X is generally ok to have around the office, did well at organising the team Christmas party and sometimes gets their work done on time.
Downsides are that all of their work needs re-writing, their (inflated) time written off in swathes, their spelling and grammar is like a 5 year old’s, they spend 3 hours at the gym every lunch time and I can’t risk putting them in front of clients.
I just think it's fooking insane to make a person dedicate hours maybe days of their life to building a case to show that they didn't fook up too badly in the last twelve months
we used to have an incredibly complex appraisal process at my last place
Eventually as I got more senior I learned that the entire appraisal process was a sham, a total waste of time. The only thing that mattered was whether they thought you were a good egg. I began to just nod and smile my way through appraisals and agree with anything they said, and say “no” when asked if I had any queries or concerns. This worked really well.
My firm makes our trainees email everybody in the team asking them to fill out some asinine form with 15 drop-down boxes on it and send it back to them to send to the supervising partner.
I invariably refuse to do this and instead go and have a few minutes with the partner and tell them what I actually think about trainee X (positive and/or printable or not). To the extent we haven’t already discussed it down the pub.
They’ve also now started doing partner 360 appraisal which is good in principle but inherent flaw being that anything specific is obviously going to identify you.
No form of appraisal process can effectively substitute for a genuinely open and approachable culture where constructive feedback is given without some formal meeting instigated by HR.
Ive seen two strong regional commercial firms that I’ve been at try to give jobs to complete and utter train wreck trainees because they haven’t got that culture right.
I wonder if feedback has ever achieved anything other than an enemy
Last bad feedback I got was from a guy so shit he ended up on the front of a redtop (which is hard in this line of work). Turns out a lot of people didn't know about that until after my feedback session.
One thing I’ve never done is throw anyone under a bus for appraisal purposes. You never know who they will become later in life and best to try not to burn bridges.
No, you just start by looking for the positives, then you look at those things which could use improvement and discuss a plan for the next six months to improve those, which allows you at the next appraisal to look honestly at whether or not those areas have actually improved.
If they did then great, if not, figure out why. Workload? My own failings as a manager? Lack of supervision? Too much supervision? Not enough effort?
It all falls into place easily enough when you set a benchmark and then create targets and stretch targets which you can both agree upon and arms your staffer to talk about the good stuff next time around, leading to more productive staff and hopefully better profits which then lead on to good pay increase and decent bonus. Keeps everyone happy.
Not doing an appraisal properly means you have no way to communicate with your team what you think of parts of their work and where they need to improve which means that their pay increases and bonii will stagnant which in turn leads to staff attrition.
It’s when your boss doesn’t care about your performance that you should be concerned, as it usually means they don’t care about you. (Or you are unknowingly being managed out).
Appraisals are a good thing and an opportunity for you to argue your case for more money without having to change firms.
Clergs if you take a job which has supervisory or management responsibilities, you owe it to the folks who report to you to actually do your job. Which means decent appraisals, otherwise you’ll just be known as a shit manager. If you want to make steps up rather than be stuck as a doc monkey then this is a key area for you to work on and, on a more selfish note, it allows you to communicate to your own manager how wonderful you are and therefore deserve better pay etc.
I’ve been lucky enough to have had some seriously good line managers in my time who have trusted me with responsibility as my career progressed, it would be a shit repayment to them to not “pay it forward” and do my best for people who reported into me.
It was bigger than the bonus I got in private practice, which was unlinked to performance, and a percentage of salary capped at the princely sum of £750.
I would completely bin annual appraisals. They only exist to give HR something to feel about and generate paranoia among certain personality types, and encourage unpleasant manipulative behaviour in others, which in the short-run might eke out a bit of extra productivity, but in the long run is detrimental to the culture of the firm.
Every manager should just schedule regular catch-ups with their reports (monthly at least( where feedback is shared openly.
I’d find it a bit weird to have an end of year conversation with someone which wasn’t supported by some form of feedback from people they worked with, tbh
If the evidence isn't contemporaneous it is just an obsequious or bitchy opinion after the fact.
There is no value in it whatsoever. And lots of potential for serious damage. I expect there will be some longitude study among hr fannies that concludes guess what guys pointless feedback processes are damaging for mental health!!!! in about ten years. To which everyone will say aye fooking duh.
Wouldn't be so bad if they didn't pretend to care about staff wellbeing.
To be honest, for anyone who has been in work for more than five years, I think it is usually completely useless. It's a rare person who makes it that far oblivious to genuine "areas for improvement" and you've just reached horrible about a person's personality territory. Plus, given the high turnover in most modern workplaces, few people in your immediate area really know you or have meaningful views about you.
