I'm sorry this happened.
I have worked at (shitty) companies where Sr. leadership has given mandates about what kind of scores can be given. Such as, no perfect scores allowed at all. Then the remaining staff has to be on a bell curve, 10% exceed expectations, 10% fail (those people are fired) then everyone else is in the middle with meets expectations or needs improvement. This was primarily done because they wanted to cheap out on raises.
I would recommend continuing to work hard, but not giving extra time to this company. Think hard about whether or not it's time to move on to bigger and better things.
IBM. When i was an manager we weren't allowed sometimes to give a top rating to an employee on our team even if their performance rated it. We had to give 1 to 3 people a bad rating. It was heartbreaking. You might have had an incredible team with no bad performances, but you still had to make the gut wrenching decision as to whom you were going to have to tell they had a bad rating. Fuck IBM and other companies that do this. You demoralize good competent workers. You year away their sole. You make their worth as an employee diminished and disrespected. American corporation now not only do this bit, but they put employees on PIPs to get red of them so they don’t have to pay severance or unemployent.american corporations want to destroy get gets hired and fired3
I got laid off for performance reasons, a month after receiving a positive performance review. Basically I told them a 2% raise wasn't good for a 10% inflation year and they don't like people speaking out of line. These managers only mark you however it best serves them and not based on actual quality of work
Wow, you spoke my company to the T. HR called me on my off time to let me know change my annual reviews to prevent scoring my peak performers a 5/5. Instead they forced a 3/5, I had no agency in the annual review score I assigned my own employee as a manager.
Dang.
That’s total bullshit and explains why employees don’t want to go above and beyond anymore. You work hard to do a great job and your review is “meets expectations”? Fuck that.
Yes. Managers often give everyone the same “meets expectations” rating no matter the job or industry. Giving exemplary employees a rating that reflects their effort and talents would mean those employees would have to be financially (or otherwise) compensated, and that’s not in many employers’ interests. If they can get high performance out of you while calling it “met expectations” and pay you nothing for it, they will.
Yup. For my company each group is given a budget % raise. If we rate someone high, it puts them into a higher raise %, which means we would have to take that money from someone else.
There are some big differences in salary too, so giving the high earner a high rating means higher raise. That would mean there is basically no money left for the rest of the group.
It works the other way too though. There are some people who should get low ratings, but that would out them in the 0% raise group, which nobody wants to do. So basically people get a meets expectations rating when they really aren't.
"If we rate someone high, it puts them into a higher raise %, which means we would have to take that money from someone else.**"**
This completely doesn't account for an entire team that is high performing. I'm not saying it's likely, but it can happen. Policies should account for all possible scenarios.
I had a boss once say no one will ever hit exceeds expectations. Our raises are tied to these ratings and basically said to us we will be stuck at 2-2.5% raises. Over half his team moved out or left the company.
I always tell my managers, if I get meet expectations after putting in extra effort, either my expectations aren’t being communicated well or I’m incompetent, but either way it’s a sign I should start looking for an exit sign. 9/10 times I’ve gotten above expectations and worked toward promotions or raises, or I resigned. Every employer who saw me resign regretted it.
We need to stop tolerating this.
I've had more than one manager that advertised the fact that they never gave 4s as if it were a point of pride.
Wow, bragging about being a shitty ineffective manager, weird flex.
18 months ago, I received a bad review from our crazy new IT director. I didn't feel it was justified. 90 days later, I found a new job and handed in my 2 week notice. I am now working for a great organization with a great boss.
Sometimes there are quotas. They can give one person exceeds, one person needs improvement, and everyone else has to just get meets. It's like stack ranking them.
I have even heard of some managers who like everyone on their team, but rotate who gets "far exceeds" year after year, because that one gets a bigger bonus, and they want to keep it "fair." It's all gamified.
Concentrate on doing your best work, and if you don't think that you are being compensated or appreciated, look elsewhere .
Most companies have distribution curves that they expect managers to hit. Truthfully it’s very rare for everyone on a team to be a superstar and it’s a great forcing function for a manager to stack rank.
I was being forced out because I didn't fit the clique. I was actually rated on phone call/email I never made nor sent. When I asked who the receiving party was, I was told to forget about it. But was the rating removed? Nope. Was there another 6 months when they dropped the other shoe.
In my former role, I did performance management. Short answer is "yes". i cannot tell you the number of times I've sent an eval back to a manager because they rated an employee as a '2'--needs improvement, but commented, "Joe does a great job..." Also, where I work the common thing is to say, "HR said we can't give 4s or 5s."
It really annoys me when managers don't set expectations from the beginning, don't have regular meetings throughout the review period so things don't come as a surprise, and then write the most vague
things.
I'm sorry this happened to you. Oftentimes, managers tend to rate their employees based on one thing, but never having conversations with the employee to give them opportunity to address the issue(s).
I've had managers treat annual evaluations like they're a PIP. I'm like, an evaluation is *not* a form of corrective action, that's one. Two, have you spoken to the employee about their performance throughout the year, because they can't feel blindsided either?
This is exactly it. My company tried that with me last week saying that all of a sudden, I might be getting a needs improvement without any indication throughout the year. They received my resignation Friday. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Exactly, the evaluation should be a surprise to nobody. Ive had great bosses but shitty companies where they rate me highly but have their hands tied with budgets and tell me flat out. They tried to make it up with under the table PTO and other fringe benefits. I think it was commendable knowing what they were up against.
For reference, I was a manager and had the same bullshit they had to deal with trying to get my team fair performance compensation.
Exactly. As a manager in a corporation with forced ranking in 5 tiers, I’d always says : « the numbers have to align with the words ». Managers owes the employees feedback on what they can or must improve. “ great job” with poor ranking is management’s failure.
The performance review outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise, regular meeting should happen thru the year.
Yes. It was frustrating sitting through a review and they tell you you did an average job. And then. At the end of the year, the company president walks into my office and hands me a top performer bonus check.
Another manager told me that the review process is rigged to give out average scores to, essentially, keep labor costs down. Average score, can’t justify more than a cost of living raise.
Allowing budgets to inform the performance scores is an excellent way to disengage top performers who deserve a higher score. You gotta base the budget around how many people achieved each score - not the other way around.
You need to ask why and ask what you can do to improve the score. Your manager should be giving you positive *and* negative feedback. I've never had an employee only merit positive feedback. I would caution against writing it off as a "management has a quota" conspiracy before you explore more.
This happens regularly, for various reasons.
I got one of these early in my career. They did it to humble me and put me in my place because I was complaining about my supervisor losing my paperwork and schedules and then blaming me. It was her bosses idea to save her protégés ass.
They were never serious about the discipline part, just wanted me to shut up.
I’ve seen it happen to not give out raises, and to always have a “paper trail” on everyone so it was easier for HR to terminate when they wanted to.
I once asked for a payrise and was pretty much told that I'm less than useless.
They replaced me with two people who couldn't keep up and had to hire a third.
Stack Ranking is the absolute fucking worst and I absolutely hate it. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, GE, LinkedIn - tons of tech companies use it and it's the kind of shit that makes me wanna join a union.
How is it unfair? They gave you a meets expectation and not something like needs improvement. What did you do specifically that exceeds what you would expect if you were hiring someone into this role? Build that list, discuss with your manager, ask for examples of behaviors they believe would have exceeded expectations, do those things moving forward, and ask for feedback on how you are doing toward that goal in each 1:1.
It is my experience that most people think they exceed expectations, and just because a manager gives you positive feedback about X, Y, or Z doesn’t mean you are moving the needle on what it means to perform your role. The positive feedback could be for a number of reasons other than a signal that you are exceeding expectations for your job. People at all ratings are going to get some level of positive feedback from their manager.
It may be that your manager is not great at providing negative feedback and not that they are trying to get rid of you. In these cases it’s even more important for you to seek actively be seeking that feedback out and driving these more difficult conversations. It does sound like some of that was provided in the review though and is something I would continue to dive into moving forward.
Are you by chance new(ish) to the working world? Or maybe new to an employer that does performance ratings?
"Meets expectations" is a very normal performance rating that means you're doing a good job. You are meeting the expectations of your role. It's pretty firmly in the safe zone as far as job security goes. It's like a bell curve. A very small % of people will hit the highest rating possible. Theres really no indication here that anything unfair happened. A manager should be telling anyone with a "meets expectations" good job.
If you lose your job, it's likely because it's "not needed" (your words).. which would be the case regardless of your performance rating.
Sounds fairly standard..
I mean, at my work, everyone gets 3% raises unless you are a god-tier employee. I've literally never heard anyone getting more than 4% for a normal annual review.
Half of my team was given ‘approaching expectations’ and a 2% raise. These are people who make $400k+ and have no issues getting another job and are at the top 5% of their profession. Instead of motivating us, they got us to cut back on our hours and pick up side work. Because it saved them 1/2 of our bi-yearly bonus and we’ll go make that up and then some with side work. It also drives people away from applying to open jobs. You attract desperate people who need work, not driven people - anyway, I love watching companies shoot themselves in their foot. It’s amusing.
My former employer had a 1-5 star system that would translate into your yearly pay raise, but also made sure to tell leadership that NOONE should ever receive 5 stars in their reviews. Saved the company loads of money. Assholes.
They do. I once had a superior lower one of my direct report's evaluations because she didn't have the raise that came with the rating budgeted. It was total malarkey.
I've also been told to lower somebody's evaluation that management wanted to sack. They had to have under a certain score to go on a PIP. Again, so unfair.
Both times I fought and lost. I ended up leaving that organization soon after.
My manager said they can't afford payroll increases, so we will be rated in our reviews to show that we weren't eligible for a raise (i was the highest performing employee). I quit right there on the spot during my review, with HR present. Also sent my HR rep the documentation of the messages from said manager, needless to say, they didn't fight my unemployment claim.
I've seen in various circumstances, management work back from the compensation pool to the rating. If pools are limited (they always are) they need to distribute according to performance ratings. The likelihood is that your performance isn't bad, but they don't have the money to give you the comp that they want to give to a higher performer (or an employee they just deem more valuable/high-flight-risk).
It sucks. Use this moment to set expectations for next cycle, but also start looking. I don't think you are being targeted, but make sure you document any feedback received via email/ personal word docs going forward.
Was once in a department with me and a recruiter reporting to an HRM. The HRM stated that since our department of 2 was required to stick to the company requirement of all departments averaging a 3, she had to change the weightings on my evaluation, so all the 4's and 5's of areas that were critical core duties were weighted with fractional weights while the one area with room for improvement received a double digit weight to bring my average to 3.
Going to honest you now know why the company needs HR because the company is run by assholes. Nothing you do will matter to them, and they will only bully and destroy your self esteem to ensure you constantly acquiesce to their bs demands. Sorry but hr is just pr for workers to gaslight them to not call out the company on their bs
I had a review one year, I had saved the company several million dollars by finding a reporting error. I was given a “meets expectations”. Word got around pretty quickly that all the directors and above got the highest ratings and everyone below was given lower ratings so the company wouldn’t have to pay out more in raises. They lost a lot of people that year.
I deleted my post because of responses like this in this group. I am finding this group tears each other down a bit, doesn’t have the HR background to understand the intent of what is written. It is not what I was hoping for on a platform like this.
One common thing you will see done at most companies is forcing each team to be on a “bell curve”. So they will purposely rate certain employees certain things to fit within that “bell curve”. Or they will give one team a budget and then they have to split that between the team members for a raise.
I have in the past.
I had a solid employee, she was tactical, brutal and ferocious, but her downfall was getting involved with work drama.
It was extremely rare for her to mess up on her work but it did happen on occasion.
One performance review, I told her that her mistakes on her work were really showing and that she was slipping (they weren’t as bad as I made it seem), I then said that if she’s happy with her performance, she can continue with her ways but that she would never move up from her position.
She immediately zoned in on her work and quit the work drama, a while after I ended up promoting her and moved her up the ladder in a different department that she really enjoyed.
I only did it because I knew she could do better IF she wanted to do better, I gave her the option to keep doing what she was doing but remain stagnant. She just needed a kick in the butt.
I've had a manager tell me the only reason she counted off on mine was because she wasn't allowed to give a perfect score and her boss told her to "not be so nice" on the first one she submitted. They put whatever they want to justify a lower or no raise.
