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[bcl0328]

Does your work have them? How do you feel about them?

Got my summary today and it said I did not meet expectations. Been pretty bummed about it all day and have no idea why I was rated so poorly.

The only notes were I need to be more visible, raise my profile within my company, and communicate more.

Before this year I always had met or exceeded expectations. Now I just feel depressed about going to work and feel like my job is at stake.

Guess I will find out more at the sit down. =\

 

[Curtisaur]

Nah it's always been either "you're still working here today hooray!" or "you're fired!" for me.

 

[StopMakingSense]

"Communicate more" is a fair criticism, but "be more visible"? "raise your profile"?

 

[Lazy Man's Wallpaper]

In my experience they're only meaningful if they're negative, regardless of what the company lip service says.

 

[bcl0328]

Nah it's always been either "you're still working here today hooray!" or "you're fired!" for me. Shouldn't they have at least told you what areas you need to improve in? Did you ask?

I will be asking when we sit down together and go over it.

 

[Curtisaur]

I will be asking when we sit down together and go over it.

Got ya. I edited it out of my post because I guess I glossed over the part where it mentioned the areas you needed improving in... but they are still vague.

 

[YesNOnoNOYes]

Yeah, annual reviews are coming up here pretty soon, I think.

How has your company been doing, OP? Sometimes reviews are used to lay the groundwork for giving out minimal annual raises.

If you have a good relationship with your manager, it might be worthwhile asking them about specific things you can tackle in order to improve on your 'profile' in the company.

Hang in there, OP. Criticism is always hard to swallow, but they can be a real opportunity to improve on things, too.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

I will be asking when we sit down together and go over it.

That's asinine that you get your rating without the opportunity for a explanation at the same time. Do you mind telling us where you work?

 

[bcl0328]

Got ya. I edited it out of my post because I guess I glossed over the part where it mentioned the areas you needed improving in... but they are still vague.

Yea, I don't know what to think. Does my manager want me to do more work? I mean under quality and quantity of work it said did not meet expectations. So I guess he thinks I do little work and it's shit.

That's asinine that you get your rating without the opportunity for a explanation at the same time. Do you mind telling us where you work?

Can't say. But it really has ruined my day, my week, my whatever. I have no clue what to think until we sit down. It's like what am I supposed to do now?

 

[maxcriden]

OP, try not to beat yourself up over it, as hard as that may be. You know the hard work you're doing. I would just talk it through with your supervisor when you sit down with them and see what suggestions they have for how to best proceed.

ETA: when will you be meeting with them?

 

[bcl0328]

OP, try not to beat yourself up over it, as hard as that may be. You know the hard work you're doing. I would just talk it through with your supervisor when you sit down with them and see what suggestions they have for how to best proceed.

I think the issue is the work I do isn't seen by upper levels. It's all "behind the scenes". People always ask something of me or they need help and I always do it. It may not be an official task but it puts fires out. I think my manager needs to know that.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Yea, I don't know what to think. Does my manager want me to do more work? I mean under quality and quantity of work it said did not meet expectations. So I guess he thinks I do little work and it's shit.



Can't say. But it really has ruined my day, my week, my whatever. I have no clue what to think until we sit down. It's like what am I supposed to do now?

That's why I said it's asinine...that would beat the shit out of employee engagement, as it obviously has with you. The reasons are very nebulous and seemingly have little to do with results (or lack thereof). Lack of visibility with upper management has shit-all to do with your rating assuming your supervisor knows your results, and it's his job to know.

 

[ShinZed]

We have them in the supermarket I work at. Basically every year it's 'Yeah, you're okay but work faster.'

And then you have to make a comment on their appraisal. So I write 'Okay.'

Don't know why they bother, tbh.

 

[Aesius]

At my last job, my manager gave me a "negative" annual performance review because of TWO mistakes I had made during the previous six months. One of which involved forgetting to CC her on a daily email, and another was forgetting to follow up on a potential project that never actually came to fruition.

I feel like performance reviews are solely dictated by the personality of your manager. If they hold grudges or don't want you to succeed for some reason, you're fucked.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Does your work have them? How do you feel about them?

Got my summary today and it said I did not meet expectations. Been pretty bummed about it all day and have no idea why I was rated so poorly.

