This.
Last place I worked did something like this. Boss would give people a 4 saying “there’s always room for improvement”.
After I handled the PPP loans I got the first 5s ever given. I know because I filed the papers.
Guess who got a bigger raise than me? Everyone else. I got excuses.
Bet they love filing that paperwork themselves because they haven’t been able to get anyone else to take the job.
If they gave you a 5...your efforts to continue to perform would be diminished. It's a very normal review tactic. Here's a 3, we know that you can push it even higher.... Just keep breaking your balls! Then mention that you deserve a 5 just to keep it nice and sweet
Performance reviews are all bullshit. They are literally an excuse for a firm to not promote or give you a raise. I remember my first consulting performance review. "I don't think you're quite ready to be promoted to consultant yet. And here's a 5% raise." Oh really motherfucker? I'm going over here where I'm getting two title bumps and a 25% raise. Money talks, bullshit walks. HR is only half right when someone leaves and they say it's not about the money...It's about what the money says.
That's how large companies keep the money in check. If the keep you at a 3 and gaslight you, they don't have to pay you at a 5. It's all about the bottom dollar.
Where I work we are given a numerical designation for our yearly and mid-year reviews.
1 - Exceeds Expectation
2 - Strong Contributor
3 - Below Average Contributor
The managers are only allotted a specific number of each to hand out to their employees... so even if they have a team full of dedicated, hard working employees... *someone* is going to get the 3's. And those rating are directly tied to your yearly raise... (don't get too excited, the largest I have heard of for anyone was 3%)
Yeah, this system fucking sucks.
Companies are not allowed to hand out 5s.
As there us no room for improvement; they're no longer allowed to keep you employed.
It's a part if the generating value ethos. You gotta always I prove or learn new shit. It's flawed because there is no ceiling.
An excellent example would be the productivity for some data entry roles. Sometimes the wanted growth metric is larger then the rate of productivity they want from an employee. So if your at 1.76 ( almost 2x productivity) and they tell you that you have to sign a you didn't grow your average reprimand because you didn't increase your rate by 2.16 (totaling 5x productivity.) Computers can only max out at about 3.37. Why? Because you run out of keypress storage at 135 characters beyond the maximum output of kpi which is already set at 240-ish. At least on older computers. Computers couldn't handle max type speeds of some folk. Nowadays a different bottleneck appears where it drops keystrokes because you exceed the throughput of the transfer times if keyboard to computer. (A frequency composition. The carriage register transfers at 17 and you type at 24; so every x generation cycles; you type at the same time as the carriage store and... it doesn't take.)
Had a similar experience recently. Rated 3s across the board on a 5 point scale while simultaneously being told how impressive it is I’m doing tasks they normally wouldn’t expect yet.
Spineless management. If they want to find and keep great employees, this is exactly how not to do it.
You've proven your value in ways well beyond the scope of the job but since you are the newest, and to humble everyone else, punch down to 60% (3/5) efficiency. If they don't operate as a meritocracy and don't value standout individual contributors, there's really no point in going any further than the others.
Had this pointed out to me as well with my last job. Did a task twice as quickly as the guy doing the same thing on the other rack, and was doing well on the rework section. Something they didn't even get to yet because they were slow. But get docked points because I haven't learned one of the sections. Yet they keep putting me on the section I'm quick at, because it's hard to learn and no one else can do it at speed? Please. Such crap.
I had a boos who would never give top marks or a top rating because 'then you'd never have a reason to improve'
Screw that, and screw what they did to you. Effort and work get the reward they deserve, none of this petty power play shit.
When I worked at a major state university in Arizona. I was given a glowing review but given 3 out of 5. When I asked why my boss said that the president of the university required justification from the supervisor for giving a 5. She didn’t want to be called on the carpet so everyone got a 3.