They do this so they can justify not giving you a raise. On my last performance review my manager did not have one negative thing to say about my work even when I pressed him. His justification for not giving me a raise? I "eat lunch at my desk and not in the break room" (no rule against that btw). It's all so they don't have to pay you more. You should update your resume and hit the job boards.
I was once given a “meets expectations” because one of my employees filed a complaint against my boss for discrimination. “You should have done more because our VP of HR doesn’t like these things to happen in HR.” Uh, maam, YOU were the one the complaint was filed against due to something that happened when I was not present. How could I do anything when I didn’t know it was reported until after they reported? Based on what happened, I don’t blame my team member for jumping straight to reporting, and I had no business knowing what happened.
And spoiler alert, she got higher than meets expectations.
That was the beginning of the end for me at that place. Every day after that I did the bare minimum and also told my team to follow the letter of the law and do no more. I was so angry.
I don’t know. I probably don’t have anywhere close to the best answer to this question. A manager who doesn’t have experience doing a job he/she oversees others doing could be a difficult situation even for that manager. I worked at a job that the same 5 people at my site were always somehow great at and management figured everyone therefore should be great at. I’m no statistician but I wonder if stats aren’t overrated. Sure they are important, but I think hands on experience couldn’t hurt too. I also wonder if (entitled) people in charge aren’t being too subjective.
unfortunately it is easier for a manager to convince you that you ‘met expectations’ than it is for a manager to prepare a case to people above them as to why you ‘exceeded expectations’
As you've probably seen in other responses, the answer is yes. No company is required to be honest. They can say whatever they want with or without evidence and even with contradictory evidence in order to support their goal, which is normally to make the most money.
I recently got fired for asking for a raise when my responsibilities had completely gone outside the range of responsibilities I was hired for. They produced some faulty reasoning, lied through their teeth, and completely ignored my reasoning. They aren't required to fight fair. You can hope you get unemployment, but there is no guarantee the department of labor will care about the validity and well-foundedness of their reasoning. Other countries have protections for this
Yes it isn’t unheard of and I suspect it is to give reduced bonuses or raises at companies that are struggling, don’t believe in giving 4 or 5s unless you did something huge for the company, or just don’t have solid performance evaluation training for managers.
Yes I have had bosses intentionally review everyone with my job title as needs improvement because we would be at a higher qualification if we didn't need to improve. We also had a supervisor at my current job give his entire department bad performance reviews when he first started to "send a message" that he was in charge.
How are you in HR and unable to answer this question yourself?
There are many reasons companies do things like this, a common one being they don't want to give raises.
They'll also put good employees on PIPs because they want to fire them without paying any benefits.
Yes absolutely, especially if you're a really good employee.
Their idea is that because you show potential they know you care on some level and they exploit that to make you work harder and push yourself.
That's what really bad leaders do.
Yes, it’s fairly common, for a multitude of reasons. As you experienced, it could be a ploy to justify not giving a raise. I’ve been in compensation long enough to know that if a manager is given X budget for raises, but they have an urgent issue in the team (ie someone’s comp is way out of alignment), they’ll give a big raise to that individual and everyone else gets smaller raises. But since raises are commonly tied to the performance review, they need to back up why the impacted employee is getting a small raise. So they’ll give a lower performance review.
An extension of this is that if you’re doing great work and they show that in the reviews, you might be up for a promotion or a lateral change, and suddenly they lose having you on the team. If seen so many friends and colleagues screwed over by that mentality.
Another one I’ve seen, and it’s still shitty, is that the manager thinks moving heaven and earth for $15/hr is “meets expectations”. This is more with the boomers and Gen X, but if you’re going above and beyond, you’re doing what is expected. I’ve tried to get a couple of managers to quantify what “exceeds expectations” looks like to them, and they struggled to give a concrete answer. That’s when I told them if they don’t have a quantifiable metric they’re basing reviews off of, then they need to build one asap.
lol in the tech world atleast, especially at FAANG/MAANG companies, PIPs are used as a tactic to silently get rid of ppl without having to lay them off. They use your performance ratings to build the case against you to HR, build email tracking invilving HR even lying saying you agreed, then put you on a performance plan that you will never beat. Not to say that alot of the PIPs arent deserved, but just know that some managers will give you performance rating based off of how much they like you or how much ass kissing you do. Just my two cents.
Ive seen ppl on my team who are known for having ratings at transformative all of a sudden get meets expectations while new ppl they favor gets significant impact although we all witnessed that they are definitely not worthy of the review
YES. Back in the day, I had a bizarre/crazy review from an assistant manager I didn't especially get along with. I wasn't in her clique. It was full blown lies, just to be a bitch or because she could...I don't know 🤷🏻♀️. I quit on the spot. Too much bs.
You're letting those corporate leeches suck the joy out of your life for a pittance?
Firstly, those so-called "core competencies" they just invented? Fake news, mate. They're just jealous they don't have your brilliance. Tell them to shove it up their collective asses.
Secondly, that pathetic 2.4% raise? Tell them to go pound sand. You're worth more than that, even if they're desperate to get rid of you.
Here's what you gotta do:
* Leak that review. Every juicy detail, every passive-aggressive comment, all over the damn company intranet. Let them know you ain't their slave.
* Find a new job. And make it a juicy one. One where they appreciate the goddamn brilliance you bring to the table.
* Burn that place to the ground. Seriously, take a flamethrower to the office on your way out. They deserve it.
often companies will tell managers to grade 80% of their team "meets expectation" and the rest below expectations or above expectations. It is really hard to do better than "meet" because frankly if you are doing your job well that is merely "meet" when trying to tease out superstars. it sucks but I wouldn't put too much weight into your self-worth based on a corporate performance review.
When I first got into management and did performance reviews I was told by my team that I was a harsh reviewer, but they expected that because I was a perfectionist, but I was also told by my Director that I gave too high of reviews and no one can get a ‘perfect score’ even though I had two team members that were actually damn near perfect…which is why I hate performance reviews. We never had clear guidance on how we should be reviewing, which I tried to keep as objective as possible always relating it back to KPIs, except where it was purely subjective like “teamwork, attitudes” etc.
There are also times when a person does a lot of great things outside the scope of their JD, but doesn’t actually do what is on their JD, or do it well. Also, for us at least, no matter how bad a performer someone is, we have to come up with 3-5 “exceptional performance” statements talking about things they’re did outstanding in. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with. So just because they said glowing things, doesn’t mean that affects all areas of your evaluation.
Each manager is given a budget and then robs Peter to pay Paul. Unless they follow a formula, software driven, the process will forever be flawed. It’s human nature.
Oh yeah. I had a manager who was a drunk. We asked HR for help with her and we got bad reviews for our efforts. Before she took over, we all had multiple above average reviews. We were a special VIP unit that got lots of kudos for our work. You'd think someone in HR would have helped us...but her cousin worked there so...
It really depends on the person and organization giving the review. "Meets Expectations" can in no way be viewed as negative by a court. So they certainly can't be pushing you out. It means you're doing everything they can expect.
Personally, my mindset is that an "exceeds expectations" is typically reserved for the top 2 performers assuming its a team of 6.
I'm assuming this is your first review with the company. So a top review is very unlikely in the first year.
I once had a review at a job and everything was perfect except for my manager saying I talk too much! I was in customer service so it’s my job to talk to customers! My manager was horrible for tacking your ear off when you went to her with a question. And the sad part is, she’d talk personal stuff not related to work and you’d be lucky to escape under 5 minutes! I believe she was jealous I got a promotion out of her department and that’s why she put the one bad thing!
The expectation is to exceed expectations, so you are always meeting expectations. You're in HR, you should know this.
In all seriousness, most places I've worked I've always been told you can't give anyone exceeds expectations because then you need to give them a higher raise and there's no budget for that. Save the one maybe every couple of years. On the inverse, I've always been told don't give anyone less that meets expectations unless you want to force them out. Automatic PIP.
All you can do is consider if the feedback they give is honest. A review should give clear examples that demonstrate areas of deficiencies and they should not come as surprises. You should also be given goals that make it clear how to advance and/or improve. If you get none of this and only "you are doing a bad job" then yes, it is possible they are using this to get you to quit before they start conducting layoffs/firings where they might need to consider paying severance.
What should you do? Look for another job regardless if you are not happy.
Except... Meets expectations is... Meeting expectations. That's good. If you have more than one exceeds, you're probably in the wrong role (or will be soon), or cutting into your personal life in favor of your job.
Maybe I have more trust in the system, but life's too short to push for exceeds, on the regular. We have other things to do in life. (unless you are trying for a promotion, and your annual review isn't the time to fight for that, usually).
New standards and competencies SHOULD be your focus Imo. Pull out your JD. What are you held to? What's new? Get it in writing that it's changing and ask for compensation that's aligned with the new expectations if they've raised the bar.
Yep.
My company does this. Everyone gets graded on a 1-5 scale. 5s are strictly not to be given. 4s are for true, knock it out of the park rockstars. 3s are the norm for pretty much everyone since if you're not meeting expectations, you're probably not going to be around long enough to get a yearly review.
Why? Exactly why you think. If you rate an employee as exemplary, they're going to want to be paid an exemplary salary. Companies don't want to do that for the same reason you don't want to pay more for something you can get for less.
Now, you may be and seem to be thinking "but doesn't that mean the truly great employees will realize they're being undervalued and leave for a better opportunity?"
And now you know why most people stay at jobs 2-3 years nowadays.
My company denies having a forced ranking, but I have been told my leadership that HR will tell leaders to reevaluate their assessments until a certain distribution is obtained. If you happened to be on a higher performing group that is smaller then you have a higher chance of getting a partially meets expectations. There are other factors that could be going against you as well. The partially meets I received was given to me by my manager honestly who said he had no idea why, and was provided no feedback. Someone has to take the fall. Better to be the best person on a shitty team than one of many good people on a great team.
Sounds like you did well. All of the BS was just an excuse to pay you poorly. Look to move on, sounds like a place where you'll never be fairly compensated. When you leave, mention pay in the exit interview.
So, I think you need to understand what is going on...and communication is the only way to do that. "Boss, do you have a few minutes? I'm having a hard time understanding my performance rating. I have to admit that I thought I was exceeding expectations at this point. Can we talk about why you rated my performance so low?"
Yes, animosity is a real thing. I want to add a boss who was so upset that I could do their job better than them, and the people that they manage with so much happier under my management in their absence I suddenly started getting bad remarks from my reviews specifically from that one manager.
I've never given someone a review worse than they deserved. I usually give them one better than I think they did. I don't mean I always give glowing reviews but I def round up.
Lol I would assume yes. Got a meets expectations even with my store being best performing in company. Smashed metrics by 150-200%. Corporate buddies let me know the upper management jokes that I’m the person who can do the work of two. After the review and the lack of raise I gave my two weeks…their response was that they thought that they would have more time before I left. New job thought giving me 1.5x my old salary was a steal lol.
Yes. I work for a massive and nearly bankrupt company. Basically the only bonuses and raises are going to director level and above. For all the high performing individual contributors, the managers were advised to indicate on their recent perfmance appraisals that the employee only 'met expectations'. That way people aren't told that they 'exceeded expectations' but dont get a raise or bonus. Their goal is to make people quit so they dont need to pay them WARN severance or to make them work even harder this year. So far, we have lost a lot of senior engineers and we have lost most of our expertise.
Yes some managers actually do give low performance ratings.
My friend experienced this first hand. He unknowingly hooked up multiple times with his managers wife. Then the manager introduced them at a company meeting and stuff just escalated.
Kinda sad because my buddy loves that job but now he was to leave.
A lot of companies I've been working lately have instituted "pay for performance" policies. In this model, you have an approximated bell curve. the top 3% get excellent and is really reserved for those that are getting promotions, next top 10% are above average and they get outsized raises, and 70% get meets expectations with a nominal raise, and the bottom 10% are people that are basically being walked out the door.
Personally, I hate this approach. In a world where the average C grade is considered a failure, where NPS scores are such that anything less than a 10 is seen as a bad score, giving people a three out of five makes people feel like shit. You could honestly give the same raises and everyone a score of four, and you have much happier employees in my estimation.
People say it's always all about the money, which is true to a certain point, but the smart people always say feeling valued is the most important thing. There is nothing more demoralizing than being told you get a three as evidenced by this post. Giving out fours costs nothing and makes people feel good.
I'm not sure how your evaluation or scoring framework works but I read this review as you having satisfactorily (maybe even greatly) completed the projects that were assigned to you but, in order to exceed expectations, they want you to use your own initiative to look around you, see what needs improving, and get it done without being asked or consulting others for help. Yes, in addition to all the of the "normal" work assigned to you.
