View Full Version : got my annual review
Maybe I should not be disappointed but I am. With the overall review process and personal goals and the entire year rolled up into something we get a number score from 1-5. 5 is rock star and you get a roadie (ok I made that up), 3 is meets expectations, and 1 is seriously not doing your job.
Maybe I was just so used to always getting A's in school, I had a few B's, but I am NOT used to being a basic meets expectations person yet in several jobs I have been consistently given that score. Yet the thing is that people come to me for advice, for help, for a chance to talk something through. So it seems that whatever they score people on is not what I am best at or bosses and organizations look at. I hear consistently that I am really good at training staff, it is not on the eval list and if it was I bet I would get a 3 even if I provide handouts and activities and others just get up and talk and also get a 3 because they performed training.
In the discussion my sup consistently said how much she appreciates me (2 of my work friends got teaching jobs and that is hard, neither have teaching degrees/certificates) coming back, how she knows I will have a positive attitude, how I have great teamwork, etc. Then of course you have to have some things to work on and I expect that. In that part of the discussion she said that within the department they know how each other's staff is doing and they also know when people apply for positions, which means she knows I applied for that other job. She said she totally supports me but maybe there are a few things holding me back. One was feeling that I don't really listen to her, that I get so excited that I am not truly listening. That upset me because I feel I worked on interrupting when i get excited and I have done a lot of work through my Buddhist practice on listening to a level of more awareness. I listen to her but I question a lot, one thing was telling us we had to have a certain grouping and schedule for the summer program and what I was questioning was that I had been told we had more freedom in running summer. I felt we were told what we were required to do and I wouldn't have worked summer if I had known that.
The biggest issue is really getting things in and meeting deadlines. Our entire group did not get things in on time but as far as I can tell I did one of the best. I will admit not getting things in on time, I was up front about it and made changes to adjust. Our jobs changed significantly and so instead of having 4 sites with all the paperwork due on the same day I had 16 different items and due dates. This year they are hiring assistants because it was so hard to get things done, but I still get rating basic level. There was the end of year paperwork, we were given the checklist on a Friday, school ended on Tuesday, I had the entire checklist done and boxed to drop off by the end of Wednesday plus I planned the best training according to my peers to be delivered on Thursday complete with activities and handouts. On Friday I set up camp in a different location than we usually have programming and on Monday 60 kids showed up ready to go. Her encouragement was to not multi-task and instead focus on one item at a time. That is exactly how I did that intense week and I got it all done!! Plus that does not give me a rating based on improved paperwork but rather just an average. I personally would weight work at the end of the school year more heavily than the beginning. One of my staff corrected a chronic problem in January, so I would not make that the primary part of her rating but instead focus on her willingness to change and address the issue.
Bottom line, she could not have done what I did last year. And I think I could go onto another job or work for myself in mediation but I really have lost trust that the universe or bosses or anyone can see and compensate for that. Yeah, that and deciding what if anything I want to share back with her.
iris lilies
8-6-13, 11:42pm
"3" or meeting expectations means you are doing the job.
I supervise a lot of people. Most people think they are doing better than employees on either side of them. We are all above average, ya know? Just sayin.'
And interestingly enough, my employees who put in the strongest performance and could be promoted rate themselves lower than the weaker employees rate themselves. I've never once been challenged on ratings for excellent employees when I give them less than an "excellent" score. I have been challenged by those who believe they do a much better job than they actually do. I think this is because the great employees have a clear idea of what needs to be done and they accurately asses how far they fall short. We all fall short.
I agree with iris lilies. I do evals. It's not even close to letter grades. Do all the stuff and get an A. Do all the stuff and get a 3. The systems are not comparable. Where I work, meetig expectations takes every minute iof the day. It's really hard to exceed expectations ... If it were easy we would be cutting staff to save money.
I don't think you should take it too personally, ZG. You clearly have a very different personality/working style than your boss, and given that and some of the challenges you have faced in your position a 3 is nothing to sneeze at. Especially if she feels threatened by you. That was what I ended up facing with my boss in previous HSSJ, and he gave me several 2s as retaliation when I stood up to him on some things. One of the hardest things I ever went through, but thankfully several people in the organization knew him, knew me, knew how both of us worked, and gave me lots of support because they knew it was a game. Hurt like hell, though. But it was a sign that it wasn't the right place for me to be. When I found that right place, at the end of my initial 3 month period I was already pulling down 4s in all categories. Don't lose faith in the universe. Your right place is out there. It might be this place, with some tweaking, but maybe it is somewhere else. Hang in there. You are competent and skilled and want to make a difference in the lives of kids and families. I'm confident that someone will see that and offer you new opportunities.
