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Pointless performance reviews and stupid targets

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Something that is starting to annoy me about business today is the lack of regard these so called employers have for their employees.

I will start with the common one, you can work like canal horse all day long and not once will a manager come over to you and say 'You now deserve a pay raise well done.."  Nope, you have to approach the matter with facts and figures and Christ knows how many other hoops they need you to jump through when you go for that 'performance and salary 'review meeting'.

Which brings me on to the next thing, these annual performance reviews.  Oh lets 'tick boxes' to say how well you preformed these past few months.  Bad reviews are pointless, but they always seem to focus on the bad parts of what you have done, or not done...  If you have done every single little thing that's expected of you then apparently you haven't done well enough.  You need to give it 110%, you need to adapt to new ways of thinking, and you need to tick all the right boxes.  In fact you just need to sit there and shut up whilst listening to all this BS.

A business meeting These companies are so quick to go go with you on the good times and dance around with you when you make them tons of money!  But when you have a downer, and you feel like you're banging your head at a brick wall, call after call and no one is buying, or you no one wants to buy your services... that's when your employers turn on you.  And it's not the market you're in, it's not the fact the world is royally screwed for money at the moment, it's not the fact that people do have peaks and troughs in their career or just generally all year round...  Nope.  It's YOU apparently.  You're not trying hard enough and you're not putting in the hours. You're not giving it 110% and you're not doing blue sky thinking, building strategies and business plans, and all the other tripe you get asked to do.  It's ALL YOUR FAULT!

This is precisely why companies are failing now in a recession; they are not looking after their own.  People will have good and bad days.  Nobody will ever be 110% and no one gives a crap about business plans and blue sky thinking and prizes if you hit your targets, or dare I say it 'exceed' your targets.  Targets are another issue. What the hell is a target anyway?  If you're constantly setting KPIs and targets for people and they are constantly failing then maybe, just maybe it's not the people?  Maybe it's your stupid unrealistic targets!?

When they're done with you, they then screw you over on holiday pay, or pay in lieu, or commission or they send you a nice little threat letter saying 'If you steal our business we will take you to court'.  Lovely, so not only do companies want to squeeze your life, cause family feuds and make you generally seriously depressed.  You leave and then you can't do you next job effectively because of the same problem.  Brilliant.  Oh and whilst they're using you, they're also screwing their customers...  Welcome to 21st century business.

By: Derek


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ahforfoukessake

ahforfoukessake

right on Tony.
Thats why I tell colleagues in jobs Ive had not to work themselves into the ground being a superhero. You'll not get promoted and/or paid more if you're that good in your position if you're "irreplaceable" by the bosses' reckoning. Moving on to targets,
my mother was falling behind in her job as night shift shelf stacker(9pm-7am) as they are expected to do more at her local sainsburys as there's no customers to distract them unlike daytime staff.
She had a problem that developed along her arm(carpal tunnel syndrome) which made doing it harder and they kept having performance reviews of all her colleagues and they said "you should be unpacking x number of cases per hour" failing to take into account the stackers are not machines set to an hourly spped rate with no breaktimes or need for food/drink to keep going. Every time she got close to the number required, it would be put up so she'd still be behind by same amount.
Eventually they fired her for not keeping up. many of her co-workers thought it was out of order and many have since left since the company treated a lot of people like crap in general for varying reasons.
21/05/13 ahforfoukessake
2
MikeP

MikeP

There are some simple and effective ways of dealing with these idiotic procedures. One is to ask the person who is doing the appraisal to explain in simple language what it means. They won't be able to do so.

Another is to take a red pen and a ruler, draw two diagonal lines across each page, and write an appropriate comment between them.
31/08/11 MikeP
0
Help Me Please

Help Me Please

Excerpts from my Individual Contributor's Work Plan for the coming year, upon which I will be measured. Complete and utter garble. Do I not have a legal protection from this nonsense? It's complete and utter drivel.

