Performance Review- Critique? 1

[buggsbunny]

A teacher friend and I were talking about our reviews and she told me that she critiques her review as an attachment and returns it. The attachment basically documents her opinion of the individual aspects of the review.
Mine is coming up soon. I usually don't have an opportunity to vocally give my opinion, I am told to sign whether or not I agree with what has been written. I am usually told the same thing over and over as far as negative points, even though I can not think of any re-occurences of the issue.
Does anyone critique reviews in a manufacturing industry? If I were to do so, it would be in an objective manner. Any opinions?

 

[SteveMartin]

My written yearly reviews include a space (actually a whole page) for me to respond or otherwise comment on the review. I have yet to actually use it, as I haven't yet disagreed with what the higher-ups put onto it, and I'm quite proactive about getting my opinion through when I have a concern, so there's never been an issue hanging over my thoughts when I walked into the review.

I believe in general your signature indicates that you've actually been given the review, so you can't claim ignorance. At least mine have never included any verbiage indicating that my signature implies or states agreement.

Certainly if I disagreed with my review I would comment, either on the review if possible, or else in a seperate document addressed to the relevant manager(s) and possibly HR.

 

[MikeHalloran]

There is absolutely no up-side to responding to a review.

Many outfits will interpret any response whatsoever as a form of insubordination.

Your criteria for objectivity are completely disjoint from those used by HR. Trust me on this.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[rbulsara]

Agree with Mike. I have been reviewed and have reviewed others all my life. Now I am on my own (not necessarily for that reason). Just go through the motion. You can gently test waters to see if your voice makes any difference. But if you are too unhappy, change the job. Fighting your system/boss is usually futile.

Rafiq Bulsara

http://www.srengineersct.com

 

[tygerdawg]

Unfortunately, I must agree with Mike & Rafiq. I feel the root cause to this unfortunate situation is (1) engineers usually make horrendously poor managers and (2) many engineers think they should get paid much more than they normally do, and (3) those HR Weasels complicate the issues since their job is to protect the company and maintain harmony in the workplace. Even if it means getting rid of an employee who shows some dissention.

As I've gotten older I realize more and more that it is very easy to be critical, but d@mn hard to effectively coach an employee and modify their behavior without causing any hard feelings or de-motivate the employee. Generally my reviews have been equitable. Sometimes there were some boss impressions that I didn't feel were correct or fair. Once I got a comment that was so unbelievably outrageous that I immediately had a vision of a big neon sign over Boss' head flashing the word "idiot." I tried at the time to discuss the differences professionally. Sometimes OK, sometimes not. It is all very fluid about how far you should push that rock up the hill. And your boss is one thing, those Evil Weasels in HR are something completely different and usually illogical in the bargain.

Once or twice the review wording was absolutely wrong and I recognized it as the supervision laying the groundwork necessary to terminate me under false pretenses. I decided I had nothing to lose, so I engaged in direct battle against this.

Once I refused to sign, told the boss I'd respond in writing. I took his review and shredded it sentence by sentence, showing evidence to the contrary with dates & witnesses, to each charge against me. When confronted with this, he backed off and re-wrote the review. After I got his signature on my improved review (and it got put into my employee file), I quit two weeks later.

A similar incident occurred in which I wasn't able to get the wording changed or the supervisor to admit any wrongdoing on his part. I still quit shortly thereafter.

A Performance Review is a very difficult situation and the cards are generally stacked against you. You're in shoally waters, navigate carefully.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[SomptingGuy]

We have a box for employee comments, which I doubt anyone every fills in. I haven't in the 20-ish reviews I've had working for my current employer. I always feel tempted to write a load of incomprehensible garbage in there to see if anyone, anywhere actually reads it.

- Steve

 

[buggsbunny]

Steve, Sounds like your company takes the review as a means of creating a good bond between the employer and employee. I really think that is what everyone wants in their organization. Your comments were probably reasonable, and your supervisor glad to have your input.
Tygerdawg, sounds like you created a hostile situation over it, and then in the end, got what you wanted, and then quit. In my opinion that was an irrational move in both situations.
Also, "just go through the motion" and "no upside to responding" are ways to just sit back and let other people take control of one's career.