Just want to say getting rated on a 1-5 sucks but it is what it is. I was on that scale for 31 years as was my husband.
Note he worked in the upper ranks of technology with people who were all superb at what they did or it would stand out like a sore thumb. He was on the ranking panels (to give out ratings, make promotions, give raises, etc.) Many angry discussions were held over these rankings. At one point later in his career, the company said that the rankings had to be the U shaped curve with at least 10% at the bottom even if the whole group was working great, producing and getting everything done. Try explaining to a good performer who gives everything that they are at the bottom of their group because of the U shaped curve. Husband got out of management.
thank you all, I hope I am not one that just overestimates what I do. I let this sit overnight so if a 3 is basically the A-B range in grading systems I can be okay with it. I base what I think about my work on outside, un-requested, comments of my work. Yesterday again someone stopped me to say hi, didn't need to say anything about the summer work we did but did go out of his way to say I handled discipline the best out of the 3 summer managers. I was very pleased with what we all did as a team actually so i was surprised but it still felt good.
Here is the thing, I used to always count myself just average in all these types of evaluations. I was pretty hard on myself. So I am trying to learn to give myself some more credit. The last interview I had for another job in the department I had the manager sit down after I did not get the job and talk to me about the interview which was wonderful, no one has done that before. Her feedback was that I could talk higher about myself, give myself credit for the things I had done instead of saying 'we'. Really advocate for what I had worked on. So I am trying to reach out a little, base it on more facts than my feelings (such as the written licensing visit forms and keeping track of how many deadlines I meet and seeing that in presenting training everyone did one section but I offered to do 2). But I think I need to see that as a 3 regardless, just let go of the idea of 4 no matter what I am striving to improve.
In being honest I say my site sucked and my staff sucked, we were not the quality I wanted. And in further being honest I would have taken the 3 from any other manager. I didn't really rate myself higher, but I do not trust her judgement of my work.
the company said that the rankings had to be the U shaped curve with at least 10% at the bottom even if the whole group was working great, producing and getting everything done. Try explaining to a good performer who gives everything that they are at the bottom of their group because of the U shaped curve.
It's a shame that there's no way to record the pernicious effect of this grading on a curve on American innovation and productivity. Employees waste so much time pitting themselves against each other when they could be out solving business problems and getting ahead together. Managers waste untold hours creating the stories they have to tell about the people who report to them and hashing out how to meet what is essentially an arbitrary standard. How does an organization claim to hire the best and brightest available and then convert them into deadwood by review time? Do you suppose 10% of the people at google really are doing a crappy job?
One of the final straws for me in my old position was learning that HR had changed compensation such that if you were a "3" but were above salary midpoint for your grade, you got no raise. Nothing. I'm not quite sure what they were trying to achieve. What they told us was that it was an incentive to move to the next grade level or a new position. Except that we already had enough chiefs and not enough indians and there were no positions many of us could move to. "Steve, you had a very good year. You did everything we asked you to even with all the changes that occurred. But we can't give you a raise." Yeah. That makes me want to run through rings of fire for the company....
Totally agree about the ridiculousness of applying the bell curve to the range of possible human achievement -- I used to have a tagline in my profile that basically said I thought the bell curve was one of the worst instruments of evil ever. Jack Welch's eat-or-be-eaten management model, which is based on it, may be the only thing that is worse. That definitely might be a factor here. In many organizations there may be strict rules from HR about how many people can get high ratings. Even if they aren't as harsh as the Jack Welch approach, that still has an impact.
Even in my pretty healthy, well-managed organization I see a bit of that. I can say with confidence that I am probably one of the strongest employees in the organization. I know my boss, co-workers and our funders think very highly of me and my work. Yet in spite of this great performance year in and year out I am pretty much in the 4.2-4.3 range. It just isn't possible in our organization to be a 5, even though it is on the scale. That makes sense in a way -- you can't excel at everything all the time, and if you do it probably means you are in a job that isn't stretching you enough. But the striver in me bristles a bit every year at performance review time.
I was just thinking part of what is irking me, that I personally feel like a 3 means I can't move forward in any other job which is untrue. But also after a year of pushing so hard to start up a new and unique site and struggle with new paperwork and deadlines they are getting an assistant for me and another similar school. There are other changes that are specific to my site since no one really thought this plan out (but hired me because they knew I would get it done), which means they have found the money to get assistants however they cannot find money to pay me more. The same job at a Middle school pays $10K more a year, I have no idea why.