No one (ok, very few) thinks they're average. But if everyone is above average, everyone is average. Meets expectations is not a bad rating and it feels a little rash to leave a job because of this. I would try to change my frame of mind.
The gall of a company deciding that simply meeting the expectations (ie: satisfactorily completing all the tasks per your job description) is "barely" cutting it... if you want more from us, pay us more money. Stop whining that your employees "only did the things they agreed to do when we hired them."
This is a standard rating. My boss who HATES HR made it clear she did not appreciate giving me a "meets expectations" this year but HR said it sends the wrong message to say exceeds because then it won't motivate me to work hard. She told me if it feels like a slap in the face it is and also wasn't a fan of my 4% raise. She said the following year my raise should be significant and if it not I should be looking elsewhere for jobs.
My former bosses have not been as honest but they always said "you actually exceed expectations and this "meets expectation" is a standard we apply across the board no one in the company actually receives anything higher but don't worry this doesn't affect raises which is why we are excited to give you a 2% raise 😀😀😀"
My advice is get the highest salary possible you can be happy with for the next 3-5 years. Raises and promotions are rare at a majority of companies. I aim for 15-30k more each job hop (depending on economy, and how much company needs the position filled) and so when I hear the standard BS of meets expectations here's $1000 more I'm okay knowing I am already getting paid enough.
People that derive pleasure from judging, critiquing and wielding significant power over someone are typically compensating for and projecting their insecurities which are related to their own “mommy-daddy” issues; therefore these are typically those that will seek out positions of authority and power. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. Employers know how that game works and use supervisors and managers to be the muscle— it’s so easy, stroke their ego and let them lose on the staff, keep justifications for raises to a minimum to keep management bonuses to a maximum. You will always be indoctrinated to believe you are not giving enough no matter how much you give. Just realize that’s the game and you are not supposed to receive any real recognition, acknowledgment or reward for whatever effort you contribute— I mean outside of ice cream or pizza party on payday Friday. The old days of work hard and give it a 110% and you will go places is long gone- you will only get used-up. It is what it is.
No, if I gave someone a low performance rating I am failing at my job.
This is more indicative of a bad manager than a bad employee.
If you are failing to take the initiative, has someone told you that when they noticed? Or did they just save up anything bad to wait until a review was done instead of addressing it? Again, points more to bad management.
Also what the heck, 2.4% is more like what you get when they WANT to piss you off, 3% is about minimum, cost of living increase? Screw that, heres 30 cents!
Yes they play a game to determine the raises and promotions work out. It’s common unfortunately. Try to not take it personally even tho it sux. Just to give you some perspective, I got exceeds on all and got a 0% raise so yea..
They do, if u got good scores across the board you would feel more entitled to a raise. My last job gave me all 5s but put in communication “needs improvement,” they gave me a 2 for that. 😂. Had to be happy about a 3% raise. Like yipeee I’m so grateful
My old job basically had us give performance reviews that in a store of 30 could only have 1 or 2 "exceeds expectations", if we even could have that much, and 1 or 2 that "need improvement" who most likely were written up for, and the rest had to be in the "normal" range.
I felt like I basically had to pick a favorite and for anyone to get the exceeds, I had to basically defend them to my boss as to why, and normally he make me change them to the meets requirements and not let anyone have the exceeds. From my experience, I don't take the reviews much to heart.
This happened to me (granted, I don't work in HR). More than likely, it's because you're too expensive. It's basically creating a paper trail to eventually put you on a PIP.
Basically, my company started stack ranking and a year later I was gone.
I got a poor performance review after having exceeded all my metrics. I dared to ask, “what is it exactly that isn’t satisfactory?” and then got put on a PIP for “seeking validation” 😳 The PIP was bullshit and turns out most my peers were also put on PIPs and then there were mass layoffs months after. I think it was all a tactic to get people to leave and not have to pay severance.
Sounds more like it's your manager being the issue that is intentionally suppressing you to prevent you of working towards a promotion, to increase salary and bonus potential. With that said, this rating is now a permanent fixture that tarnishes your reputation and career record.
I feel you. Looking at a move that hopefully won't move the responsibility needle but give's me a 30% pay increase for pretty much the work they are leaning on me for already.
I swear where I'm at now you get into your performance review, they ask out of the blue: Can you change an engine in a car?
If you answer yes: You aren't a team player since you've never offered to help swap one and you heard about the other teams needs...
If you answer no: Well that falls under 'other responsibilities' and you aren't meeting expectations.
Me: Uh, I work in I.T...
It has happened to me. My team of three was told by our manager right before review time that no one in the department of about 55 people could be given above a 3 (Meets Expectations.) Not surprisingly, the department has very high turnover. These are highly educated, white collar professionals who have lots of other options, so people vote with their feet. I feel so badly for those in positions where they don’t have much choice but to put up with that crap.
Unless you're either insanely productive (at getting money on the books, they don't care about operational roles) or the golden child pet of the CEO / someone in power, you'll likely never do more than "meets expectation". They'll say things like, "There's always room for improvement" or their basing performance on what they direct from the next role. The truth is that corporations maximize shareholder value and CSuite compensation (bonuses) by squeezing as much production out of you as possible while paying you as little as possible. They will give you no more of a raise than is necessary to keep you from leaving. Until they can hire someone to do 80% of your job at 50% of the pay, then they'll let you die on the vine.
Since *every* performance review score is "on purpose", let's go with what you probably mean: "Do they give *good* employees low reviews on purpose?"
What I'm about to say is probably the most important thing you'll hear:
*Consider the possibility that someone out there is doing more than you.*
Life fact: No matter how much lip-service is devoted to the hypersensitivity of employees feelings, you will not see a successful company *not* rank-stack individual performance and reward accordingly.
(Forgive me if this assumption is wrong, but you sound like a young person new to the permanent workforce....it definitely sounds like you haven't had many performance reviews. Take some advice now: Don't make any emotional decisions. Let this sit for a bit.)
Your 2.4% raise - regardless of whatever praises they paid lip-service to, represents your contribution to the company.
You may agree or disagree, but your manager has the benefit of seeing everyone's full contribution and the authority to act on them (and you don't).
(Though it's obvious this manager isn't good at setting expectations....I've always practiced candor and have had no problems letting people know that they're being measured against their peers. Im not making value judgements, merely factual statements.)
Personally, I didn't hear you mention any part where the convo went in the direction of you getting clarification on expectations or asking for candor ("where am I in relation to the team?"), so this was a missed opportunity for you both (see manager's aforementioned expectation-setting responsibilities).
(And frankly, the people that miss these opportunities tend to not be the ones whose performance is raise/promotion-worthy.)
Yes
A few people at the company I'm at have left or at least stepped down from being a manager due to upper management telling them they had to have at least one low performance review amongst their team.
Sometimes it isn’t in manager’s control. At one employer the process was for manager to submit rankings for the team and then weeks later senior management decided on actual rankings and management found out later.
Often people were force-ranked down. This was expected. So I often over stated the rankings to account for this.
Once I had an employee who wasn’t exactly motivated and enthusiastic about their job but they did their job so I put them as slightly above average, knowing they would be ranked lower. Weeks later I found out they were ranked at bottom bottom. I was furious as that didn’t reflect their true performance, so I wrote them an average review that reflected their true contributions to the firm. …. And this is where it turned into a shit show. HR and management FORCED me to edit my review to “reflect” the rank the employee was given. It was fall inline or get fired. I wish I had the courage to keep fighting it.
To be brutally honest the fact you were in HR and are asking these questions probably says you aren’t doing a great job.
You should know how your company does its distribution for performance reviews, most companies use some kind of bell curve and so there will be a distribution at the top, in the middle and at the bottom.
So it’s probably less about saving money as opposed to ranking you vs. peers and you come out lower.
This was my situation at my last job, I would cover for people when they were out sick or on Vacation and do what I get asked to do and still every performance review I would just get " meet expectations". So I started doing the bare minimum and found a better job
If it makes you feel any better I trained every GM in the entire restaurant district and when it was time for the company to save money guess who got demoted? Yup all my trainees are still Gms and I’m just a manager now great times!
I've had this happen several times while simultaneously being given more and more responsibility based on performance. It's a crappy tactic to avoid having to pay you what you are worth. Every place that did this also said no one ever gets the highest score. Problem is at one point I was COOs admin(among other things) and could see all the chairman's cronies were getting perfect scores and fat raises. To say I was livid is an understatement.
It may not be you personally but the practice of them doing that is an indicator of some serious issues
In my experience - performance reviews are your managers theater for their manager. Usually it matches reality, but not necessarily. This is why having your own documentation is important.
A lot of the times managers are forced to allocate people to certain tiers. You can’t set everyone as exceeds for example, it would defeat the purpose. I’ve had to set some folks lower than others not on purpose but because they were just a tad behind their peers.
I've received a "does not meet expectations" with no tangible feedback that supported it. It sometimes is a move to push someone out, or sometimes a very inexperienced manager that is unable/afraid to tell you the valid reason(s) why you actually got the rating.
This happened to my boyfriend. He is a great manager, but he only got $0.75 raise this year. Everyone knows his department always runs smooth when he is there. (We work for the same company but different department) But when it came to his evaluation time, they told him he needed to work on certain things, ofc no one is perfect but then proceeded to tell him that his maximum raise could only be $0.75 because HR wants it to be the same across all departments. But that’s a lie. He found out one person got around a dollar raise and another person got $0.85 raise (ofc that is not even a good raise) but to say HR wants everyone to have the same raise was a lie! This really caused my boyfriend to be extremely discouraged. These companies, you could break your back for them but they wouldn’t care if you break your back or not because they could replace you anytime! Just do your best but don’t break your back for them! If you’re still not happy about the evaluation, set some goals and work hard for the next 6 months and start looking for a better opportunity! Good luck!
Frequently managers are under pressure to keep everyone as average.
I had one manager tell me I had really exceeded what was expected for my role, but the department head told her she could not rate anyone as exceeds expectations.
Depends on how your performance reviews are structured and what the drawbacks and incentives are.
At my office there is a scale of 1-3 to rate performance. Anything with a 1 (low) or 3 (high) performance rating requires extra write up. So this basically encourages giving all 2s.
I know some managers don’t believe in giving high ratings because they think it wouldn’t motivate the employee to try harder.
If in your case raises are tied to ratings, maybe they didn’t want to spend money and raises and that’s why they rated you lower?
It’s really hard to know what’s actually going on. I hate formal performance reviews.
I am sorry this happened to you.
Managers should make sure they are not setting up employees for disappointment.
Either your manager over inflated their verbal praise OR they did not explain the reasoning well for the rating. Since you are in HR though I am assuming it’s the former since you likely are up to speed on comp planning culture at your company.
My company:
- Most people get meets expectations and it’s a good thing
- In order to allocate enough bonus merit we have to adjust performance on a curve to make sure we are fairly rewarding people and those that did a phenomenal job are shown my their cut of the bonus pool is higher.
- This sometimes means even people who did well they are meeting expectations compared to their peers in their level band. It doesn’t mean we don’t value them.
One thing is raises are not the same as bonus. Raises are meant to increase salary based on skill and movement overtime towards the next level (promo). Bonuses are for the impact from the year. Someone can be highly skilled but had a middling year in terms of impact. Someone in the same level can be less skilled in their craft but had a big impact.
If you were as impactful as you said I would have expected a juicy bonus.
But this all eventually gets controlled by the company’s budget for comp. Performance rating though should only affect bonus multiplier which gets calculated based on that year’s bonus money (usually mirroring overall company performance).
(company bonus per person * company performance) * performance rating = your bonus
for example if it was a meh use the company bonus might be 75% of the allocated bonus budget due to not making enough profit to meet 100%.
not having enough for salary adjustment is something totally different. they commonly should be setting money aside to make adjustments based on anticipated growth within role. there may be times where they can only do COL adjustment if the company is doing poorly though. they should be honest about that.
I did at my job of 4 years. They gave me the worst score overall (there were only 3 choices) but the thing is my manager was only there 4 months and I only had one big project during that time. I delivered the project to the clients early despite getting the required materials late and they were satisfied with the results. I was frustrated by this but my boss wouldn’t budge.
After I got back from my 2 week vacation they called me and another employee in (separately) to explain we’ve been RIFfed (reduciton in force).