Individual Contributor to have positive impact on the overall team level customer satisfaction.

Success Criteria
Customer Kudos, Satisfaction Comments shared by customers in the SatMatrix survey returns.

Demonstrate empathy by acknowledging customer’s business challenges and urgency of the issue(s), providing the customer a solution.

Individual Contributors are expected to adopt the organization’s vision working towards the achievement of goals. Individual Contributors are empowered to make the right decisions for the customers and their teams. It is important to establish and keep career goals in mind as skills are improved upon and new skills are acquired.

Consume team and organizational communications to reflect on the vision of the organization and how you can make an impact.

Seek information on new roles and opportunities for job diversity.

Sharing of “best practices” and examples of good behavior during individual and team meetings.

Employees are motivated to go the extra mile to provide exceptional services.

Employees are eager to take their training since they understand the importance to them and their future success.

Move from a silo organization to a more collaborative environment where we work together as a group to resolve issues. Our goal is to build a sense of community with our coworkers and customers to demonstrate the value of the strength of a collaborative community.

To enhance the customer experience and contribute to a seamless and collaborative organisation that works more effectively with customers.

Leverage Customer Success and Relationship Management program to identify various customer communication channels, build relationships with both internal / external partners, generate sales and licence revenue and increase success of customer.

...
31/08/11 Help Me Please
7
Just Think

Just Think

Dear God,
Please stop these obnoxious powermad fools from trying to bully people into buying stuff they don't need. And stop them abusing their employees. We all know it's pretty much slavery. Please do something because mimum wage is a joke and we aren't actually in the victorian age anymore.
Amen
25/08/11 Just Think
0
pastit

pastit

Performance reviews. a tool for targetting employees for redundancy.
In my experience, the criteria chosen for reviewing can be manipulated. God help you if you have no upper management friends.
26/03/11 pastit
4
JR

JR

Get rid of middle management, needless, incompetent and a waste of space.
02/02/11 JR
-5
Glagolitic

Glagolitic

My firm has solved this problem. They have refused to conduct salary reviews. We have had no bonus or payrise for five years now. The annual review is a something out of Alice in Wonderland. They think I am wonderful. Career and progression, forget it. Bonuses and rewards are discount vouchers to be spent in John Lewis. The more you spend from your diminished salary, the bigger discount, compensated by larger interest rate on your credit card debit balance. I am paid now 20% less in real terms than I was 10 years ago.
02/01/11 Glagolitic
2
ANABEL

ANABEL

I work in a call centre and my company literally wants blood from me. Its not enough that I consistantly hit 200 % of my daily target - often calling in up to two or three differant languages, there is pressure on my to dress like im in some £100 grand job at canary wharf despite the fact that I earn only £16 gr a yea ( which is at least £3 gr under what most jobs pay for similar kind of work). Im also under pressure to socialise and kiss behinds with the bosses in the pub after work. Im religious - so I dont do pubs or immodest dressing and I generally dont socialise a lot out of work because I have family commitments.

In every single review im told that im great, I could be a manager, I could get promotions etc - but only if I start dressing like every other office bimbo and drinking till I fall over with the bosses... this despite the fact that I have made it clear on several occaisions that doing so is against my faith .. HR doesnt give a damn and because im a convert to a faith - ive been accused of milking it - and not being geniune because im white and the faith I follow is from the east...

then on top of all that- there are no yearly pay rises, I cant get commission becuase to earn the programme I work on doesnt allow me to meet all the criteria...

then on top of all of that - im given barely 20 days holiday a year- which I have to use if I need to go to a medical appointment - and at least 3 of them are taken from me for xmas!!!

there is no pension, no sick pay, the company want a huge amount of work out of me for only the bare basics of what the law requires them to give me .. and because of the crappy economic climate I cant find a better job so im stuck for the forseable...