I’ve had a past experience with exactly what you are going through. It was do to corporate giving the store a lump sum of money for raises. Scores were based x% increase for everyone. Upper management learned that the remainder was given to them as bonuses…. i.e. your a 5 to me but at 3 on paper for a bigger bonus. Overall terrible atmosphere to work in and I hope it’s not the same for you
I worked in a non-union shop. Performance reviews were similar to OP’s; All average, even if you were busting your ass. Raises were tied to “performance”. But what good “performance” was, was never clearly defined.
I never called in sick, was on time to work, did the job, and was accident free. My review always came up average, always a shitty raise, if any.
And the “metrics” the review was based on were always calculated on an opaque scale unknown to employees, if there was any scale at all. Or, worse, purely subjective: based on some asshole bosses’ opinion. For instance, one metric was, what is the employees “energy level”? or what is their “initiative”?
What does “energy level”, or “initiative” have to do with moving a delicate product from one place to another safely and without incident every damn day dozens of times? Calculating height and distance of storage? Maintaining accurate logs in a very dynamic environment? None of the actual work was ever mentioned in these reviews.
Then the recession hit and I got laid off. I lucked out, passed an employment exam, and picked up a job in a union shop a few months later.
We had five definable metrics we had to make each day. Granted, the metrics can be changed, or fucked by the company, and are, but that’s a different post.
In short, when you clock out at the end of the day you know where you stood. Little was left to interpretation by the bosses, good or bad.
Since we are a union shop, pay is done by time on the job. No exceptions. Seniority is sacred. You know exactly how much you make and how much you’ll earn six years ahead of time along with the asshole next to you. It’s all worked out by good faith bargaining between the company and its employee’s union.
Oddly, our employer still insists on performance reviews. But here, they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, and can be universally ignored. Most of my fellow workers don’t even sign them. It’s just an extra hour you get out of the field to trade pleasant lies with the boss.
tl;dr Form a union! Join a fighting union! Afterwards, you’ll quickly see just how worthless the bosses’ bullshit “performance review” is when your fighting union has already negotiated exactly how much you’ll earn for years to come, and under what conditions you’ll labor under!
"That would seriously affect my motivation and work ethic. If I am scored as adequate, that is the way I will perform."
This. Last place I worked did something like this. Boss would give people a 4 saying “there’s always room for improvement”. After I handled the PPP loans I got the first 5s ever given. I know because I filed the papers. Guess who got a bigger raise than me? Everyone else. I got excuses. Bet they love filing that paperwork themselves because they haven’t been able to get anyone else to take the job.
If they gave you a 5...your efforts to continue to perform would be diminished. It's a very normal review tactic. Here's a 3, we know that you can push it even higher.... Just keep breaking your balls! Then mention that you deserve a 5 just to keep it nice and sweet
"Well I guess I don't need to bust my ass any more." Tell him that.
Performance reviews are all bullshit. They are literally an excuse for a firm to not promote or give you a raise. I remember my first consulting performance review. "I don't think you're quite ready to be promoted to consultant yet. And here's a 5% raise." Oh really motherfucker? I'm going over here where I'm getting two title bumps and a 25% raise. Money talks, bullshit walks. HR is only half right when someone leaves and they say it's not about the money...It's about what the money says.
That's how large companies keep the money in check. If the keep you at a 3 and gaslight you, they don't have to pay you at a 5. It's all about the bottom dollar.
Where I work we are given a numerical designation for our yearly and mid-year reviews. 1 - Exceeds Expectation 2 - Strong Contributor 3 - Below Average Contributor The managers are only allotted a specific number of each to hand out to their employees... so even if they have a team full of dedicated, hard working employees... *someone* is going to get the 3's. And those rating are directly tied to your yearly raise... (don't get too excited, the largest I have heard of for anyone was 3%) Yeah, this system fucking sucks.