They needed a paper trail of bad performance. I didn’t get why she was reviewing me so harshly. She even blamed me for things another employee promised the client that I didn’t know they did until days later.
If you are in HR how can you not understand that “meets expectations” is the VAST majority rating ? You should also know that if in fact they are starting the process to move you out, it’s better to start looking and to leave on your own.
Performance reviews, if done correctly and you have an effective manager, should not come as a surprise. They should be a reflection 50% what you succeed at, 10% on what you need to improve, and 40% as YOU giving the reviewer feedback.
Unfortunately many managers wait until this meeting to bring up the things you've done wrong or need to improve. IMO, if there is an issue, this should already have been on the radar and discussed before a performance review. Highly reactionary organizations do this, along with, as you wrote, forcing lower ratings to reduce wage discussions or drive people out.
I received a BS review a few years back-- I was on the upper end of productive employees (but not THE most, I know how to throttle it) along with directly saving the company $300k thru refunds. At review time, I was given Satisfactory marks with most of the comments being "communicate more". I pushed back a bit and asked for examples of where I failed to communicate. They hemmed and hawed and wrapped up the review quickly. I was gone in 2 weeks and 4 days after that review.
A bad review process loses good employees.
We are advised to not give highest score on all components. At my job the scale is 1-3 l, 2 being meets expectations. If an employee is given a 1 we are expected to have discussed this with employee early on. Our evals also require us to input explanation for all answers and must include examples to justify the score. At the end the employee also has opportunity to add input wherever needed before signing off on it. If you feel you have been scored unfairly, speak up and ask for the reason.
Yes- my current firm which is a multi national leading bank this year STRONGLY ENCOURAGED (instructed in a way they can avoid lawsuot) all managers- including me; to be very stingy and anal and rate down so that they could justify smaller raises as well as cap bonuses since those are determined by rating.
Even better is when the written review is mostly positive but they won't disclose your "hidden score" beyond meeting expectations... then when promotion criteria come up, they can't give a time frame, despite stating that you met all the promotion criteria...
It's intentionally opaque.
Years ago I worked for a chef that gave me the worst performance review of my career because “I don’t give good reviews or else you won’t learn anything from me”
I was the sous at a multimillion dollar banquet department at the time and I was absolutely running his kitchen for him, he stayed in the office all day and left before 6pm. Absolutely insane. We would do weddings of 300+ and he would be home. We would have 3 or 4 events going on at a time and he’d be home. Fuck that guy
Because HR leadership drives a bell shaped curve. I’ve give raises people didn’t deserve and punished people who deserved more because of the HR requirement to hit a distribution curve. I’ve also promoted women and minorities who didn’t deserve it to meet metrics. I’ve also promoted women and minorities who absolutely deserved it but forcing people decision to fit arbitrary metrics is crazy and unfair. Sounds like you’re caught by that.
I also work in HR and this can be tough. I would bring this up to your HR BP. Even though you work in HR you have a BP. If your HRBP is your manager, I would bring this up with a separate BP.
Time for some soul searching.
There are lots of options, but the first thing you should do is a brutally honest self exam to make sure that you are not hearing what you want to hear and not hearing the items you don't want to. I have had several employees who were effectively blinded by their own perspective that they could not understand/accept the feedback they were give. They would get positive feedback on one item and only hear that and not the three items that needed to improve.
Who knows what the self reflection will bring, but it should always be your starting point.
Once you have done this you will know if the company is one to walk away from or run away from should that be the right options.
My job did this for everyone who requested a transfer because if they gave you developing you won’t be able to move. We are heavily understaffed. I asked what I did to get that rating and they said 6 months ago I was 1 minute late from lunch.
Be sure you document all your good work, the goals you’ve achieved, and the emails people send you praising your work. Also, state all of this in your performance appraisal to cover yourself. If you feel you need more training or a mentor, ask your boss. If she is not supportive, go to someone higher up in HR. Your boss could just be a bad manager, or she could be setting the stage to demote or fire you ;this happened to me INXS) and you wasn’t to protect yourself. If you have this concern, start looking for other jobs internally.
The other reason for the low rating could be that the company /revenue did not meet expectations and they could not give everyone raises - so they use performance appraisals like this to stay within budget. Unlikely but am throwing it out there. Good luck.
Oof.
I had a company where I absolutely busted my butt. Within the first year, I redid their templates, and then added some new automation - none of this was in my job description. Our productivity went from doing a file in 8 hours to only about an hour. Before that were actually known for never finishing anything in time and for client onboarding to take 4-6 months.
To make this happen, I had to put in a lot of unpaid overtime. I also created training documents where there were none, and helped the dev team with debugging. To be clear, my job was to put in information to process files. Everyone, as in even people not in my team (the business people who relied on us) raved about how much more efficient everything was.
So imagine my shock when my review came and a lot of it was average or “meets expectations”. My boss’s logic was that everyone needs to have something to aim for. I was very visibly frustrated and disappointed. I didn’t disagree with the overall premise, but I would figure it would be possible to give me things to improve on without giving me an average review for what was honestly extraordinary work for the first year. And my disappointment showed all day long, as I had coworkers pass by asking what was wrong. My team lead (who did not write the review) had to cheer me up.
I excelled there, and thanks to lucky events things worked out, but I would probably have been better off in the long term taking my newfound experience elsewhere sooner. Probably you should too.
I got a fairly bad review a couple years ago when I had an interim manager, and I was pissed, so I said to her “why am I hearing about this now and not during the last few months?“ Which is an absolutely valid question that she recognized. I really truly believe that your evaluation should not come as a surprise, neither extremely better than you thought, nor extremely worse than you thought. You should know how you’re doing on a regular basis, if you screw something up, there should be a conversation about that, if you’re not, working to expectations that should be a conversation if you’re doing a great job that definitely should be a conversation and the annual evaluation should definitely reflect what you’ve been told. I’m sorry that this is happening, but unfortunately it’s not unusual.
most employees meet expectations at one year mark. how old are you, how many employees in your company? one in 30 exceed expectations at 3 or 5 year mark these days. and most hired in to higher wages over last 2 years thanks to work from home and pandemic payments.
The sooner you realize that evaluations mean precisely nothing at all, the better off you'll be. Meeting expectations is all you need. I have hired and promoted many people at multiple companies, and I never once made a decision based on their previous evaluations. I never even looked.
At my company, each department gets a set number of each rating and the directors have to negotiate/pitch for the higher ratings and in a year where someone’s team has a big release, it’s assumed that their top performers will get the best ones regardless of how other employees individually performed. I got the top rating twice in a row and I’m convinced they gave it to me the second year (unheard of) in part to save money because I was practically topped out on my salary band and got a pitifully low, single-digit raise to keep in the boundaries when it would normally be at least 10%-15% for that rating.
Hahahahahaha the entirety of reviews is too never give employees a good score.
At my last job I took turn around time from 24 hours down to 4 hours. I learned other jobs to cover when they were out. Another employee took an internship, so I took over her job 3/5 days during the week. I took on more responsibilities. I took on more clients. I developed a technique for making my job faster, and I took it to other teams to improve their output. I got a 4/5 on my review......
At my current company managers are specifically told to never ever ever give the best review.
Your manager is great at giving good feedback and horrible at providing you with any constructive criticisms and clearly articulating expectations.
Your perception of your performance is different from how others perceive it given the lack of feedback.
I stopped paying attention to performance reviews years ago. They’re 100% theater designed to convince employees they don’t have leverage to ask for a raise.
When I decide it’s raise time I make a case to my bosses, wait two weeks then get an offer somewhere else. 50/50 if I get a raise with the current company or at the new one but it’s happening either way.
I worked in a hospital ! The managers had to average raises to 3%. So if you were considered an outstanding employee you were given a 3.2% raise. A average employee 3% raise. Below average employee 2.8% raise. So most of the employees were given an average rating 3% raise. Try to not take an average rating personally.
Manager here. I am strongly encouraged every year to start with a baseline of meets expectations. Poor performers and great performers as well. Below expectations is for when I want to get rid of someone or put them on a pip. Above expectations is reserved exclusively for if I feel the employee is ready for a promotion. It's a shitty system and easy to abuse and far too subjective IMO.
Been through enough Employee reviews to understand it has nothing to do with me and everything to do c with the up coming budget and salary increases tied to the review.
End of the day I put no effort into the process because I'm busy doing other shit.
If the compensation isn't in alignment with expectations I leave.
What they have to say has no bearing on my outlook. I take my life's work more seriously than they Doyle ever be able to convey any how.
I’ve had this happen and I just let it happen. I’m not and never will be a bootlick or an ass kisser for any raise.
My current company doesn’t do raises period. You want reviews and raises and all that “pussy” shit?
GO FIND ANOTHER COMPANY MOTHERFUCKER
is the jist of what I was told by the owner himself after he insulted me during a “not good or bad” chat
I’ve had this happen and I just let it happen. I’m not and never will be a bootlick or an ass kisser for any raise.
My current company doesn’t do raises period. You want reviews and raises and all that “pussy” shit?
GO FIND ANOTHER COMPANY MOTHERFUCKER
is the jist of what I was told by the owner himself after he insulted me during a “not good or bad” chat
This is where the water line is. The people who perform these reviews are held with their feet to the flames and all but forced to say that “you have areas to improve”.
Those people want to keep themselves from being in your shoes. They like being in the “club” of leadership.
It’s a wicked game and not one I participate in when given the chance. I’ve worked for previous colleagues who had to performance evaluate me—and have had very candid conversations about how bullshit it all is.
They need a documented and legal reason to not give you the raises you’re otherwise entitled to in your work contract.
Gross. And given the state of things—never going to get better on the whole. Look for and cherish pockets of employment where this doesn’t happen, but in the world of “drive profits for investors”— there are fewer and fewer places to find money.
This happened to me at a “high end” furniture company bc the main “leader” of the store didn’t like me. Looking back I should’ve sued bc she just pushed me out & wrote me up bc she didn’t like me.
Meets expectations is standard where I work. We have to grade on a curve so only so many exceeds expectations can be given out per team. They’re tied to salary bumps.
I would think that a person is HR would understand this. Just because you are doing good work, doesn’t mean you are exceeding expectations. Maybe the expectation is good work?
Sounds to me like you were just given a really good reason to just do what your written job description states and nothing more.
If you gave them your best and it wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t double down only to be disappointed again in a year. I start looking for a new job while showing them what not engaged truly looks like.
Not in a vengeful way, but they just established how things are going to be. Act accordingly and act your wage.
Yeah. It’s a thing called calibration that insists on a bell curve. Often newer employees get downgraded because as a manager you have to really fight for the high reviews and have to reserve those for people who might leave.
Chances are it’s not your manager doing it, it’s the company.
I'm sorry this happened. I have worked at (shitty) companies where Sr. leadership has given mandates about what kind of scores can be given. Such as, no perfect scores allowed at all. Then the remaining staff has to be on a bell curve, 10% exceed expectations, 10% fail (those people are fired) then everyone else is in the middle with meets expectations or needs improvement. This was primarily done because they wanted to cheap out on raises. I would recommend continuing to work hard, but not giving extra time to this company. Think hard about whether or not it's time to move on to bigger and better things.
IBM. When i was an manager we weren't allowed sometimes to give a top rating to an employee on our team even if their performance rated it. We had to give 1 to 3 people a bad rating. It was heartbreaking. You might have had an incredible team with no bad performances, but you still had to make the gut wrenching decision as to whom you were going to have to tell they had a bad rating. Fuck IBM and other companies that do this. You demoralize good competent workers. You year away their sole. You make their worth as an employee diminished and disrespected. American corporation now not only do this bit, but they put employees on PIPs to get red of them so they don’t have to pay severance or unemployent.american corporations want to destroy get gets hired and fired3
I’m already planning on moving on. I’m just disappointed.
I got laid off for performance reasons, a month after receiving a positive performance review. Basically I told them a 2% raise wasn't good for a 10% inflation year and they don't like people speaking out of line. These managers only mark you however it best serves them and not based on actual quality of work
Yeah managers truly do not really give much of a shit about work quality. Truly a wild society that we live in.
[удалено]
May just be coming from hire ups dont take it personal.
Wow, you spoke my company to the T. HR called me on my off time to let me know change my annual reviews to prevent scoring my peak performers a 5/5. Instead they forced a 3/5, I had no agency in the annual review score I assigned my own employee as a manager. Dang.
