peer feedback at work

[Zoe Girl]

So I was in a monthly staff/group meeting. I get so overwhelmed by the to-do list I walk away with that I am almost in tears every time. Of course I have an extra 7 hours of trainings this week and I do tend to be quite sensitive. On a side note I am going to a meetup about how to take care of yourself when you are highly sensitive, So at the end I was also at the end and a supervisor brought up peer feedback! Yeah, um no. I have done peer feedback with out meditation group and the special training for women facilitators in a small group. Giving peer feedback is pretty huge and needs to be led by a skilled leader, I would not be comfortable with this outside a place where I had total choice to be there.

It sounds like we developed the idea to a simple coffee time once a month (yeah we had coffee today and my supervisor also provided tea, I appreciate that and made sure I told her). I think that could be okay. However the encouragement to give feedback concerns me. I have a local friend who has been part of the women's group and we give each other feedback on the times we lead group which has been okay, but a large amount of preparation was part of that. I want to reach out to here and ask her opinion on how to give feedback (haha) to my supervisors on this issue. I did not feel it was best to bring that up in the meeting.

[kib]

This sounds like a dreadful idea waiting to happen. I can see how at first glance it would come off as somehow helpful and supportive, but given the potentially unevolved nature of co-workers and work relationships, the fact that supervisors will be present to garner subjective and potentially negative concepts about their employees, the fact that managers, IMHO, Love to discover new and unexplored time wasting "problems" to address that gum up overloaded schedules of the worker bees, and the fact that the people involved are (perhaps) not all peers but in a hierarchical arrangement with each other ... my enlightened and mature response: call in sick. :|(

[iris lilies]

Peer review is a tool of weak managers. I encountered it from those fleeing Academia.









edited to make more sense.

[sweetana3]

Only good with highly trained employees who all are working for the same goals and have clearly established paths. My husband was in such an environment and they are rare. It was hard on everyone. I think they called it 360 degree evaluations.

I would hate to have "peer feedback" and this is probably because I always thought I was doing more than expected and others in my job category were trying to do less. Note that I was consistently promoted and that had a lot to do with doing more than required. Did not make me many peer friends. Retired now and dont have to deal with it.

[Zoe Girl]

I think it is further complicated by our type of work. We have 18 sites, and we work the majority of time at our sites. We see each other for monthly meetings and the committee work we are on. I have little idea of what other people do, and our sites are so different I am not sure how valuable it is to comment on a 100 kid site from my 30 kid site.

Wow, love the weak manager comment. I think (just brag) one of my strengths is having difficult conversations. It sounds like some people are approaching the managers about some issues like people dominating meetings with comments. I shared that I thought my coworker had really low cut shirts and it seemed inappropriate in our work in schools. So my supervisor asked if I felt comfortable talking directly to the person, and I didn't. I didn't supervise her in any way, that could go over badly. In a meeting they asked for people to share ideas, like what was appropriate work clothes. It felt like passing off their job to have a respectful and private conversations. I had to once (the worst conversation ever) talk to an employee about extreme body odor. Other people shared with me, as if I didn't notice, and another female and I did the best with the conversation, gave her a gift bag of items and reassured her.

on a positive note, I got a meeting moved that was scheduled on my meeting free Friday (I have such long days that I need this for appointments, naps, ) to flex time for the 7 hours of training I need to do this week. I thought that was nice and respectful of my time.

[razz]

Zoe girl, is there some info that you can find that will give the supervisor the amount of skill, knowledge and training that careful feedback really requites to be a positive experience for everyone. There must be some credible sources that can be suggested, anyone?

It is so frustration when someone doesn't know what and how much s/he doesn't know.

[Tradd]

My company's HR department sent out an email this week about this year's annual reviews. Peer reviews will be used for some, but not all. Wonder what the criteria is.

[Zoe Girl]

good idea razz, i think that would support what i am saying. i could easily list the 3-4 books we have studied or are studying as part of our facilitators training.

[Teacher Terry]

This is the worst idea I have ever heard!thumbsup!. Peer reviews will only create problems.

[Rogar]

We had peer reviews when I was working, but it was only used for part of the routine work assessments. I was pretty neutral about it. We were pretty big on a team driven work force and being a team player was important to accomplish those objectives. I don't recall anyone getting down on a high performance employee and if you were a slacker who made work harder for other, you would hear about it from the team. There were downsides, especially if there were petty or vindictive members of the team.

[TxZen]

Ahhh peer reviews- where things get vicious and you can't do a darn thing about because HR won't let you.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I would tend to think the bias would be: you eat lunch with your peer everyday, you know a bit about their life etc., only thing is they aren't the greatest coworker in the world, would you mention it? I wouldn't. Quite frankly, they simply aren't paying me to be management. Luckily I've never gotten nor given peer reviews.

[SteveinMN]

We had peer reviews -- except, like most initiatives, it was numbers driven and so the rush was on to find half-a-dozen people who worked closely enough with you to identify positive and negative job and personality traits. Since I mostly worked with the same group of people, finding more qualified people was a challenge. Okay, impossible. Ditto for people for whom I was asked to give feedback. The thought that this actually played into someone's job evaluation really concerned me. Ick. Bad idea for most workplaces.

[jp1]

As ApetheticNoMore alluded, I would suspect that a peer review will be "I like this person and they go out with us for a beer every now and then so I'll find good things to say" or "I really don't get along with this person personally so I'm going to say negative things regardless of the quality of their work."

Thankfully I've never been subjected to this. My very large corporation opted instead for a roundtable review thing, where every employee's manager had to sit in a 4-6 hour meeting with 19 other managers from across the country of people at the same level as their employee and then fight for their employee's ranking. The end result had to be a bell curve with 10% 1's, 20% 2's, 40% 3's, and 30% 4's and 5's.

[Zoe Girl]

the thing is that the way our work is structured we don't eat lunch together, we see each other in committees and meetings a few times a month. before we got printers for our sites we all had time together on the big payroll days, all of us editing and running payroll in one room, but we still didn't necessarily see each others work, there is a person who tends to comment too long in meetings, i know she has been talked to about it, and it will always happen. that means the facilitator has to be on top of it, rather than having a peer feedback where we tell her that and in the moment she still doesn't seem to catch it.

well maybe the casual coffee thing will just be okay, i know we have asked to have more time to share ideas casually with our peers. that is the focus i will take at least