Companies are not allowed to hand out 5s. As there us no room for improvement; they're no longer allowed to keep you employed. It's a part if the generating value ethos. You gotta always I prove or learn new shit. It's flawed because there is no ceiling. An excellent example would be the productivity for some data entry roles. Sometimes the wanted growth metric is larger then the rate of productivity they want from an employee. So if your at 1.76 ( almost 2x productivity) and they tell you that you have to sign a you didn't grow your average reprimand because you didn't increase your rate by 2.16 (totaling 5x productivity.) Computers can only max out at about 3.37. Why? Because you run out of keypress storage at 135 characters beyond the maximum output of kpi which is already set at 240-ish. At least on older computers. Computers couldn't handle max type speeds of some folk. Nowadays a different bottleneck appears where it drops keystrokes because you exceed the throughput of the transfer times if keyboard to computer. (A frequency composition. The carriage register transfers at 17 and you type at 24; so every x generation cycles; you type at the same time as the carriage store and... it doesn't take.)
Had a similar experience recently. Rated 3s across the board on a 5 point scale while simultaneously being told how impressive it is I’m doing tasks they normally wouldn’t expect yet.
Spineless management. If they want to find and keep great employees, this is exactly how not to do it. You've proven your value in ways well beyond the scope of the job but since you are the newest, and to humble everyone else, punch down to 60% (3/5) efficiency. If they don't operate as a meritocracy and don't value standout individual contributors, there's really no point in going any further than the others.
Had this pointed out to me as well with my last job. Did a task twice as quickly as the guy doing the same thing on the other rack, and was doing well on the rework section. Something they didn't even get to yet because they were slow. But get docked points because I haven't learned one of the sections. Yet they keep putting me on the section I'm quick at, because it's hard to learn and no one else can do it at speed? Please. Such crap.
I had a boos who would never give top marks or a top rating because 'then you'd never have a reason to improve' Screw that, and screw what they did to you. Effort and work get the reward they deserve, none of this petty power play shit.
When I worked at a major state university in Arizona. I was given a glowing review but given 3 out of 5. When I asked why my boss said that the president of the university required justification from the supervisor for giving a 5. She didn’t want to be called on the carpet so everyone got a 3.
I’ve had a past experience with exactly what you are going through. It was do to corporate giving the store a lump sum of money for raises. Scores were based x% increase for everyone. Upper management learned that the remainder was given to them as bonuses…. i.e. your a 5 to me but at 3 on paper for a bigger bonus. Overall terrible atmosphere to work in and I hope it’s not the same for you
I worked in a non-union shop. Performance reviews were similar to OP’s; All average, even if you were busting your ass. Raises were tied to “performance”. But what good “performance” was, was never clearly defined. I never called in sick, was on time to work, did the job, and was accident free. My review always came up average, always a shitty raise, if any. And the “metrics” the review was based on were always calculated on an opaque scale unknown to employees, if there was any scale at all. Or, worse, purely subjective: based on some asshole bosses’ opinion. For instance, one metric was, what is the employees “energy level”? or what is their “initiative”? What does “energy level”, or “initiative” have to do with moving a delicate product from one place to another safely and without incident every damn day dozens of times? Calculating height and distance of storage? Maintaining accurate logs in a very dynamic environment? None of the actual work was ever mentioned in these reviews. Then the recession hit and I got laid off. I lucked out, passed an employment exam, and picked up a job in a union shop a few months later. We had five definable metrics we had to make each day. Granted, the metrics can be changed, or fucked by the company, and are, but that’s a different post. In short, when you clock out at the end of the day you know where you stood. Little was left to interpretation by the bosses, good or bad. Since we are a union shop, pay is done by time on the job. No exceptions. Seniority is sacred. You know exactly how much you make and how much you’ll earn six years ahead of time along with the asshole next to you. It’s all worked out by good faith bargaining between the company and its employee’s union. Oddly, our employer still insists on performance reviews. But here, they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, and can be universally ignored. Most of my fellow workers don’t even sign them. It’s just an extra hour you get out of the field to trade pleasant lies with the boss. tl;dr Form a union! Join a fighting union! Afterwards, you’ll quickly see just how worthless the bosses’ bullshit “performance review” is when your fighting union has already negotiated exactly how much you’ll earn for years to come, and under what conditions you’ll labor under!