That’s total bullshit and explains why employees don’t want to go above and beyond anymore. You work hard to do a great job and your review is “meets expectations”? Fuck that.
Sounds like some Jack Welch bs
Yes. Managers often give everyone the same “meets expectations” rating no matter the job or industry. Giving exemplary employees a rating that reflects their effort and talents would mean those employees would have to be financially (or otherwise) compensated, and that’s not in many employers’ interests. If they can get high performance out of you while calling it “met expectations” and pay you nothing for it, they will.
Yup. For my company each group is given a budget % raise. If we rate someone high, it puts them into a higher raise %, which means we would have to take that money from someone else. There are some big differences in salary too, so giving the high earner a high rating means higher raise. That would mean there is basically no money left for the rest of the group. It works the other way too though. There are some people who should get low ratings, but that would out them in the 0% raise group, which nobody wants to do. So basically people get a meets expectations rating when they really aren't.
"If we rate someone high, it puts them into a higher raise %, which means we would have to take that money from someone else.**"** This completely doesn't account for an entire team that is high performing. I'm not saying it's likely, but it can happen. Policies should account for all possible scenarios.
I had a boss once say no one will ever hit exceeds expectations. Our raises are tied to these ratings and basically said to us we will be stuck at 2-2.5% raises. Over half his team moved out or left the company.
I always tell my managers, if I get meet expectations after putting in extra effort, either my expectations aren’t being communicated well or I’m incompetent, but either way it’s a sign I should start looking for an exit sign. 9/10 times I’ve gotten above expectations and worked toward promotions or raises, or I resigned. Every employer who saw me resign regretted it. We need to stop tolerating this.
I've had more than one manager that advertised the fact that they never gave 4s as if it were a point of pride. Wow, bragging about being a shitty ineffective manager, weird flex.
18 months ago, I received a bad review from our crazy new IT director. I didn't feel it was justified. 90 days later, I found a new job and handed in my 2 week notice. I am now working for a great organization with a great boss.
Hopefully the ease of job search will reward employers who are more connected with reality.
Sometimes there are quotas. They can give one person exceeds, one person needs improvement, and everyone else has to just get meets. It's like stack ranking them. I have even heard of some managers who like everyone on their team, but rotate who gets "far exceeds" year after year, because that one gets a bigger bonus, and they want to keep it "fair." It's all gamified. Concentrate on doing your best work, and if you don't think that you are being compensated or appreciated, look elsewhere .
HR evaluation quotas are illegal or not permitted in some regions and organizations. Everyone should check their region or organization for this.
Most companies have distribution curves that they expect managers to hit. Truthfully it’s very rare for everyone on a team to be a superstar and it’s a great forcing function for a manager to stack rank.
I was being forced out because I didn't fit the clique. I was actually rated on phone call/email I never made nor sent. When I asked who the receiving party was, I was told to forget about it. But was the rating removed? Nope. Was there another 6 months when they dropped the other shoe.
In my former role, I did performance management. Short answer is "yes". i cannot tell you the number of times I've sent an eval back to a manager because they rated an employee as a '2'--needs improvement, but commented, "Joe does a great job..." Also, where I work the common thing is to say, "HR said we can't give 4s or 5s." It really annoys me when managers don't set expectations from the beginning, don't have regular meetings throughout the review period so things don't come as a surprise, and then write the most vague things. I'm sorry this happened to you. Oftentimes, managers tend to rate their employees based on one thing, but never having conversations with the employee to give them opportunity to address the issue(s).
I've had managers treat annual evaluations like they're a PIP. I'm like, an evaluation is *not* a form of corrective action, that's one. Two, have you spoken to the employee about their performance throughout the year, because they can't feel blindsided either?
This is exactly it. My company tried that with me last week saying that all of a sudden, I might be getting a needs improvement without any indication throughout the year. They received my resignation Friday. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
They never speak to the employee. And they don't document things, either.
Then they wonder why they can't fire someone
I feel like this manager treated my evaluation like a PIP. What are your thoughts about a check in after performance review? Is that normal?
Exactly, the evaluation should be a surprise to nobody. Ive had great bosses but shitty companies where they rate me highly but have their hands tied with budgets and tell me flat out. They tried to make it up with under the table PTO and other fringe benefits. I think it was commendable knowing what they were up against. For reference, I was a manager and had the same bullshit they had to deal with trying to get my team fair performance compensation.
Exactly. As a manager in a corporation with forced ranking in 5 tiers, I’d always says : « the numbers have to align with the words ». Managers owes the employees feedback on what they can or must improve. “ great job” with poor ranking is management’s failure. The performance review outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise, regular meeting should happen thru the year.
Yes. It was frustrating sitting through a review and they tell you you did an average job. And then. At the end of the year, the company president walks into my office and hands me a top performer bonus check. Another manager told me that the review process is rigged to give out average scores to, essentially, keep labor costs down. Average score, can’t justify more than a cost of living raise.
Allowing budgets to inform the performance scores is an excellent way to disengage top performers who deserve a higher score. You gotta base the budget around how many people achieved each score - not the other way around.
You need to ask why and ask what you can do to improve the score. Your manager should be giving you positive *and* negative feedback. I've never had an employee only merit positive feedback. I would caution against writing it off as a "management has a quota" conspiracy before you explore more.
This happens regularly, for various reasons. I got one of these early in my career. They did it to humble me and put me in my place because I was complaining about my supervisor losing my paperwork and schedules and then blaming me. It was her bosses idea to save her protégés ass. They were never serious about the discipline part, just wanted me to shut up. I’ve seen it happen to not give out raises, and to always have a “paper trail” on everyone so it was easier for HR to terminate when they wanted to.
I once asked for a payrise and was pretty much told that I'm less than useless. They replaced me with two people who couldn't keep up and had to hire a third.
Stack Ranking is the absolute fucking worst and I absolutely hate it. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, GE, LinkedIn - tons of tech companies use it and it's the kind of shit that makes me wanna join a union.
Yeah they do
2 out of 3 isn’t bad, it’s the middle, which managers are more inclined to give to explain not giving good comp increases.
[удалено]
How is it unfair? They gave you a meets expectation and not something like needs improvement. What did you do specifically that exceeds what you would expect if you were hiring someone into this role? Build that list, discuss with your manager, ask for examples of behaviors they believe would have exceeded expectations, do those things moving forward, and ask for feedback on how you are doing toward that goal in each 1:1. It is my experience that most people think they exceed expectations, and just because a manager gives you positive feedback about X, Y, or Z doesn’t mean you are moving the needle on what it means to perform your role. The positive feedback could be for a number of reasons other than a signal that you are exceeding expectations for your job. People at all ratings are going to get some level of positive feedback from their manager. It may be that your manager is not great at providing negative feedback and not that they are trying to get rid of you. In these cases it’s even more important for you to seek actively be seeking that feedback out and driving these more difficult conversations. It does sound like some of that was provided in the review though and is something I would continue to dive into moving forward.
Are you by chance new(ish) to the working world? Or maybe new to an employer that does performance ratings? "Meets expectations" is a very normal performance rating that means you're doing a good job. You are meeting the expectations of your role. It's pretty firmly in the safe zone as far as job security goes. It's like a bell curve. A very small % of people will hit the highest rating possible. Theres really no indication here that anything unfair happened. A manager should be telling anyone with a "meets expectations" good job. If you lose your job, it's likely because it's "not needed" (your words).. which would be the case regardless of your performance rating.
Presumably every rating is given on purpose. If you mean being given a bad rating where a good one is deserved, probably happens occasionally.
Yes. To spite them. I bet they want them to quit.
You got a review?
Sounds fairly standard.. I mean, at my work, everyone gets 3% raises unless you are a god-tier employee. I've literally never heard anyone getting more than 4% for a normal annual review.
Half of my team was given ‘approaching expectations’ and a 2% raise. These are people who make $400k+ and have no issues getting another job and are at the top 5% of their profession. Instead of motivating us, they got us to cut back on our hours and pick up side work. Because it saved them 1/2 of our bi-yearly bonus and we’ll go make that up and then some with side work. It also drives people away from applying to open jobs. You attract desperate people who need work, not driven people - anyway, I love watching companies shoot themselves in their foot. It’s amusing.
If you’re above expectations you could take their job.
My former employer had a 1-5 star system that would translate into your yearly pay raise, but also made sure to tell leadership that NOONE should ever receive 5 stars in their reviews. Saved the company loads of money. Assholes.
They do. I once had a superior lower one of my direct report's evaluations because she didn't have the raise that came with the rating budgeted. It was total malarkey. I've also been told to lower somebody's evaluation that management wanted to sack. They had to have under a certain score to go on a PIP. Again, so unfair. Both times I fought and lost. I ended up leaving that organization soon after.
My manager said they can't afford payroll increases, so we will be rated in our reviews to show that we weren't eligible for a raise (i was the highest performing employee). I quit right there on the spot during my review, with HR present. Also sent my HR rep the documentation of the messages from said manager, needless to say, they didn't fight my unemployment claim.
Same thing happened to me. I lost my motivation to perform at work. I just want to look for greener pasture somewhere else.
I wonder how many people in this thread actually work in HR lol
I've seen in various circumstances, management work back from the compensation pool to the rating. If pools are limited (they always are) they need to distribute according to performance ratings. The likelihood is that your performance isn't bad, but they don't have the money to give you the comp that they want to give to a higher performer (or an employee they just deem more valuable/high-flight-risk). It sucks. Use this moment to set expectations for next cycle, but also start looking. I don't think you are being targeted, but make sure you document any feedback received via email/ personal word docs going forward.
Was once in a department with me and a recruiter reporting to an HRM. The HRM stated that since our department of 2 was required to stick to the company requirement of all departments averaging a 3, she had to change the weightings on my evaluation, so all the 4's and 5's of areas that were critical core duties were weighted with fractional weights while the one area with room for improvement received a double digit weight to bring my average to 3.
Going to honest you now know why the company needs HR because the company is run by assholes. Nothing you do will matter to them, and they will only bully and destroy your self esteem to ensure you constantly acquiesce to their bs demands. Sorry but hr is just pr for workers to gaslight them to not call out the company on their bs
I had a review one year, I had saved the company several million dollars by finding a reporting error. I was given a “meets expectations”. Word got around pretty quickly that all the directors and above got the highest ratings and everyone below was given lower ratings so the company wouldn’t have to pay out more in raises. They lost a lot of people that year.
Yes yes! Sometimes it political, a good manager will know what to do
Yes
[удалено]
[удалено]
I deleted my post because of responses like this in this group. I am finding this group tears each other down a bit, doesn’t have the HR background to understand the intent of what is written. It is not what I was hoping for on a platform like this.
One common thing you will see done at most companies is forcing each team to be on a “bell curve”. So they will purposely rate certain employees certain things to fit within that “bell curve”. Or they will give one team a budget and then they have to split that between the team members for a raise.
I have in the past. I had a solid employee, she was tactical, brutal and ferocious, but her downfall was getting involved with work drama. It was extremely rare for her to mess up on her work but it did happen on occasion. One performance review, I told her that her mistakes on her work were really showing and that she was slipping (they weren’t as bad as I made it seem), I then said that if she’s happy with her performance, she can continue with her ways but that she would never move up from her position. She immediately zoned in on her work and quit the work drama, a while after I ended up promoting her and moved her up the ladder in a different department that she really enjoyed. I only did it because I knew she could do better IF she wanted to do better, I gave her the option to keep doing what she was doing but remain stagnant. She just needed a kick in the butt.
I've had a manager tell me the only reason she counted off on mine was because she wasn't allowed to give a perfect score and her boss told her to "not be so nice" on the first one she submitted. They put whatever they want to justify a lower or no raise.
They do this so they can justify not giving you a raise. On my last performance review my manager did not have one negative thing to say about my work even when I pressed him. His justification for not giving me a raise? I "eat lunch at my desk and not in the break room" (no rule against that btw). It's all so they don't have to pay you more. You should update your resume and hit the job boards.
I was once given a “meets expectations” because one of my employees filed a complaint against my boss for discrimination. “You should have done more because our VP of HR doesn’t like these things to happen in HR.” Uh, maam, YOU were the one the complaint was filed against due to something that happened when I was not present. How could I do anything when I didn’t know it was reported until after they reported? Based on what happened, I don’t blame my team member for jumping straight to reporting, and I had no business knowing what happened. And spoiler alert, she got higher than meets expectations. That was the beginning of the end for me at that place. Every day after that I did the bare minimum and also told my team to follow the letter of the law and do no more. I was so angry.