If you are dealing with high achievers who want to tear up the ladder then I see no harm in playing the game but for most people it is just shitting on any positive sentiment they have for their employer.
I mean, the head of another department said I had done excellent work on something and I was pleased he was so nice about it but if he'd said I'd done a bad job he would have been wrong, frankly. Everything I do is for a reason. And I respect my staff to be making similar calls.
That’s quite a jaded view but I don’t work where you are so it may be accurate
what you’ve described though is quite a low risk situation whereby there are no pay consequences for you whatever folk say
inevitably people focus on the negatives that they get and spend nowhere near enough time on the positives they get. There’s learning in both, and sometimes very Much learning in the latter in terms of reinforcing what you are doing well,
It is a firm convicted forged in one of the most oppressive appraisal systems I think is likely ever to have existed in the UK.
If someone is underperforming they need real time support and guidance. If they are not then they need to be supported to develop themselves in whatever ways they need or reasonably want and management aside from that needs to fook off and stop ruining their lives for absolutely no reason.
As for focusing on negatives, I cannot think of a single negative thing a person can legitimately say. You are either doing the job or not. If someone is very rude or very lazy then those things can be picked up but "feedback" isn't the solution it's just clipeing.
I think you know you are part of the problem but the system has worked ok for you so you feel some psychological economics obligation to keep it moving despite the damage it causes. It's funny because I never see people like that from the human side.
I’m sorry you think that from what I’ve posted. I haven’t had the experienced you’ve had though clearly .
I have had LOADS of bad feedback, though, believe me. Some of it ludicrous but interestingly bosses have sometimes suggested that before me saying it.
loads of good feedback too (which, for me, talking about is sometimes harder)
also some really interesting “good, but could be better” stuff. Sometimes it’s little stuff that is actionable. I fiddle with things when I’m thinking - phones, Pens, laptops. I only really do it when I’m engaged in something. One year 2 of my team told me, independently, that they saw it was a sign that I was disinterested in what they said. It was actually the opposite. It’s good to know that stuff so I can either explain my quirks or stop doing them
That is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Feedback culture empowers the perceiver to bask in their subjective views. Workplaces encourage mindfulness ,(live in the now, don't dwell on the past you can't change) and even CBT (when someone behaves in a certain way it's almost certainly not about you) then appraisal season comes along and people come out with this SHIT.
If someone gave me feedback like that about someone in my team I would want to tell them to grow the fook up and get over themselves (and consider the possibility that the "fidgeter" has a medical condition like ADHD on their way) but probably would feel disempowered from doing so because of the idiotic stasi situation engendered by Feedback.
And who is qualified to comment on how any given person can improve anyway? People with more experience perhaps but generally speaking those at the top would do well to consider how the environment they have created has caused people to behave, rather than criticising them for Failing.
You make the people's lives worse with your toxic competitiveness and grids and if you work for w**koBank and are handing out a million pounds to the brassest necked bastard in the room then fine but otherwise you're just mugging off some people who just want to pay their fooking mortgage in the least undignified way possible.
I adore it when you’re in these moods tbh, reminds me why I stopped bothering with actual work in the first place.
Strongly suggest everyone works out how much they need to have in the bank/passive earnings or whatever and just stop there.
Endless accumulation of wealth for its own sake is absolutely pointless. So I suppose the question is why do you still work clergies? Given that you hate it so much and all.
The worst thing is in our bit, HR don't even fooking touch it. A total binworthy waste of time. I do feel so strongly about this (in case you couldn't tell) I am not sure what to do with the passion.
My advice would be to divert it completely into something else and proceed blandly with an empty smile through the entire appraisal process, as both receiver and, if applicable, giver of feedback.
answer - most people are in the middle of the road and why does reminding them every year of this fact improve their lives in ANY WAY BECAUSE THERE ARE NEARLY 8 BILLION OF US AND NONE OF US ARE THAT GOOD.
Inhouse so yes, we use feedback from our clients for appraisals. I ask the feedback from the people my team work with. Throughout the year on informal basis and at the end of the year with a somewhat formal process. INhousers generally appreciate the feedback. As manager I use it more to calibrate my own thoughts.
I just don't believe people appreciate the feedback. What use is it? You're not stupid or just in the door, the things you do are for a reason.
Unless it's plugged into promotion so knowing that the boss hates the way you say solution could be helpful. Otherwise it's just being forced to listen to someone's opinions.
Proper, honest feedback should be a constant process and any decent manager will make sure that everyone knows of any real issues as and when they are an issue. This is good.