welcome to the life of a 21st century slave ...
26/12/10 ANABEL
8
Bagpuss

Bagpuss

I agree - I struggle with CPD. It's not that I'm lazy, I work until ten most evenings - planning, preparing resources for the next day, week etc. I take home marking, assessments and uet this dows not seem to be good enough. I have to prove yet again, that I am not a waster. So I have to think of useless and pointless targets - which then get rejected. I thought I would develop the maths resources -- you should be doing that anyway. Well then I will take charge of the corridor displays - that's a TA job etc etc etc. So in the end I just gave up and asked my boss to think of some for me - only to be told that she would not help. I felt stymied at every turn. Now dread the next round and that is in July!!!
20/12/10 Bagpuss
2
The Awful State Of Being

The Awful State Of Being

Meritocracy in life has been wholly replaced with medicocracy and sycophantocracy. The sickness began about 60 years ago. I remember it being in full operation at school, where they actually believed you could really "measure" performance.

What they found was that they could measure those who sucked up to the system, yesmen. Those with true skills and knowledge were not wanted; they were not system people. Society did not want non-compliants.

Banks and bankers have fully demonstrated the artificality of gain and economic progress. nasty people end up on luxury yachts in the Mediterranean or Caribbean.

Arrse-licking, brunoiserie, brown-nosing rules.
10/12/10 The Awful State Of Being
1
rachel

rachel

We never had appraisals at my company. I only had my last 3 as I asked for them. I filled out the forms and handed them in. I brought up alot of procedures that werent working and things that I was happy with and things that I wasnt. We had an audit this year and my boss told me that he had lost my last 3 appraisals. He rushed me into doing 3 years in one go, promtping me for answers that he felt I should give just to get it out of the way. He signed all three in different colour ink so they looked authentic. He is a bully and if this continues, I may leave because of stress and take him to a tribunal. Will the forged appraisals complicate this process? I had no option but to go along with that he wanted at the time.
10/12/10 rachel
-8
Red Panda

Red Panda

Most worker bees are subject to universal tactics such as: divide and conquer, keeping people in the dark, individual performance reviews, unobtainable goal setting, changing employment contracts, changing work roles, budget reviews, threats of staff reductions etc etc etc

The above are all techniques employed by HR departments to fck staff over. Graveyards are filled with more than their fair share of indispensable people...

On a personal level I think I might have made a mistake going to Uni...if I could only perfect living happily on a minimum wage!
26/09/10 Red Panda
5
Braveheart

Braveheart

I am not a 'Slave'..... yet and neither do I intend to become one. But when the inevitable happens.... I will be there!
27/08/10 Braveheart
1
another anon

another anon

Braveheart

"Now is the time for the 'Slaves' to collectively rise up against them before it's too late."

Ok, you first
27/08/10 another anon
4
Braveheart

Braveheart

It seems to me that these reviews are nothing diffeent to how the annual school reports used to be. They are done simply to demean and keep you in your place and not 'get any ideas about being above your station'. If the tick boxes are numbered in scores of 1 to 6, you'll never get a '6'. Your never going to be worth that! It's a dog-eat-dog world out there now, both within the workplace and out of the workplace. If you're a manager you're probably keen to make sure that no one below you threatens your own job by showing too much initiative. Can't risk losing the villa in the sun, company car, 'jolly' trips and lucrative wage perks and huge annual bonuses can you? If you're a lowly worker, you'll never have a chance to progress unless your face fits, no matter how good you are at your job and you'll have to do with the wage your given - no discussion! Worse, if you're unemployed, it doesn't matter what skills you have if you're over a certain age, there's younger people from elsewhere who'll do the job you used to do for a lot less. The rich are truly becoming much richer and the poor are becoming much poorer. The gap is widening all the time. Look at all the people who cannot pay their mortgages. What's happening to their homes? They are being repossesed by the banks and large property-buying fat cats. The wealth in the land is being taken up by the wealthiest in the world. The remainder of the world will merely become their slaves. Now is the time for the 'Slaves' to collectively rise up against them before it's too late.
27/08/10 Braveheart
-7

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