I wonder if there is any way to generally ask about how many people got a 3, or a 4 or a 2 without breaking privacy.
I agree with the others about the review numbers not equaling letter grades. A 3 likely means you are a solid performer. It sounds like she really did give you a lot of honest feedback and wants to support your eventual transition to a position at the next level.
If you feel comfortable, you might consider asking your boss for some concrete ways she recommends you improve the skills she mentioned. Maybe there are things she can suggest that are not so nebulous, such as you can work on speaking less in meetings...I have a coworker who is proactively working on this because he does get sooo excited, he takes over meetings and sometimes the topic he is discussing is completely tangental to the meeting at hand.
Even though critiques can be hard to hear, and you may have valid points w/regard to those past situations, I would try to take her review as food for thought.
I was just thinking part of what is irking me, that I personally feel like a 3 means I can't move forward in any other job which is untrue. But also after a year of pushing so hard to start up a new and unique site and struggle with new paperwork and deadlines they are getting an assistant for me and another similar school. There are other changes that are specific to my site since no one really thought this plan out (but hired me because they knew I would get it done), which means they have found the money to get assistants however they cannot find money to pay me more. The same job at a Middle school pays $10K more a year, I have no idea why.
I wonder if there is any way to generally ask about how many people got a 3, or a 4 or a 2 without breaking privacy.
I would like to caution you with this story about a woman I worked with. She felt that there was no way one person could possibly do all of the work that her position required (she was right, by the way). She brought it up repeatedly at her evaluations when they mentioned her inability to get all of her paperwork submitted on time. Finally, they had her do a log of how she spent her hours. They found out that there were too many tasks to be done by one person. So, they decided to hire a part time assistant. The woman was really upset that they were able to find this money when they wouldn't increase her salary. So, she went to the board and said that she would be able to do everything if they paid her a higher salary. I told her ahead of time not to do it, but there was no reasoning with her. As I predicted, the board told her that if she wasn't able to do everything because of time, then the amount they paid her shouldn't make a difference. Now, if she wanted to argue that her job was worth more money, that is the way she should have gone...but once she argued that she couldn't get everything done, she couldn't "change her story". She ended up needing to find another job that had a higher starting salary. You are in the same position. It you can't get everything done because it truly is too much for one person to do, then salary doesn't come into play. If, on the other hand, what you do entails skills that should command a higher salary, then most likely you will need to look around for another position. It's never easy, just make sure that you are fighting the right battle. Good luck!
oh yeah, I never say directly I cannot get my work done or that it should be paid more. If an issue of work load comes up I talk about it in other ways, one very real factor is that I do not have this much time. Because I am the only site like mine it is difficult to judge my work load. I do say what I have found to be more efficient specifically. I will point out the week that we had 5 due dates to different people, all urgent and none of the tasks were routine so it was very difficult to get them done. One change I saw from that is they no longer schedule meetings on payroll due dates, thank god. Just having people pay attention to due dates across the department is important, we don't feel set up to fail. I struggle with thinking that creating a new site and bringing what I know is kinda special, I succeeded in that the site is still functioning and growing, I did not succeed in getting to a living wage once again.
So my supervisor got us assistants because she decided that was the best way to handle the overall late paperwork. I just told her what I learned as I went along and renewed my commitment to solving the problem. One very specific way i asked for her help in her role was to prioritize tasks with us. Since we deal with a lot of urgent things, child work does this, it helps to break down tasks into priorities. For summer camp she said no. Just no, it was all equally important so I needed to get it done, if I couldn't then I could delegate, then I could hold that person accountable and it was all fine. When we came back over summer one of our shared team values for the department is actually to prioritize!! It was stated as a way to respect the time of ourselves and others.
The pay issue is probably out of everyone's control working for a school district. I don't even think negotiating a salary is possible with the systems in place. Still even if they could work out a small amount it would feel good, like someone noticed our work.
You sound like you have a good handle on it Zoe!
Thanks Valley, raising bosses is such hard work LOL. I have slight hope that I will get somewhere with it this year. Just so frustrating!!
I posted on the other thread that my problem child staff is looking for another job!! I was writing a bunch of things that I deleted about this skill I have that I can't identify, basically I walk into a room and things don't get worse. Kids throwing chairs, parents yelling, needing to tell people difficult things, I don't always make it better but I don't make it worse. My staff just breathes and it gets worse. In one month of camp there were 4 parent concerns with her, the facilities manager does not speak directly to her, she has this way of just taking a perfectly fine situation and making it tense. Sigh,....
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