What kind of feedback does your employer give?

In My Humble Opinion
1

How transparent is the compensation review process at your place of employment? Is there a formal process? Do you have to fill out forms or ‘sell’ your accomplishments to your managers at a meeting? Also, what size company do you work for?

My employer (8000+ workers), handles raises this way: Every 6 months, your manager hands you a piece of paper with your new salary and bonus printed on it. Then he says something to the effect of “Good work, your not doing anything wrong, nothing needs improvement, keep doing it like you are doing it.” That’s it, no explanation of why you get what you get, no peer group comparison, no feedback at all, year after year. Everybody I know well enough to ask about this (about 20 people) has the exact same experience. Its as though the managers are working off of a script. Stranger still, raises fluctuate but not in any predictable way. There is definitely no correlation with individual performance (ie. hours worked, sucessful projects) or department performance (ie. profitability compared to other departments). It’s not that I’m complaining-any raise is better than none and no feedback is better than getting yelled at, but it’s frustrating and confusing to not have any idea what management wants from us because we lack any kind of discernable connection between what we do and what we get.

2

We get an average raise for the group and then our bosses can adjust people’s raises up or down as much as they want as long as they keep the average. Last year I was ahead of the average this year I was behind.

We have to fill out a form describing how we achieved out objectives for the year but I don’t know if this plays into the raises as much as how much your boss thinks of you currently.

We’ve got about 400 employees.

3

I would hate working there. No incentive to outperform.

4

120,000 employees.

Increases and bonuses are tied to performance. We have mid-year and yearly reviews, lengthy documents that require extensive peer-feedback, detailed self-evaluation, and a lot of written specifics from managers, along with having an over-all yearly score. We are told of our increases at a meeting seperate from our yearly review. (Most employees can count upon at least a 3.5% COL increase each year)

The whole year-end process takes 4 months to complete and as a manager is a total nightmare to deal with, though I try to do them really well for my team, because as an employee they are really helpful and I enjoy getting my yearly review.

The most important thing I’ve learned about getting a good review is to write a lot of very specific examples of my successes in my self-evaluation. I keep a file that I put ideas in through the year so I can remember stuff to mention when reviews come around.

5

Oh boy, I just started at this company in August and their salary and bonus review process is ridiculous!

International company of 85,000+

Basically, it’s two parts. Your Goals and Development Plan, and your previous years’ Performance Review. For instance, I fill out a 2010 Goals and Development Plan and then at the end of this year, I transfer it into a new document, which turns into my Performance Review. This is my first year going through this, so it was a struggle.

Basically, I sit down with my boss and we go through my goals for the previous year (mine were for Aug - Dec 2009). For each goal, I have to write that I did or did not reach it and why. If I did anything extra, I include it. Then both of us agree on a grade (A to D) for each goal. A is exceeded expectations, B is met expectations, C is did not meet expectations, D is totally screwed up this expectation. I got all B’s, because pretty much no one gets A’s.

So then this document is reviewed by my bosses boss, who has to agree to it. Once it’s signed off by both, it goes in for bonus/raise based upon my grades. My bonus range for my pay grade is 10% to 20% of my annual salary.

After all this is done, I then start preparing my goals for 2010. They have to meet the SMART criteria. I also have to identify my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once I do that, I make a plan on how to meet my goals for 2010, including deadlines. Once I’m done the draft, I then review it with my boss to ensure it compliments his goals. If it does, he signs off, his boss signs off, and we’re good for the year.

This literally took me a full three days to do, not including meetings with my boss to go over it all. EVERYONE has to do this every year, and they are due January 31.

6

Holy crap! After hearing these, I’d just as soon stick with the black box method.

Also, could a Mod please fix ‘employer’ in the title? I’m having trouble achieving my spelling goal. Thanks.

7

Is done.

8

At the (very large) company I work for, it’s almost exactly like ** EmAnJ** described, except that in the end everybody gets pretty much the same raise. :rolleyes:

9

Mostly ambivalent.

We have to fill out formal feedback forms for every project we work over so many hours. At mid year and end of year, some committee gathers all these forms and somehow ranks everyone according to their peers. There are about 150,000 employees in the company.

It’s really bullshit though because there is so little guidance as to what you are actually supposed to do. So how do you know if you are doing a good job?

10

I came into the “company” (government) around 18 months ago. No formalized goals set. I was to have a mandatory six month review which my boss blew off.
I was then to have my annual review, which came a month late after some reminding. I mostly met and sometimes exceeded goals which were never formally given to me to begin with. I earned a raise!
Which wasn’t going to be implemented because there was no money in the budget.
I do, however, have formal goals for next year that I worked with my boss on to clear up the vagaries and ambivilant issues.
If I do well and meet or exceed expectations I can earn another raise.
Which still won’t be implemented because there’s no money in next year’s budget either.

Incentivizes the hell out of me, it does.