 

[GregLocock]

So buggsbunny, in your enormous experience all organisations have the same desired outcomes from performance reviews in all situations?



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[philmech]

I would not hesitate to repond to a review I did not agree with. However, I would be very very careful how I worded my response. First and foremost, I would try to present only facts, and eliminate any emotion from my response. I would also take responsibilty for anything I had actually done which was considered poor performance by the reviewer, along with how the situation would be corrected. I would finish by stating what I intended to do differently so that they would get a more accurate view of my performance in the coming year.

In most cases, responding in a mature and professional manner will have more of a positive than negative effect.

 

[Noway2]

I agree with almost all of the comments in this thread. If you feel that your evaluation is wrong, and have the facts to back it up, then consider doing so. There is a high probability that the attempt will be futile, but not always.
If raises are based on a score from the review, getting negatives removed, or positives improved, can impact your bottom line.

Personally, I think that putting anything in a review that is negative is not justifiable unless the issue has previously been brought to the employees attention. In other words, it is not an appropriate format for raising new issues. I have gotten negatives removed on a review this way. Furthermore, I think that putting negatives in a review will server one purpose: to piss off the employee and it is highly unlikely that anything good will come of doing so.

On the flip side, keep in mind that for all the hype made about a review, it is really a worthless pile of paper. Once you walk out the door, it has little to no effect on you. The law should dictate (i.e. limit) what they are allowed to say about you and your performance and the review is irrelevant.

Also remember, that the review is just as much a reflection on the company and the manager as it is on the employee.

 

[tickle]

I have responded to a performance review in the past. This was not following a particularly poor review, but one that had some negatives in it, that ignored (what I considered to be) positives for the previous year. My basis for responding to the review was to document some of the reasons behind the negatives. In my mind I considered these to be in part due to the management not doing their job. Obviously this was not highlighted on the performance review.

I had the option of discussing the review with independent people within the organisation (hr and others). My boss was not particularly happy about me following that path. Which you have to question the reason why - protecting his own performance appraisal / bonus or that my comments were valid. Either way the response from the boss was another reason to polish up my resume.

Therefore my advice, act professionally - no emotions, be humble where required, facts only, yes add comments (if not for now, to document the reasons) and finally, you are only in control of your own actions.

 

[KENAT]

You guys are doing it wrong, that space for employee response is for you to write in how much you enjoy working for your current manager how much you appreciate his feedback, ask how you can become a model employee and similar Brown Nosing BS.

Otherwise I tend to agree with Mike & Co for most private industry reviews in places with limited employee protection such as US at will workers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are exceptions, just don't ask me to name one.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[buggsbunny]

Some good responses here, from all ranks it seems, thanks.

 

[SylvestreW]

My only "review feedback" is the resignation letter. Usually that tells them what I thought.

Find me a review that's objective, quantitative and not in some way tied to remuneration and I'll go work for free for that company.

 

[cksh]

I'm with SylvestreW. A resignation letter is the best feedback.

Of course I don't give them a chance to make ammends. I just move on.

A buddy of mine got a bad review simply because there were too many good reviews in the department, and he drew the short straw. His supervisor actually told him or I would not have believed it. I didn't last much longer there.

I have never given feedback to a review.

 

[ScottyUK]

Years ago I gave feedback on a review. I disagreed with a few things, both in terms of accuracy and the unduly negative wording with which they were reported. My response was pretty robust, not rude but not especially compromising either. It did go all the way up to the top of the medium-sized company I worked for - which is an indirect sign that normally the response box is left blank - and it did no good at all in terms of changing anything. It did however make my boss very pissed off, which wasn't really the aim.

I've not commented since where I have any choice, or if forced to comment I just write something positive but vague like "I'm looking forward to the challenges of the next six months" or similar.


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