Each year making people get feedback from peers and customers for a formal HR box ticking bullshit process is a wast of everyone's time and is an excuse for poor lazy mangers not to bother for the rest of the year.
That said there is a place for proper anonomous 360 annual appraisals for senior people.
They say you may only have appraisals once a year, but you should prepare for them every day.
I had one where after a chat around the place my boss said nobody has much negative to say about you except that you should probably buy a couple of new suits.
I arranged for some specific training for managers that was flagged as an area they wanted to develop. This was of more value to them than just a pay rise. This has been followed up by specific training for some to lead an inhouse support and training function.
I set up a regular meeting to discuss a specific thing that people wanted to know more about and have more feedback into.
I was given a low score in one area of personal performance so I made sure that I demonstrated that I was working on that and that I appreciated their honest feedback.
But I also would not apply this to more junior people as I am sure it woudl be used to pick holes and express petty grievances.
that's not feedback!!!!!!!! that's them asking for something reasonable and you not being a dick about it
wait, ok, para 3 was feedback but fook people they have to make allowances for individualism (unless you were making really gross jokes or something equally obvious)
feedback culture is like dragging us all back to the playground
My point is this - if done properly it is very useful.
If done badly (like most law firms do) its really negative,
Kim Scott's model is helpful to me to see the four main ways people manage and give feedback: -
Obnoxious Aggression: A boss who will challenge and criticize but does not genuinely care about the employees or the outcomes. Praise feels insincere and criticism isn’t delivered respectfully or kindly.
Ruinous Empathy: A boss who genuinely cares but does not challenge their employees to improve. This person offers vague but sincere “surface level” praise and either offers no criticism or sugar coated and unclear (read useless) criticism.
Manipulative Insincerity: A boss who neither cares nor challenges. Offers non-specific praise that comes across as fake and offers criticism that is neither constructive nor kind.
Radical Candor: This is the goal! A healthy mix of genuine praise and constructive criticism that is delivered kindly and respectfully.
can I ask a question tho? do you genuinely believe "perpetual improvement" is desirable? do you think a mental state of dissatisfaction with oneself is good? do you think that, maybe, most people are as good as they will ever be and you are just making them hate you with nonsense?
I am an expert and so are my staff. I work on expert advice. If something I do doesn't fit in to the system adequately (clergs omg there's a budget tomorrow and you were late and we might get fooked by the forestalling u moron) then I need to know. I do not need to know if Ricardo in the cashroom thinks I didn't use enough thank yous in my email.
Feedback on style or personal substance is not just useless, it is damaging. To relationships at work. To an individual's self-esteem. To staff turnover (it's an incentive to leave before the bullshit cycle turns over once again).
moreover, most workplaces do not really encourage internal advancement. you tend to have to leave (unless you are on one of those Superleaders Of Tomorrow programmes in which case you made your bed from the prickles of feedback and can lie in it until you get septicaemia). so why the pressure on IMPROVEMENT all the time.
My honest belief is that I won't improve any from where I am now (and I think that is fine). I can learn new things and apply new techniques. But technical stuff is generally excluded from EYR. So WHAT'S THE fookING POINT.
also, appraisals assume that there is always meaningful improvement to be had
how does a 54 year old lawyer who has been in practice for 30 years, keeps up with CPD, does all his/her work on time and with appropriate admin and is generally good craic in he office improve?
The idea that you must advance or leave, which exists in may places is really damaging. Some of the very best employees have found their place and are really happy there and do a great job. Those people are gold and should be really valued. They do a good job, are reliable and don't need much management time.
That said everyone can be better at how they do stuff. No is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
wibble - no there fooking isn't room for improvement!
also, most people who think there is have no idea of the subjectivity of what they are saying
for example, I have had three bosses this year. If one didn't want to be bogged down with everything I am working on but another wanted to know everything (why am I keeping her in the dark!) and the third didn't really know, WHAT FEEDBACK SHOULD I USE/
That is a valid thing to be happy with and to say to your employer. I am happy with things exactly as they are and I don't think I can improve at all. You are wrong, no one is perfect, but its a valid position to hold.
For example - you seem very stressed and unhappy with many aspects of your working life. There are things that you could do that might help with that.
I think while in theory yes there's always "room for improvement", in reality, in some circumstances (not all), the person is never going to change because it is just part of his or her MO/personality and it is part of the package that we have to take or leave as a whole. I have a junior with whom I have worked for almost 10 years and I kept asking her to gauge the context of a piece of email correspondence and try to keep it "punchier" if warranted, as opposed to every email starting off with a two-paragraph summary of the background with defined terms. But maybe because of some ingrained self-preservation/CYA mentality, she is just not going to change and I have come to accept that.