11

Honestly, sometimes I would, too. We spend a lot of time and effort with all of these various metrics and measurements and statistics… which ignore the actual meat of doing the job. Oh, and we have to fill it out ourselves, too. I work in help desk, and I don’t really get any particular credit for knowing how to troubleshoot, or being able to resolve issues without dispatching techs, or following through on urgent issues so business needs are taken care of, or basically being a good tech. They’re all based on metrics that they can track off the phone, and that we can’t see, and they don’t tell us about how we’re doing because it’s all “work in progress” to get the reports to determine all of these things. Oh, and the only actual review of our work right now is done by peers once a month. Our manager is supposed to do this, but doesn’t, so all of the quality portion is determined by each other, and there’s no anonymity.

There are all kinds of stupid things we have to do for our review, like take mandatory online trainings repeatedly for software we don’t use or have access to, or submit suggestions to this innovation committee. This year, they’re adding a wellness requirement. So I have to tell my boss all about what I’m doing to improve my “wellness” (literally supposed to tell how we’re improving our diets, exercising, taking care of ourselves, etc.) and document this alll year too.

So far I don’t know how raises work, but I’m sure it’s the standard deal: no matter how much of a good job you do, you get no better than “meets expectations” in any category so that you don’t get too big of a raise. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from people working there.

Naturally, I find this whole procedure asinine. At my last job, I got very detailed and specific feedback from my awesome boss every year directly pertaining to my job. I didn’t have to jump through hoops. It was better, but the raises were generally terrible no matter what I did. I figure if you’re going to give me a shit raise, don’t make me write up a long dissertation of why I deserve a raise that covers less than 1/3 of the cost of living increases in the last year, thanks.

12

I’ve never run into any review/compo plan that wasn’t a joke. And I’ve been on both management side, employee side and as the administrator for the incentive plans.

And it’s sad because incentives are good, but the fact is, at the end of the day, money talks, and if you’re incentive/raise is tied to performance, they’ll find a way NOT to pay out any raises or bonuses if at all possible.

And as the admin of the plans, I can pretty much tell you they back work on how much they want to give you. You don’t really have as much choice as you think.

But what are you gonna do? That’s why you can always quit.

13

My employer initiated self-evaluations a couple of years ago. Management hands everyone the official “performance review” sheet (4 pages) and everyone in each department has a deadline as to when to fill it out and pass it back in. The manager then goes through each, adding his/her evaluation. You then have a meeting with him/her to discuss it. A month or two later you’re told whether or not you’re getting a raise.

I must say that, out of all the places where I’ve worked, this particular employer no doubt has the most comprehensive system. I worked for Former Employer maybe 15 years and only had a review ONCE.

14

Reviews at my office are a waste of time. Everything is already set by our supervisors before we get to talk to them, we don’t have any input beforehand. We can comment if we’d like to (like how we’re marked down on completely inaccurate information or things out of our control) but a copy of everything has already been sent to our head office, including whatever raise we get. What’s the point of talking to us at all? They’re generally months behind, also.

I will give them this: the information they do have down for our review is reasonably detailed and has guidance for things we need to improve, even if the guidance is based on the previously mentioned inaccuracies.

15

Small family owned company. Get review and bonus every 4 months. Self review and manager rubber stamps. Found out the size of bonus before actual review, so kinda of anti-climatic.

Company does not want employees to move forward, learn, etc. I’ve been told so much in my reviews. I’m being too aggressive in my free form final employee comments on the review form. Basically sit down, shut up, show up on time and your make 82.5% of your available bonus. Make waves and you’ll be blackballed.

Fun job.

16

At my company there are no reviews. There are lay-offs where all the slackers and screw ups are let go. So basically I guess its “If you get a paycheck, you are doing OK.”

17

We don’t get raises or bonuses at my company; recently they’ve even stopped having company parties, or sending the CEO in to tell us how things are going. I’ve been here 2.5 years, nobody’s ever bothered to do a performance review.

18

Put me in the same bucket, except that my company hasn’t given any raises in several years, and last year they cut salaries.

19

I dunno, I hit my 3 month probationary mark yesterday and they didn’t tell me to go home, so I assume that counts as positive feedback! :wink:

My last company was right on time with the 3 month probationary mark. They were a week or so late on my yearly review, but whatevs. Then at my two year mark, they didn’t talk to me at all and I didn’t want to rock the boat. I got the axe three weeks after that.

There are both small offices, <10 people, BTW.

20

Small-ish publically-traded company (4000 employees). In October, we all have to do self-appraisals, including management. These get passed to the manager. Undermanagement (Team Leads and Supervisors) do the appraisals for the workers, and these are passed to the Manager to double-check. At the end of the year, we’re brought in, one by one, to discuss the past year, formulate the upcoming year, and to compare how we thought about ourselves vs. how management thinks about us. And then we’re told what our raises will be - or won’t be, like last year. At least we got 5% this year, across the board, from the most energetic go-getter to Shifty McSlackerson who has a hard time getting to work on time.

We do mid-year reviews, too. We beleive that what’s said to you at the end of the year should never come as a surprise.