The only notes were I need to be more visible, raise my profile within my company, and communicate more.

Before this year I always had met or exceeded expectations. Now I just feel depressed about going to work and feel like my job is at stake.

Guess I will find out more at the sit down. =\

This says more about the company you work for than it does about you. Poor or below expectation reviews should never, ever be a surprise. Ideally you and your manager would be in communication about how things are going constantly, and if you are tracking below expectations, help you improve. A piece of paper letting you know it's below expectations - without your anticipating it - is a sign of a badly run organization, IMO. As part of the sit down portion of your review, you should probably make sure to find out how you can tell if you are performing at expecations (or below) in advance this year, so you have time to do something about it.

 

[maxcriden]

I think the issue is the work I do isn't seen by upper levels. It's all "behind the scenes". People always ask something of me or they need help and I always do it. It may not be an official task but it puts fires out. I think my manager needs to know that.

Yeah, that is a tricky situation because it can be hard for them to see everything you're doing. Anyway, I would definitely make it a point to diplomatically bring this side of things up at your meeting.

 

[GungHo]

Yes we have them. Yes they often suck (for both sides). Yes the feedback is typically unspecific.

When you hear "you need to raise your profile", it means that you've dropped an opportunity. You should ask what opportunity you missed if you aren't sure what ball was handed to you that you didn't take down field. Sometimes us managers think that their subordinates see the opportunities the way they see the opportunities and we end up shitting the bed because we wanted to play head games and see who went for ye olde brasse ringge, as if that meant anything.

This says more about the company you work for than it does about you. Poor or below expectation reviews should never, ever be a surprise. Ideally you and your manager would be in communication about how things are going constantly, and if you are tracking below expectations, help you improve. A piece of paper letting you know it's below expectations - without your anticipating it - is a sign of a badly run organization, IMO. As part of the sit down portion of your review, you should probably make sure to find out how you can tell if you are performing at expecations (or below) in advance this year, so you have time to do something about it.

This is very true. That being said, sometimes as an employee you have to be able to read the room. Managers should have the balls to tell you that you are out of line, but the employee needs be ready to receive and adapt. Two people being either oblivious or passive aggressive cannot advance the organization.

 

[JoeBoy101]

I think the issue is the work I do isn't seen by upper levels. It's all "behind the scenes". People always ask something of me or they need help and I always do it. It may not be an official task but it puts fires out. I think my manager needs to know that.

Start keeping a log of everything you do, especially those tasks that are outside your responsibility, helping others, etc.

Next, Plan out a project or two that you would be in charge of that, ideally, would take little effort or resource from the company. For example, though we have financial reports at my company, there aren't many good roll-ups/dashboards/high level reports for the guys I'm supporting. I threw together an excel sheet I can update easily monthly with financials as they come in.

In a more general case, it might be trying to improve a procedure, or taking some initiative to developing a tool or such.

If they are talking communication and visibility, sounds like they want you to not just be a support for other people, but to strike out more for yourself.

Oh, and that log. Once a month or once a quarter, go over it with your boss. Book an hour with him/her and show they what you've been doing extra and get some input on how to help situations, better respond, or how they might view the situation. Bear in mind that your boss will only know about the work they give you, unless you let them know you are taking on more yourself. The log shows the extra time and help your giving. The projects would show how your trying to advance yourself and your position.

Now, all THAT said, when you meet with your supervisor, try to get a read how they are presenting this. Is it to push you to do better and advance yourself, is it a response to possible stagnation on your part, is it them not recognizing the effort you put in, or, and the most critical, is it a pretext for later action on you. If you feel its the latter, start looking for a new job, immediately.

And a final point, sometimes this judgments are not personal. I worked for a large organization a few years back and, to cut down on raises, they 'unofficially' forbade any supervisor from giving better than satisfactory ratings, and pushed for at least a couple of unsatisfactories.

 

[3phemeral]

In theory, it's great. I would love to hear feedback for my work and what I could to to improve. I also want to be acknowledged if I did a kick-ass job at a project or pulling a team together.

In reality: Waste of time in terms of departmental feedback. Most if not all the employee reviews were literally copy and pasted from other employees and not only that, you're told in advance that your performance had no bearing on your bonus, which provides little incentive to work hard but also reminds you that if you're completely incompetent, there's nothing to worry about in terms of your end-of-fiscal-year reward.

