‘My review was completely off base’: What now?
July 7, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Terminations
For managers, performance reviews aren’t always easy — especially when the employee disagrees with the assessment. Here’s one way you can help mitigate the damage:
Let the employee write a response and stick it in the personnel file.
After a manager prepares a written review, the employee should be able to see it and make comments. Sometimes the objections are minimal and can be dealt with easily.
But in other cases, the employee will have larger disagreements. Often, the employees are just upset about getting criticism and getting a chance to vent and make their case will do the trick.
Of course, if an employee and a manager disagree completely about the employee’s performance, you should also make sure expectations are being adequately communicated, and ongoing feedback is being given.
Tags: disagreements, performance reviews, workplace conflict
July 17th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Employers need to document their grievences, and have this to prove to the employee that he or she is not working or behaving up to potential or sometimes even basic requirements. It amazes me how emplyees get really nice to me from Thanksgiving to Christmas when I am preparing end of the year reviews, and suggestions for Christmas Bonuses. It takes more than one month to turn around bad behavior incidents and careless mistakes. To solve this, I suggest re-reviewing the employee in 30 or 60 days to see if an improvemnt has been made.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Since a new manager stepped in a year ago I am no longer asked to sign off on my reviews, which have steadily been getting poorer with no explanation. I feel like I have no way to have my voice heard. And don’t say go to HR as she is the director.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:16 am
That is just it, we meet every two weeks and nothing has/had ever been said. I do know I want to sign off on all reviews from now on.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Our practice for annual reviews requires that the employee sit with the manager go over all portions of the review and comment in writing before the review to finalized. Areas in which perofrmance is in question or requires attention mandates that the manager and employee develop a performance enhancement plan. The manager is required to review the employees progress at a predetermined period that both parties agree to.
Having a written employee response to the review gives the employee a means to voice his/her comments as part of the process and something seperate from it.