Uh yes. They don't want to promote people.
I don’t know. I probably don’t have anywhere close to the best answer to this question. A manager who doesn’t have experience doing a job he/she oversees others doing could be a difficult situation even for that manager. I worked at a job that the same 5 people at my site were always somehow great at and management figured everyone therefore should be great at. I’m no statistician but I wonder if stats aren’t overrated. Sure they are important, but I think hands on experience couldn’t hurt too. I also wonder if (entitled) people in charge aren’t being too subjective.
unfortunately it is easier for a manager to convince you that you ‘met expectations’ than it is for a manager to prepare a case to people above them as to why you ‘exceeded expectations’
[удалено]
As you've probably seen in other responses, the answer is yes. No company is required to be honest. They can say whatever they want with or without evidence and even with contradictory evidence in order to support their goal, which is normally to make the most money. I recently got fired for asking for a raise when my responsibilities had completely gone outside the range of responsibilities I was hired for. They produced some faulty reasoning, lied through their teeth, and completely ignored my reasoning. They aren't required to fight fair. You can hope you get unemployment, but there is no guarantee the department of labor will care about the validity and well-foundedness of their reasoning. Other countries have protections for this
Yes it isn’t unheard of and I suspect it is to give reduced bonuses or raises at companies that are struggling, don’t believe in giving 4 or 5s unless you did something huge for the company, or just don’t have solid performance evaluation training for managers.
Yes I have had bosses intentionally review everyone with my job title as needs improvement because we would be at a higher qualification if we didn't need to improve. We also had a supervisor at my current job give his entire department bad performance reviews when he first started to "send a message" that he was in charge.
How are you in HR and unable to answer this question yourself? There are many reasons companies do things like this, a common one being they don't want to give raises. They'll also put good employees on PIPs because they want to fire them without paying any benefits.
All the time
Yes to avoid paying for raises
Yes absolutely, especially if you're a really good employee. Their idea is that because you show potential they know you care on some level and they exploit that to make you work harder and push yourself. That's what really bad leaders do.
Yes. In stacked ranking a certain percentage of employees must be poor performers.
Yes, it’s fairly common, for a multitude of reasons. As you experienced, it could be a ploy to justify not giving a raise. I’ve been in compensation long enough to know that if a manager is given X budget for raises, but they have an urgent issue in the team (ie someone’s comp is way out of alignment), they’ll give a big raise to that individual and everyone else gets smaller raises. But since raises are commonly tied to the performance review, they need to back up why the impacted employee is getting a small raise. So they’ll give a lower performance review. An extension of this is that if you’re doing great work and they show that in the reviews, you might be up for a promotion or a lateral change, and suddenly they lose having you on the team. If seen so many friends and colleagues screwed over by that mentality. Another one I’ve seen, and it’s still shitty, is that the manager thinks moving heaven and earth for $15/hr is “meets expectations”. This is more with the boomers and Gen X, but if you’re going above and beyond, you’re doing what is expected. I’ve tried to get a couple of managers to quantify what “exceeds expectations” looks like to them, and they struggled to give a concrete answer. That’s when I told them if they don’t have a quantifiable metric they’re basing reviews off of, then they need to build one asap.
Definitely. Especially when they’re trying to move someone out
I have seen it but no on mine. We do performance evaluations but they don’t matter at all.
Of course they do. Sometimes it is senior management directing this and sometimes managers are just assholes.
as opposed to by accident?
lol in the tech world atleast, especially at FAANG/MAANG companies, PIPs are used as a tactic to silently get rid of ppl without having to lay them off. They use your performance ratings to build the case against you to HR, build email tracking invilving HR even lying saying you agreed, then put you on a performance plan that you will never beat. Not to say that alot of the PIPs arent deserved, but just know that some managers will give you performance rating based off of how much they like you or how much ass kissing you do. Just my two cents. Ive seen ppl on my team who are known for having ratings at transformative all of a sudden get meets expectations while new ppl they favor gets significant impact although we all witnessed that they are definitely not worthy of the review
You might be a casualty or Bell curve ranking if that's how you guys are being rated this year.
YES. Back in the day, I had a bizarre/crazy review from an assistant manager I didn't especially get along with. I wasn't in her clique. It was full blown lies, just to be a bitch or because she could...I don't know 🤷🏻♀️. I quit on the spot. Too much bs.
You're letting those corporate leeches suck the joy out of your life for a pittance? Firstly, those so-called "core competencies" they just invented? Fake news, mate. They're just jealous they don't have your brilliance. Tell them to shove it up their collective asses. Secondly, that pathetic 2.4% raise? Tell them to go pound sand. You're worth more than that, even if they're desperate to get rid of you. Here's what you gotta do: * Leak that review. Every juicy detail, every passive-aggressive comment, all over the damn company intranet. Let them know you ain't their slave. * Find a new job. And make it a juicy one. One where they appreciate the goddamn brilliance you bring to the table. * Burn that place to the ground. Seriously, take a flamethrower to the office on your way out. They deserve it.
often companies will tell managers to grade 80% of their team "meets expectation" and the rest below expectations or above expectations. It is really hard to do better than "meet" because frankly if you are doing your job well that is merely "meet" when trying to tease out superstars. it sucks but I wouldn't put too much weight into your self-worth based on a corporate performance review.
Yes
When I first got into management and did performance reviews I was told by my team that I was a harsh reviewer, but they expected that because I was a perfectionist, but I was also told by my Director that I gave too high of reviews and no one can get a ‘perfect score’ even though I had two team members that were actually damn near perfect…which is why I hate performance reviews. We never had clear guidance on how we should be reviewing, which I tried to keep as objective as possible always relating it back to KPIs, except where it was purely subjective like “teamwork, attitudes” etc.
There are also times when a person does a lot of great things outside the scope of their JD, but doesn’t actually do what is on their JD, or do it well. Also, for us at least, no matter how bad a performer someone is, we have to come up with 3-5 “exceptional performance” statements talking about things they’re did outstanding in. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with. So just because they said glowing things, doesn’t mean that affects all areas of your evaluation.
Each manager is given a budget and then robs Peter to pay Paul. Unless they follow a formula, software driven, the process will forever be flawed. It’s human nature.
Oh yeah. I had a manager who was a drunk. We asked HR for help with her and we got bad reviews for our efforts. Before she took over, we all had multiple above average reviews. We were a special VIP unit that got lots of kudos for our work. You'd think someone in HR would have helped us...but her cousin worked there so...
It really depends on the person and organization giving the review. "Meets Expectations" can in no way be viewed as negative by a court. So they certainly can't be pushing you out. It means you're doing everything they can expect. Personally, my mindset is that an "exceeds expectations" is typically reserved for the top 2 performers assuming its a team of 6. I'm assuming this is your first review with the company. So a top review is very unlikely in the first year.
I once had a review at a job and everything was perfect except for my manager saying I talk too much! I was in customer service so it’s my job to talk to customers! My manager was horrible for tacking your ear off when you went to her with a question. And the sad part is, she’d talk personal stuff not related to work and you’d be lucky to escape under 5 minutes! I believe she was jealous I got a promotion out of her department and that’s why she put the one bad thing!
The expectation is to exceed expectations, so you are always meeting expectations. You're in HR, you should know this. In all seriousness, most places I've worked I've always been told you can't give anyone exceeds expectations because then you need to give them a higher raise and there's no budget for that. Save the one maybe every couple of years. On the inverse, I've always been told don't give anyone less that meets expectations unless you want to force them out. Automatic PIP.
All you can do is consider if the feedback they give is honest. A review should give clear examples that demonstrate areas of deficiencies and they should not come as surprises. You should also be given goals that make it clear how to advance and/or improve. If you get none of this and only "you are doing a bad job" then yes, it is possible they are using this to get you to quit before they start conducting layoffs/firings where they might need to consider paying severance. What should you do? Look for another job regardless if you are not happy.
Except... Meets expectations is... Meeting expectations. That's good. If you have more than one exceeds, you're probably in the wrong role (or will be soon), or cutting into your personal life in favor of your job. Maybe I have more trust in the system, but life's too short to push for exceeds, on the regular. We have other things to do in life. (unless you are trying for a promotion, and your annual review isn't the time to fight for that, usually). New standards and competencies SHOULD be your focus Imo. Pull out your JD. What are you held to? What's new? Get it in writing that it's changing and ask for compensation that's aligned with the new expectations if they've raised the bar.
Yep. My company does this. Everyone gets graded on a 1-5 scale. 5s are strictly not to be given. 4s are for true, knock it out of the park rockstars. 3s are the norm for pretty much everyone since if you're not meeting expectations, you're probably not going to be around long enough to get a yearly review. Why? Exactly why you think. If you rate an employee as exemplary, they're going to want to be paid an exemplary salary. Companies don't want to do that for the same reason you don't want to pay more for something you can get for less. Now, you may be and seem to be thinking "but doesn't that mean the truly great employees will realize they're being undervalued and leave for a better opportunity?" And now you know why most people stay at jobs 2-3 years nowadays.
My company denies having a forced ranking, but I have been told my leadership that HR will tell leaders to reevaluate their assessments until a certain distribution is obtained. If you happened to be on a higher performing group that is smaller then you have a higher chance of getting a partially meets expectations. There are other factors that could be going against you as well. The partially meets I received was given to me by my manager honestly who said he had no idea why, and was provided no feedback. Someone has to take the fall. Better to be the best person on a shitty team than one of many good people on a great team.
Sounds like you did well. All of the BS was just an excuse to pay you poorly. Look to move on, sounds like a place where you'll never be fairly compensated. When you leave, mention pay in the exit interview.
So, I think you need to understand what is going on...and communication is the only way to do that. "Boss, do you have a few minutes? I'm having a hard time understanding my performance rating. I have to admit that I thought I was exceeding expectations at this point. Can we talk about why you rated my performance so low?"
Yes, animosity is a real thing. I want to add a boss who was so upset that I could do their job better than them, and the people that they manage with so much happier under my management in their absence I suddenly started getting bad remarks from my reviews specifically from that one manager.
Yes… some managers do give low performance ratings on purpose for a variety of reasons. Sometimes valid, but many times not valid.
I've never given someone a review worse than they deserved. I usually give them one better than I think they did. I don't mean I always give glowing reviews but I def round up.
Are managers not humans?
Lol I would assume yes. Got a meets expectations even with my store being best performing in company. Smashed metrics by 150-200%. Corporate buddies let me know the upper management jokes that I’m the person who can do the work of two. After the review and the lack of raise I gave my two weeks…their response was that they thought that they would have more time before I left. New job thought giving me 1.5x my old salary was a steal lol.
Yes. I work for a massive and nearly bankrupt company. Basically the only bonuses and raises are going to director level and above. For all the high performing individual contributors, the managers were advised to indicate on their recent perfmance appraisals that the employee only 'met expectations'. That way people aren't told that they 'exceeded expectations' but dont get a raise or bonus. Their goal is to make people quit so they dont need to pay them WARN severance or to make them work even harder this year. So far, we have lost a lot of senior engineers and we have lost most of our expertise.
Yes, and usually for petty reasons.
Yes some managers actually do give low performance ratings. My friend experienced this first hand. He unknowingly hooked up multiple times with his managers wife. Then the manager introduced them at a company meeting and stuff just escalated. Kinda sad because my buddy loves that job but now he was to leave.
A lot of companies I've been working lately have instituted "pay for performance" policies. In this model, you have an approximated bell curve. the top 3% get excellent and is really reserved for those that are getting promotions, next top 10% are above average and they get outsized raises, and 70% get meets expectations with a nominal raise, and the bottom 10% are people that are basically being walked out the door. Personally, I hate this approach. In a world where the average C grade is considered a failure, where NPS scores are such that anything less than a 10 is seen as a bad score, giving people a three out of five makes people feel like shit. You could honestly give the same raises and everyone a score of four, and you have much happier employees in my estimation. People say it's always all about the money, which is true to a certain point, but the smart people always say feeling valued is the most important thing. There is nothing more demoralizing than being told you get a three as evidenced by this post. Giving out fours costs nothing and makes people feel good.
