Can my Boss give me a bad review regardless of my performance?

[windingmeup]

What is the name of your state? California

This is the second of two questions. Please see my previous post for other details on my work environment.

My question is: Can my boss give me a bad review even if I performed superbly? We operate each year on a set off performance goals and are measured at the end of that year based on what we achieved towards those goals. This year my boss told me that it doesn't matter what I achieve with these goals but it depends on how I do relative to my peers who are at my pay-level. In other words he is telling me that if all of us perform exceptional and meet and exceed all our performance goals he is still going to have to give a poor review to the person who is the lowest (even though everyone may have performed exceptional).

Our company has not given raises in the last three years and has significantly increased OT requirements and performance level requirements. My bosses explanation for this is we need to do these things so we can remain cost competitive with our competition. That is understandable. However, I am unsure if he can give someone a bad review just so he can have the right number of high performers versus Low performers. The number of high performers he is allowed to give this year must be lower. My previous Boss last year was not able to give raises but still gave good reviews. That is also understandable under difficult business circumstances but I don't understand my new bosses logic on giving bad reviews to someone based on how his or her peer performed even if he/she met their own performance objectives.

As I said in my previous post, I believe he is doing this in hopes of getting them to quit or go to different positions so he can get his costs down by bringing in non-exempt computer technicians to do our work. Makes sense from a business perspective but it's very disheartening if you are the worker caught in this environment.

Please comment on my situation.

Thanks………..

 

[Beth3]

Sounds like the company may have adopted a "forced distribution" approach to performance evaluation and recommendations for raises. That can play out several ways, such a forced ranking of employees from high to low, a forced distribution on a bell curve, etc. Whether those are good management practices are debatable but they're perfectly legal.

GE, for example, used to (and may still do) a forced evaluation of all employees from top performers to low for the entire organization (many thousands of employees) and terminated the bottom 10% every year.

All these approaches work farily well when there's a "standard" distribution of performance among employees but when the employees involved are all working at various degrees of superior performance, it is a very painful process. Nonetheless, it's perfectly legal.

Your options are to hope for the best and see what happens or start a job search and see if you can find a new opportunity that suits you better.

 

[windingmeup]

Thanks for the reply. I have one more question. Am I obliged to know whom I am competing with. In our group we have a couple of different pay levels. Our boss compares those in each pay-scale. I have no idea who is in my pay scale and he has eluded question alongs those lines. Also, if he does not have to reveal who is in my pay scale, does he have to reveal what the performance results were of the other people in my pay scale. Could he just give everyone a bad review and then tell each of them they did not perform as well as the others.

Everyone in our group is talking about how this new manager we have is so uptight and "dings" them for every little mistake. I get the feeling that there are no great performers and I think he wants it that way to try and get people to move on to other positions.

I am having one of the best years since I started 9 years ago but my boss is giving me hints that he not going to give me a favorable rating due to one specific item on my performance objectives (I have many I am measured against). This particular item I was behind on earlier in the year due to reasons I though were dicressionary on how I performed my job. I have since caught up in that area and have maintained and exceeded in other areas. This would be the first yearI did not have a good review.

I think the answer is that my boss can make my work environment as miserable as possible as long as he doesn't discriminate. Does he have to reveal anything about the other performance results. Can he just give everyone a bad review in hopes they will quit so they can bring in lower salary workers?

 

[cbg]

Not only does he not have to reveal anything about other performance results, in some circumstances he could be sued for confidentiality violations if he did.

 

[Beth3]

No, they don't have to tell you who is in your same pay grade, who you are competing against, and what the performance evalualtion results are for those individuals. I can understand your frustration but looking at it from the other side, what they particularly want to avoid is getting into a pissing match with employees over the evaluations. "Joe was absent two more times than I was - how come you graded his attendance an X and gave me a Y?", which is exactly what will happen.

I don't know whether the issue is that your boss is something of a jerk or whether he's under strict orders from more senior management to supervise in this manner but neither is unlawful.