/ evidence of performance to the contrary

ii) if you plan to stick around, invite the evaluator's attention and comments to those attributes rated adversely and ask for his views, interpretation, and assessment of anecdotes/ evidence of performance to the contrary

During the course of (ii) expect the evaluator to be defensive and/ or vague when substantiating the comments. Remember that not all are good performance evaluators. Likewise, I hope the evaluator will make allowances for any displeasure you may convey.

Once the review is conducted, the key is to focus on arriving at clearly understood (and mutually acceptable) performance goals and evaluation criteria. Again, this is worthwhile only if you opt for (ii). Once this is in place, request quarterly meetings to track progress.[/quote]

[Desi_by_Nature]

I feel in general its a good idea to maintain a list of accomplishments, however small and insignificant they might seem.
It's easy to overlook things you might have accomplished and bright ideas that produced substantial results. We all tend to forget them after a while.

Such a list comes handy in times like these, and when you are writing your resume to enter the job market again.

[RRK]

Hi Sathish,
Please check CoC.
We will remove the hivaduvur id which was created later.

[layman]

Rating is a one sided affair whatever the company says. The boss always has an upper hand. It is a catch-22 process. What you can do is to work for your future rating. You lodge your protest with your boss and ask him what will make him rate you higher in the next rating. Note that down and work on it. Making formal complaints against your boss will not take you anywhere.

You mentioned that your boss did not communicate the expectation to you. You should understand how the rating system works. At the end of the day, your boss has to rate the people reporting to him in terms of their contribution and competence. If there are people that have done more than you, it will not matter whether your boss communicated anything or not. He has to rate you below other better performers in thast case. If there are people stronger than you in your team, it is highly likeley the story will continue next year also. Remember, your boss is there to judge you, not to train and guide you. You should beat your peers to get a higher rating (but company documents will claim that your manager is supposed to do that, blah blah. It is not a must). That is how the system works.

[Chicago Desi]

OP,

This is a great opportunity for your personal development. Clearly, something is broken that your manager has a poor perception of your performance:
a) Your performance was truly not upto the mark
b) There was a gap in communication from your side about your achievements
c) There was a gap in communication from your boss about expectations
d) Your professional image lends way to speculation of poor performance (this entails many things wrt body langauge, being organized with thoughts or outward appearance, your contributions in team meetings, your personal leadership, even things like body odor).

Performance is always a subjective thing. This is an opportunity for you to learn ways of success in your organization and also to clean up your act.

Pushing back is never the way to go. I have done many performance reviews, and given some really bad ones. Typically, this is one factor that sours relationships permanently and causes loss of trust and faith. DO NOT let that happen in your case. Being on a warpath with your boss is ABSOLUTELY disastrous to your career, no matter how bad the boss is. You have to either befriend him and perform upto his expectations, or find some other work.

Complaining to HR or his boss is also a very very bad idea. All company/work policies are geared towards protecting management.

I am not saying you are at fault here. But the onus is on you to find whats broken and fix it. Or, you can always move on.

[strongindian]

The appraisal process in US companies is generally an yawning #!*%& process, in my experience. But I DON'T really know much about it in academic setting.

There are few things that I personally have seen in US industry:

* If the company is doing well with no money/business tension in immediate proximity, then all talks are sweet talks, no vengeful action from boss/management folks, even the coworkers are all 'nice'. Appraisal will also take a serene route. The company defined appraisal procedure etc has some existence during these good times.

* If there is budget/business/future tension in the company (employees might not even know about it), then appraisal etc are all rocky affair. You won't be able to trace who is back stabbing whom. Even if your boss is a nice guy, and he likes you, he might very well behave differently, keyed by his own boss/other management folks. Even some coworkers could be playing games in this. Managemnt folks efficiently use all these to mask their own act. If promotion etc is involved, some employees can go any further and can do all shameless politics to 'cut someone off'.

* Another important point is that, for visa people, appraisal process hardly has any meaning. The company/management OPTIMIZE on visa people for cost-work-risk-obligation..., on everything. So whatever appraisal farce they may be doing is just a fake show. There is no point in pursuing talks in this as there won't be any result. There is no law of any kind for protection of the employee. The management can write any story (I mean ANY STORY) about you and they don't have to defend themselves, that will be it. The management folks regularly do all these in US.

In my experience, there is no point in confrontation unless there is something serious. I won't advice anyone on 'how to improve upon', 'how to keep track of achievements' etc. unless it is an intern. Bad boss is unfortunate and it is frequent reality. Of course, I know that particular situation might be gross. Still, one should try not to waste much energy on dealing with bad folks if possible, rather one should use those energy for his/her own goal (may be in getting better work, gathering better work experience, learning new things, whatever he/she thinks is good for the career), which will definitely be useful in future.

[gautham]

in some companies i see a loophole in the appraisal process. (in my company they follow this) thers this top x ranking system wherein people are assessed within their grade and categorized top 10%, top 25%, bottom 10%. the issue is that someone has to be bottom 10%. even if all in a bracket are good employees, someone should be given bottom 10%.. this really hurts.
i hope this is not the case with you.

[johnterry807]

Hi

This topic help me a lot in developing my project. I will contribute more when I finished it.