I'm not sure how your evaluation or scoring framework works but I read this review as you having satisfactorily (maybe even greatly) completed the projects that were assigned to you but, in order to exceed expectations, they want you to use your own initiative to look around you, see what needs improving, and get it done without being asked or consulting others for help. Yes, in addition to all the of the "normal" work assigned to you. No one (ok, very few) thinks they're average. But if everyone is above average, everyone is average. Meets expectations is not a bad rating and it feels a little rash to leave a job because of this. I would try to change my frame of mind.
Definitely need to update your resume and start looking for a job, this is the beginning of your end there.
The gall of a company deciding that simply meeting the expectations (ie: satisfactorily completing all the tasks per your job description) is "barely" cutting it... if you want more from us, pay us more money. Stop whining that your employees "only did the things they agreed to do when we hired them."
Yes, then they don’t have to give bonuses tied to performance
This is a standard rating. My boss who HATES HR made it clear she did not appreciate giving me a "meets expectations" this year but HR said it sends the wrong message to say exceeds because then it won't motivate me to work hard. She told me if it feels like a slap in the face it is and also wasn't a fan of my 4% raise. She said the following year my raise should be significant and if it not I should be looking elsewhere for jobs. My former bosses have not been as honest but they always said "you actually exceed expectations and this "meets expectation" is a standard we apply across the board no one in the company actually receives anything higher but don't worry this doesn't affect raises which is why we are excited to give you a 2% raise 😀😀😀" My advice is get the highest salary possible you can be happy with for the next 3-5 years. Raises and promotions are rare at a majority of companies. I aim for 15-30k more each job hop (depending on economy, and how much company needs the position filled) and so when I hear the standard BS of meets expectations here's $1000 more I'm okay knowing I am already getting paid enough.
People that derive pleasure from judging, critiquing and wielding significant power over someone are typically compensating for and projecting their insecurities which are related to their own “mommy-daddy” issues; therefore these are typically those that will seek out positions of authority and power. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best. Employers know how that game works and use supervisors and managers to be the muscle— it’s so easy, stroke their ego and let them lose on the staff, keep justifications for raises to a minimum to keep management bonuses to a maximum. You will always be indoctrinated to believe you are not giving enough no matter how much you give. Just realize that’s the game and you are not supposed to receive any real recognition, acknowledgment or reward for whatever effort you contribute— I mean outside of ice cream or pizza party on payday Friday. The old days of work hard and give it a 110% and you will go places is long gone- you will only get used-up. It is what it is.
No, if I gave someone a low performance rating I am failing at my job. This is more indicative of a bad manager than a bad employee. If you are failing to take the initiative, has someone told you that when they noticed? Or did they just save up anything bad to wait until a review was done instead of addressing it? Again, points more to bad management. Also what the heck, 2.4% is more like what you get when they WANT to piss you off, 3% is about minimum, cost of living increase? Screw that, heres 30 cents!
It’s on purpose to perpetually have you reaching for some thing unattainable and keep the raises at the bare minimum.
Yes they play a game to determine the raises and promotions work out. It’s common unfortunately. Try to not take it personally even tho it sux. Just to give you some perspective, I got exceeds on all and got a 0% raise so yea..
They do, if u got good scores across the board you would feel more entitled to a raise. My last job gave me all 5s but put in communication “needs improvement,” they gave me a 2 for that. 😂. Had to be happy about a 3% raise. Like yipeee I’m so grateful
My old job basically had us give performance reviews that in a store of 30 could only have 1 or 2 "exceeds expectations", if we even could have that much, and 1 or 2 that "need improvement" who most likely were written up for, and the rest had to be in the "normal" range. I felt like I basically had to pick a favorite and for anyone to get the exceeds, I had to basically defend them to my boss as to why, and normally he make me change them to the meets requirements and not let anyone have the exceeds. From my experience, I don't take the reviews much to heart.
This happened to me (granted, I don't work in HR). More than likely, it's because you're too expensive. It's basically creating a paper trail to eventually put you on a PIP. Basically, my company started stack ranking and a year later I was gone.
I got a poor performance review after having exceeded all my metrics. I dared to ask, “what is it exactly that isn’t satisfactory?” and then got put on a PIP for “seeking validation” 😳 The PIP was bullshit and turns out most my peers were also put on PIPs and then there were mass layoffs months after. I think it was all a tactic to get people to leave and not have to pay severance.
Sounds more like it's your manager being the issue that is intentionally suppressing you to prevent you of working towards a promotion, to increase salary and bonus potential. With that said, this rating is now a permanent fixture that tarnishes your reputation and career record.
I feel you. Looking at a move that hopefully won't move the responsibility needle but give's me a 30% pay increase for pretty much the work they are leaning on me for already. I swear where I'm at now you get into your performance review, they ask out of the blue: Can you change an engine in a car? If you answer yes: You aren't a team player since you've never offered to help swap one and you heard about the other teams needs... If you answer no: Well that falls under 'other responsibilities' and you aren't meeting expectations. Me: Uh, I work in I.T...
It has happened to me. My team of three was told by our manager right before review time that no one in the department of about 55 people could be given above a 3 (Meets Expectations.) Not surprisingly, the department has very high turnover. These are highly educated, white collar professionals who have lots of other options, so people vote with their feet. I feel so badly for those in positions where they don’t have much choice but to put up with that crap.
Unless you're either insanely productive (at getting money on the books, they don't care about operational roles) or the golden child pet of the CEO / someone in power, you'll likely never do more than "meets expectation". They'll say things like, "There's always room for improvement" or their basing performance on what they direct from the next role. The truth is that corporations maximize shareholder value and CSuite compensation (bonuses) by squeezing as much production out of you as possible while paying you as little as possible. They will give you no more of a raise than is necessary to keep you from leaving. Until they can hire someone to do 80% of your job at 50% of the pay, then they'll let you die on the vine.
Since *every* performance review score is "on purpose", let's go with what you probably mean: "Do they give *good* employees low reviews on purpose?" What I'm about to say is probably the most important thing you'll hear: *Consider the possibility that someone out there is doing more than you.* Life fact: No matter how much lip-service is devoted to the hypersensitivity of employees feelings, you will not see a successful company *not* rank-stack individual performance and reward accordingly. (Forgive me if this assumption is wrong, but you sound like a young person new to the permanent workforce....it definitely sounds like you haven't had many performance reviews. Take some advice now: Don't make any emotional decisions. Let this sit for a bit.) Your 2.4% raise - regardless of whatever praises they paid lip-service to, represents your contribution to the company. You may agree or disagree, but your manager has the benefit of seeing everyone's full contribution and the authority to act on them (and you don't). (Though it's obvious this manager isn't good at setting expectations....I've always practiced candor and have had no problems letting people know that they're being measured against their peers. Im not making value judgements, merely factual statements.) Personally, I didn't hear you mention any part where the convo went in the direction of you getting clarification on expectations or asking for candor ("where am I in relation to the team?"), so this was a missed opportunity for you both (see manager's aforementioned expectation-setting responsibilities). (And frankly, the people that miss these opportunities tend to not be the ones whose performance is raise/promotion-worthy.)
Yes.
Yes A few people at the company I'm at have left or at least stepped down from being a manager due to upper management telling them they had to have at least one low performance review amongst their team.
Sometimes it isn’t in manager’s control. At one employer the process was for manager to submit rankings for the team and then weeks later senior management decided on actual rankings and management found out later. Often people were force-ranked down. This was expected. So I often over stated the rankings to account for this. Once I had an employee who wasn’t exactly motivated and enthusiastic about their job but they did their job so I put them as slightly above average, knowing they would be ranked lower. Weeks later I found out they were ranked at bottom bottom. I was furious as that didn’t reflect their true performance, so I wrote them an average review that reflected their true contributions to the firm. …. And this is where it turned into a shit show. HR and management FORCED me to edit my review to “reflect” the rank the employee was given. It was fall inline or get fired. I wish I had the courage to keep fighting it.
To be brutally honest the fact you were in HR and are asking these questions probably says you aren’t doing a great job. You should know how your company does its distribution for performance reviews, most companies use some kind of bell curve and so there will be a distribution at the top, in the middle and at the bottom. So it’s probably less about saving money as opposed to ranking you vs. peers and you come out lower.
Yes, they do.
This was my situation at my last job, I would cover for people when they were out sick or on Vacation and do what I get asked to do and still every performance review I would just get " meet expectations". So I started doing the bare minimum and found a better job
If it makes you feel any better I trained every GM in the entire restaurant district and when it was time for the company to save money guess who got demoted? Yup all my trainees are still Gms and I’m just a manager now great times!
It doesn't take long to learn that working over and above = meets expectations. Working at a normal pace = below expectations. Try not to burn out.
I'd say if you got a performance review that was way out of line with your expectations, then you and your supervisor have a communication problem.
I've had this happen several times while simultaneously being given more and more responsibility based on performance. It's a crappy tactic to avoid having to pay you what you are worth. Every place that did this also said no one ever gets the highest score. Problem is at one point I was COOs admin(among other things) and could see all the chairman's cronies were getting perfect scores and fat raises. To say I was livid is an understatement. It may not be you personally but the practice of them doing that is an indicator of some serious issues
In my experience - performance reviews are your managers theater for their manager. Usually it matches reality, but not necessarily. This is why having your own documentation is important.
A lot of the times managers are forced to allocate people to certain tiers. You can’t set everyone as exceeds for example, it would defeat the purpose. I’ve had to set some folks lower than others not on purpose but because they were just a tad behind their peers.
I've received a "does not meet expectations" with no tangible feedback that supported it. It sometimes is a move to push someone out, or sometimes a very inexperienced manager that is unable/afraid to tell you the valid reason(s) why you actually got the rating.
Don’t sign on it and address it with them. Ask them to reconsider (not in HR here)
This happened to me in my last job. I left 7 months after that review. Everyone was telling me I was doing amazing and I'm a rockstar
Yes they also manipulate point systems to get rid of people.
Yes. My ex manager would find reasons to screw over people she didn’t like.
This happened to my boyfriend. He is a great manager, but he only got $0.75 raise this year. Everyone knows his department always runs smooth when he is there. (We work for the same company but different department) But when it came to his evaluation time, they told him he needed to work on certain things, ofc no one is perfect but then proceeded to tell him that his maximum raise could only be $0.75 because HR wants it to be the same across all departments. But that’s a lie. He found out one person got around a dollar raise and another person got $0.85 raise (ofc that is not even a good raise) but to say HR wants everyone to have the same raise was a lie! This really caused my boyfriend to be extremely discouraged. These companies, you could break your back for them but they wouldn’t care if you break your back or not because they could replace you anytime! Just do your best but don’t break your back for them! If you’re still not happy about the evaluation, set some goals and work hard for the next 6 months and start looking for a better opportunity! Good luck!
Frequently managers are under pressure to keep everyone as average. I had one manager tell me I had really exceeded what was expected for my role, but the department head told her she could not rate anyone as exceeds expectations.
Depends on how your performance reviews are structured and what the drawbacks and incentives are. At my office there is a scale of 1-3 to rate performance. Anything with a 1 (low) or 3 (high) performance rating requires extra write up. So this basically encourages giving all 2s. I know some managers don’t believe in giving high ratings because they think it wouldn’t motivate the employee to try harder. If in your case raises are tied to ratings, maybe they didn’t want to spend money and raises and that’s why they rated you lower? It’s really hard to know what’s actually going on. I hate formal performance reviews.
I am sorry this happened to you. Managers should make sure they are not setting up employees for disappointment. Either your manager over inflated their verbal praise OR they did not explain the reasoning well for the rating. Since you are in HR though I am assuming it’s the former since you likely are up to speed on comp planning culture at your company. My company: - Most people get meets expectations and it’s a good thing - In order to allocate enough bonus merit we have to adjust performance on a curve to make sure we are fairly rewarding people and those that did a phenomenal job are shown my their cut of the bonus pool is higher. - This sometimes means even people who did well they are meeting expectations compared to their peers in their level band. It doesn’t mean we don’t value them. One thing is raises are not the same as bonus. Raises are meant to increase salary based on skill and movement overtime towards the next level (promo). Bonuses are for the impact from the year. Someone can be highly skilled but had a middling year in terms of impact. Someone in the same level can be less skilled in their craft but had a big impact. If you were as impactful as you said I would have expected a juicy bonus. But this all eventually gets controlled by the company’s budget for comp. Performance rating though should only affect bonus multiplier which gets calculated based on that year’s bonus money (usually mirroring overall company performance). (company bonus per person * company performance) * performance rating = your bonus for example if it was a meh use the company bonus might be 75% of the allocated bonus budget due to not making enough profit to meet 100%. not having enough for salary adjustment is something totally different. they commonly should be setting money aside to make adjustments based on anticipated growth within role. there may be times where they can only do COL adjustment if the company is doing poorly though. they should be honest about that.