What do you MEAN no one is perfect? there is no such thing as perfect because PERFECT IS A COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE CONCEPT. For example, I think everyone who believes in feedback culture should be sacked from management positions and investigated for harassment. Not everyone agrees. Lucky for you.
Your second paragraph is precisely precisely the font of the problem. If I am unhappy with my work, I could do something about it. What about the employer and management structure who create the environment? They could all sit around and wonder why everyone wants to leave and they have had to block four lateral transfers this year. But they won't. What could WE do to become better.
There is nothing I could do better. That is not the same as saying I couldn't BE better. But I cannot change because I am me. Just as you cannot become a Hollywood film star. I don't want the agonies of the mediocre yet ambitious thrust upon me, thanks.
Another split is that there are people (sounds like Tricky is like this from her post above) who are very comfortable with needing a performing team and if someone isn't performing or doesn't fit they are shown the door and others who are squeamish about this and want everyone to be ok even if the team suffers as a whole.
i'd say it stems from whether you enjoyed competitive sports as a child or something
i always found the concept of 'competition' ludicrous so I suffer from that. Luckily I'm very avaricious which compensates somewhat.
Oh yes if there was a cash incentive I would understand it to be the phoney process that the employer needs to go through to pretend that it has Identified Excellence.
My appraisals fook me off no end. I get nothing but outrageously good feedback that even I couldn't make up if i tried and yet it makes no difference to anything.
I know I sound like someone sitting on twenty "she just rofs and tells us to fook off if we get too close to try to ask her to do something" emails but honestly I am not
I am fine in that nobody's perfect but perfect would be wasted here way - got some nice feedback from a few folk. But what good will it do?fook. All.
Ps I have a Clerg type person that I manage. We agreed not to bother with annual appraisals for them as it wasn't a good use of anyone's time. They do their job well and so I leave them alone.
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feedback from third parties i mean
randoms in the orhanisation
"dear blah please could i have some feedback on nards"
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I used to make them get a response from someone from every job family. They loved it really, I’m sure.
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No. Unless its properly nonnmous its an utter waste of everyone's time.
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My boss used to make me and it was light work because everyone loved me so i preferred it
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X is generally ok to have around the office, did well at organising the team Christmas party and sometimes gets their work done on time.
Downsides are that all of their work needs re-writing, their (inflated) time written off in swathes, their spelling and grammar is like a 5 year old’s, they spend 3 hours at the gym every lunch time and I can’t risk putting them in front of clients.
Otherwise fine.
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See thats where i lucked out, those aunts were part of my team so everyone wanted to give me good feedback and them bad
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I have just refused to either get feedback For myself or make my team do it
Because it's nonsense
Stressful nonsense
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Never found it a problem personally - asking or giving.
Which is lucky as it is mandatory in these parts.
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Do you work for DWP or something? Is the kind of shit they pull.
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I just think it's fooking insane to make a person dedicate hours maybe days of their life to building a case to show that they didn't fook up too badly in the last twelve months
Particularly when there's no bonus either way
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Ah, well there’s money riding on it where I am.
And after all it is just a minor administrative task - no biggie.
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Yeah same as at my old firm, pay increase and some of the bonii were directly linked to the score you got at your appraisal.
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we used to have an incredibly complex appraisal process at my last place
Eventually as I got more senior I learned that the entire appraisal process was a sham, a total waste of time. The only thing that mattered was whether they thought you were a good egg. I began to just nod and smile my way through appraisals and agree with anything they said, and say “no” when asked if I had any queries or concerns. This worked really well.
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That feedback got me a bonus in my last place, Clergs.
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yeah I remember all the swimming pools I bought with those bonuses
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My firm makes our trainees email everybody in the team asking them to fill out some asinine form with 15 drop-down boxes on it and send it back to them to send to the supervising partner.
I invariably refuse to do this and instead go and have a few minutes with the partner and tell them what I actually think about trainee X (positive and/or printable or not). To the extent we haven’t already discussed it down the pub.
They’ve also now started doing partner 360 appraisal which is good in principle but inherent flaw being that anything specific is obviously going to identify you.
No form of appraisal process can effectively substitute for a genuinely open and approachable culture where constructive feedback is given without some formal meeting instigated by HR.
Ive seen two strong regional commercial firms that I’ve been at try to give jobs to complete and utter train wreck trainees because they haven’t got that culture right.