There was simply no time time for anyone to put together all of these reviews due to there always being projects running around the same time. Plus, every year, they would always pile on more work for a smaller work force.

For our individual projects, we would give feedback, though. It provided me a way to do exactly what I expected from my performance reviews. The only problem is that a lot of them were contractors so even if they were great, we'd try to keep them on something but it wasn't always guaranteed. So we'd lose quality workers due to inconsistent scheduling.

Bottom line: They're an excellent opportunity if done right and done with care.

 

[Clockwork]

At my place of employment we do our own appraisals.

That's just as horrible.

 

[giri]

Does your work have them? How do you feel about them?

Got my summary today and it said I did not meet expectations. Been pretty bummed about it all day and have no idea why I was rated so poorly.

The only notes were I need to be more visible, raise my profile within my company, and communicate more.

Before this year I always had met or exceeded expectations. Now I just feel depressed about going to work and feel like my job is at stake.

Guess I will find out more at the sit down. =\

Yes.

And i had to write lots of them in my time. If done properly they are a really dificult task for the person who does the review, because genuine evaluation is really hard to quantify into constructive criticism, whilst also addressing general area's that people may just be failing in.

If done quickly and not taken seriously, they usually cause more problems than they're worth.

If you disagree, just make sure you take notes into your review on the areas you disagree with and have examples ready. Your interpretation of your job might not be their interpretation.

 

[f0rk]

This says more about the company you work for than it does about you. Poor or below expectation reviews should never, ever be a surprise. Ideally you and your manager would be in communication about how things are going constantly, and if you are tracking below expectations, help you improve. A piece of paper letting you know it's below expectations - without your anticipating it - is a sign of a badly run organization, IMO. As part of the sit down portion of your review, you should probably make sure to find out how you can tell if you are performing at expecations (or below) in advance this year, so you have time to do something about it.

Given the notes part of this might be because of the OP though.
Getting the notes before you can talk about them is dumb though

 

[DoomGyver]

Nope, you can work your ass off and have perfect attendance yet nobody seems to notice.. but if you suck up on a daily basis and push your work onto other co-workers the sky is the limit.

 

[Cipherr]

This says more about the company you work for than it does about you. Poor or below expectation reviews should never, ever be a surprise. Ideally you and your manager would be in communication about how things are going constantly, and if you are tracking below expectations, help you improve. A piece of paper letting you know it's below expectations - without your anticipating it - is a sign of a badly run organization, IMO. As part of the sit down portion of your review, you should probably make sure to find out how you can tell if you are performing at expecations (or below) in advance this year, so you have time to do something about it.

All of this. It should be impossible for something like this to 'sneak up' on an employee. If it does, ironically its a failure of communication on their side, not yours. I mean, this isn't some 1 month check up, this is a yearly review, its not like they haven't had time to detail to you what the problem is, so that you could tend to it before the year mark.

That's just awful. I don't know where you are in the hierarchy, but if you are in a solid place within the company, I think you should bring this up during your 'talk'. If no one can point to conversations or communications that they initiated with you to inform you of the problem, then they need to do their jobs better instead of ambushing you for not fixing a problem they never made known to begin with.

 

[bcl0328]

All of this. It should be impossible for something like this to 'sneak up' on an employee. If it does, ironically its a failure of communication on their side, not yours. I mean, this isn't some 1 month check up, this is a yearly review, its not like they haven't had time to detail to you what the problem is, so that you could tend to it before the year mark.

That's just awful. I don't know where you are in the hierarchy, but if you are in a solid place within the company, I think you should bring this up during your 'talk'. If no one can point to conversations or communications that they initiated with you to inform you of the problem, then they need to do their jobs better instead of ambushing you for not fixing a problem they never made known to begin with.

My old manager always came down and talked to me, he had an open door policy, and always wanted to talk. He left and we have a different manager now. I have probably talked to him 3-4 times and he never comes visits or asks what I am doing. I feel like this review is based off of his interactions with me and it isn't fair.

 

[Edwardo]

My old manager used to have us fill out our own, then he would comment on it.