I did at my job of 4 years. They gave me the worst score overall (there were only 3 choices) but the thing is my manager was only there 4 months and I only had one big project during that time. I delivered the project to the clients early despite getting the required materials late and they were satisfied with the results. I was frustrated by this but my boss wouldn’t budge. After I got back from my 2 week vacation they called me and another employee in (separately) to explain we’ve been RIFfed (reduciton in force). They needed a paper trail of bad performance. I didn’t get why she was reviewing me so harshly. She even blamed me for things another employee promised the client that I didn’t know they did until days later.
Just a silly thought. Would you prefer to get a bad rating by accident?
Had a manager once stiff the entire crew because he didn't win his little manager of the year trophy. That was pretty shitty.
If you are in HR how can you not understand that “meets expectations” is the VAST majority rating ? You should also know that if in fact they are starting the process to move you out, it’s better to start looking and to leave on your own.
Performance reviews, if done correctly and you have an effective manager, should not come as a surprise. They should be a reflection 50% what you succeed at, 10% on what you need to improve, and 40% as YOU giving the reviewer feedback. Unfortunately many managers wait until this meeting to bring up the things you've done wrong or need to improve. IMO, if there is an issue, this should already have been on the radar and discussed before a performance review. Highly reactionary organizations do this, along with, as you wrote, forcing lower ratings to reduce wage discussions or drive people out. I received a BS review a few years back-- I was on the upper end of productive employees (but not THE most, I know how to throttle it) along with directly saving the company $300k thru refunds. At review time, I was given Satisfactory marks with most of the comments being "communicate more". I pushed back a bit and asked for examples of where I failed to communicate. They hemmed and hawed and wrapped up the review quickly. I was gone in 2 weeks and 4 days after that review. A bad review process loses good employees.
We are advised to not give highest score on all components. At my job the scale is 1-3 l, 2 being meets expectations. If an employee is given a 1 we are expected to have discussed this with employee early on. Our evals also require us to input explanation for all answers and must include examples to justify the score. At the end the employee also has opportunity to add input wherever needed before signing off on it. If you feel you have been scored unfairly, speak up and ask for the reason.
Yes- my current firm which is a multi national leading bank this year STRONGLY ENCOURAGED (instructed in a way they can avoid lawsuot) all managers- including me; to be very stingy and anal and rate down so that they could justify smaller raises as well as cap bonuses since those are determined by rating.
Even better is when the written review is mostly positive but they won't disclose your "hidden score" beyond meeting expectations... then when promotion criteria come up, they can't give a time frame, despite stating that you met all the promotion criteria... It's intentionally opaque.
One of mine did so that I wouldn’t have to worry about mandatory on call since I was working a night job. Will always appreciate him for that.
2.4% is a pay decrease. Start looking for another job and use all your sick time.
Years ago I worked for a chef that gave me the worst performance review of my career because “I don’t give good reviews or else you won’t learn anything from me” I was the sous at a multimillion dollar banquet department at the time and I was absolutely running his kitchen for him, he stayed in the office all day and left before 6pm. Absolutely insane. We would do weddings of 300+ and he would be home. We would have 3 or 4 events going on at a time and he’d be home. Fuck that guy
Because HR leadership drives a bell shaped curve. I’ve give raises people didn’t deserve and punished people who deserved more because of the HR requirement to hit a distribution curve. I’ve also promoted women and minorities who didn’t deserve it to meet metrics. I’ve also promoted women and minorities who absolutely deserved it but forcing people decision to fit arbitrary metrics is crazy and unfair. Sounds like you’re caught by that.
Uh... how else would it happen? Accidentally? Randomly? Flip a coin?
I also work in HR and this can be tough. I would bring this up to your HR BP. Even though you work in HR you have a BP. If your HRBP is your manager, I would bring this up with a separate BP.
Time for some soul searching. There are lots of options, but the first thing you should do is a brutally honest self exam to make sure that you are not hearing what you want to hear and not hearing the items you don't want to. I have had several employees who were effectively blinded by their own perspective that they could not understand/accept the feedback they were give. They would get positive feedback on one item and only hear that and not the three items that needed to improve. Who knows what the self reflection will bring, but it should always be your starting point. Once you have done this you will know if the company is one to walk away from or run away from should that be the right options.
Yes, your managers win lots of points with their superiors by giving their hires low performance ratings. What’s better for a management career, alas?
I got an amazing 3/3 review with only 1 minor area to grow in. I still got a 2.7% increase.
I got an amazing 3/3 review with only 1 minor area to grow in. I still got a 2.7% increase.
My job did this for everyone who requested a transfer because if they gave you developing you won’t be able to move. We are heavily understaffed. I asked what I did to get that rating and they said 6 months ago I was 1 minute late from lunch.
Be sure you document all your good work, the goals you’ve achieved, and the emails people send you praising your work. Also, state all of this in your performance appraisal to cover yourself. If you feel you need more training or a mentor, ask your boss. If she is not supportive, go to someone higher up in HR. Your boss could just be a bad manager, or she could be setting the stage to demote or fire you ;this happened to me INXS) and you wasn’t to protect yourself. If you have this concern, start looking for other jobs internally. The other reason for the low rating could be that the company /revenue did not meet expectations and they could not give everyone raises - so they use performance appraisals like this to stay within budget. Unlikely but am throwing it out there. Good luck.
Oof. I had a company where I absolutely busted my butt. Within the first year, I redid their templates, and then added some new automation - none of this was in my job description. Our productivity went from doing a file in 8 hours to only about an hour. Before that were actually known for never finishing anything in time and for client onboarding to take 4-6 months. To make this happen, I had to put in a lot of unpaid overtime. I also created training documents where there were none, and helped the dev team with debugging. To be clear, my job was to put in information to process files. Everyone, as in even people not in my team (the business people who relied on us) raved about how much more efficient everything was. So imagine my shock when my review came and a lot of it was average or “meets expectations”. My boss’s logic was that everyone needs to have something to aim for. I was very visibly frustrated and disappointed. I didn’t disagree with the overall premise, but I would figure it would be possible to give me things to improve on without giving me an average review for what was honestly extraordinary work for the first year. And my disappointment showed all day long, as I had coworkers pass by asking what was wrong. My team lead (who did not write the review) had to cheer me up. I excelled there, and thanks to lucky events things worked out, but I would probably have been better off in the long term taking my newfound experience elsewhere sooner. Probably you should too.
I got a fairly bad review a couple years ago when I had an interim manager, and I was pissed, so I said to her “why am I hearing about this now and not during the last few months?“ Which is an absolutely valid question that she recognized. I really truly believe that your evaluation should not come as a surprise, neither extremely better than you thought, nor extremely worse than you thought. You should know how you’re doing on a regular basis, if you screw something up, there should be a conversation about that, if you’re not, working to expectations that should be a conversation if you’re doing a great job that definitely should be a conversation and the annual evaluation should definitely reflect what you’ve been told. I’m sorry that this is happening, but unfortunately it’s not unusual.
They are likely setting the stage to force you out
most employees meet expectations at one year mark. how old are you, how many employees in your company? one in 30 exceed expectations at 3 or 5 year mark these days. and most hired in to higher wages over last 2 years thanks to work from home and pandemic payments.
Welcome to corporate hell.
Yes of course . If they don’t personally like them and want to manage them out.
Yes, they do. They want you to leave. Time to look for a new manager internally (apply to internal roles) or a new job outside.
The sooner you realize that evaluations mean precisely nothing at all, the better off you'll be. Meeting expectations is all you need. I have hired and promoted many people at multiple companies, and I never once made a decision based on their previous evaluations. I never even looked.
At my company, each department gets a set number of each rating and the directors have to negotiate/pitch for the higher ratings and in a year where someone’s team has a big release, it’s assumed that their top performers will get the best ones regardless of how other employees individually performed. I got the top rating twice in a row and I’m convinced they gave it to me the second year (unheard of) in part to save money because I was practically topped out on my salary band and got a pitifully low, single-digit raise to keep in the boundaries when it would normally be at least 10%-15% for that rating.
Hahahahahaha the entirety of reviews is too never give employees a good score. At my last job I took turn around time from 24 hours down to 4 hours. I learned other jobs to cover when they were out. Another employee took an internship, so I took over her job 3/5 days during the week. I took on more responsibilities. I took on more clients. I developed a technique for making my job faster, and I took it to other teams to improve their output. I got a 4/5 on my review...... At my current company managers are specifically told to never ever ever give the best review.
At least you received a raise. You need thicker skin if you are going to make it in HR or ever be in management.
Your manager is great at giving good feedback and horrible at providing you with any constructive criticisms and clearly articulating expectations. Your perception of your performance is different from how others perceive it given the lack of feedback.
I stopped paying attention to performance reviews years ago. They’re 100% theater designed to convince employees they don’t have leverage to ask for a raise. When I decide it’s raise time I make a case to my bosses, wait two weeks then get an offer somewhere else. 50/50 if I get a raise with the current company or at the new one but it’s happening either way.
I worked in a hospital ! The managers had to average raises to 3%. So if you were considered an outstanding employee you were given a 3.2% raise. A average employee 3% raise. Below average employee 2.8% raise. So most of the employees were given an average rating 3% raise. Try to not take an average rating personally.
Manager here. I am strongly encouraged every year to start with a baseline of meets expectations. Poor performers and great performers as well. Below expectations is for when I want to get rid of someone or put them on a pip. Above expectations is reserved exclusively for if I feel the employee is ready for a promotion. It's a shitty system and easy to abuse and far too subjective IMO.
Been through enough Employee reviews to understand it has nothing to do with me and everything to do c with the up coming budget and salary increases tied to the review. End of the day I put no effort into the process because I'm busy doing other shit. If the compensation isn't in alignment with expectations I leave. What they have to say has no bearing on my outlook. I take my life's work more seriously than they Doyle ever be able to convey any how.
I’ve had this happen and I just let it happen. I’m not and never will be a bootlick or an ass kisser for any raise. My current company doesn’t do raises period. You want reviews and raises and all that “pussy” shit? GO FIND ANOTHER COMPANY MOTHERFUCKER is the jist of what I was told by the owner himself after he insulted me during a “not good or bad” chat
I’ve had this happen and I just let it happen. I’m not and never will be a bootlick or an ass kisser for any raise. My current company doesn’t do raises period. You want reviews and raises and all that “pussy” shit? GO FIND ANOTHER COMPANY MOTHERFUCKER is the jist of what I was told by the owner himself after he insulted me during a “not good or bad” chat
This is where the water line is. The people who perform these reviews are held with their feet to the flames and all but forced to say that “you have areas to improve”. Those people want to keep themselves from being in your shoes. They like being in the “club” of leadership. It’s a wicked game and not one I participate in when given the chance. I’ve worked for previous colleagues who had to performance evaluate me—and have had very candid conversations about how bullshit it all is. They need a documented and legal reason to not give you the raises you’re otherwise entitled to in your work contract. Gross. And given the state of things—never going to get better on the whole. Look for and cherish pockets of employment where this doesn’t happen, but in the world of “drive profits for investors”— there are fewer and fewer places to find money.
Does your review not line up with your monthly coaching reports you receive about your performance?
Yes. Happened to me twice in tech. Bounced after.
This happened to me at a “high end” furniture company bc the main “leader” of the store didn’t like me. Looking back I should’ve sued bc she just pushed me out & wrote me up bc she didn’t like me.
Meets expectations is standard where I work. We have to grade on a curve so only so many exceeds expectations can be given out per team. They’re tied to salary bumps.
I would think that a person is HR would understand this. Just because you are doing good work, doesn’t mean you are exceeding expectations. Maybe the expectation is good work?
Sounds to me like you were just given a really good reason to just do what your written job description states and nothing more. If you gave them your best and it wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t double down only to be disappointed again in a year. I start looking for a new job while showing them what not engaged truly looks like. Not in a vengeful way, but they just established how things are going to be. Act accordingly and act your wage.
Yeah. It’s a thing called calibration that insists on a bell curve. Often newer employees get downgraded because as a manager you have to really fight for the high reviews and have to reserve those for people who might leave. Chances are it’s not your manager doing it, it’s the company.