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I wonder if feedback has ever achieved anything other than an enemy
Last bad feedback I got was from a guy so shit he ended up on the front of a redtop (which is hard in this line of work). Turns out a lot of people didn't know about that until after my feedback session.
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One thing I’ve never done is throw anyone under a bus for appraisal purposes. You never know who they will become later in life and best to try not to burn bridges.
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Ofc so the whole process becomes an exercise in lies plus psychos.
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No, you just start by looking for the positives, then you look at those things which could use improvement and discuss a plan for the next six months to improve those, which allows you at the next appraisal to look honestly at whether or not those areas have actually improved.
If they did then great, if not, figure out why. Workload? My own failings as a manager? Lack of supervision? Too much supervision? Not enough effort?
It all falls into place easily enough when you set a benchmark and then create targets and stretch targets which you can both agree upon and arms your staffer to talk about the good stuff next time around, leading to more productive staff and hopefully better profits which then lead on to good pay increase and decent bonus. Keeps everyone happy.
Not doing an appraisal properly means you have no way to communicate with your team what you think of parts of their work and where they need to improve which means that their pay increases and bonii will stagnant which in turn leads to staff attrition.
It’s when your boss doesn’t care about your performance that you should be concerned, as it usually means they don’t care about you. (Or you are unknowingly being managed out).
Appraisals are a good thing and an opportunity for you to argue your case for more money without having to change firms.
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Yeah no offence but
Yknow
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Clergs if you take a job which has supervisory or management responsibilities, you owe it to the folks who report to you to actually do your job. Which means decent appraisals, otherwise you’ll just be known as a shit manager. If you want to make steps up rather than be stuck as a doc monkey then this is a key area for you to work on and, on a more selfish note, it allows you to communicate to your own manager how wonderful you are and therefore deserve better pay etc.
I’ve been lucky enough to have had some seriously good line managers in my time who have trusted me with responsibility as my career progressed, it would be a shit repayment to them to not “pay it forward” and do my best for people who reported into me.
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It was bigger than the bonus I got in private practice, which was unlinked to performance, and a percentage of salary capped at the princely sum of £750.
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One of those “don’t spend it all at once!” Moments heh.
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I would completely bin annual appraisals. They only exist to give HR something to feel about and generate paranoia among certain personality types, and encourage unpleasant manipulative behaviour in others, which in the short-run might eke out a bit of extra productivity, but in the long run is detrimental to the culture of the firm.
Every manager should just schedule regular catch-ups with their reports (monthly at least( where feedback is shared openly.
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Well quite. It's a needless exercise in sadness and self flagellation. We get nothing out of it (it's explicitly disconnected from promotion).
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I reckon some of our esteemed colleagues consider direct reports to be like children.
That is to be ignored, admonished and flogged at regular intervals and repeated as nauseam.
The worst of the legal industry.
Also wot vertigo said.
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But a part of your job that you decided to rule yourself out of.
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Teclis just so you know I'm just not reading what you write
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Yeah you are
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I’d find it a bit weird to have an end of year conversation with someone which wasn’t supported by some form of feedback from people they worked with, tbh
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Yeah but you're literally part of the problem.
If the evidence isn't contemporaneous it is just an obsequious or bitchy opinion after the fact.
There is no value in it whatsoever. And lots of potential for serious damage. I expect there will be some longitude study among hr fannies that concludes guess what guys pointless feedback processes are damaging for mental health!!!! in about ten years. To which everyone will say aye fooking duh.
Wouldn't be so bad if they didn't pretend to care about staff wellbeing.
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Oh but Sarah from finance said you had a bit of a funny tone with her in march 2019.
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If appraisals affected promotion, pay or standing I would thing well I guess they have to split the fungible humans somehow.
But they don't.
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I agree with pretty much everything you’ve typed btw
feedback isn’t the be all and the end all, or even a dominant part of e conversation
but it does help. How other people see and perceive you can be quite an insightful thing to know
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To be honest, for anyone who has been in work for more than five years, I think it is usually completely useless. It's a rare person who makes it that far oblivious to genuine "areas for improvement" and you've just reached horrible about a person's personality territory. Plus, given the high turnover in most modern workplaces, few people in your immediate area really know you or have meaningful views about you.
If you are dealing with high achievers who want to tear up the ladder then I see no harm in playing the game but for most people it is just shitting on any positive sentiment they have for their employer.
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I mean, the head of another department said I had done excellent work on something and I was pleased he was so nice about it but if he'd said I'd done a bad job he would have been wrong, frankly. Everything I do is for a reason. And I respect my staff to be making similar calls.
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That’s quite a jaded view but I don’t work where you are so it may be accurate
what you’ve described though is quite a low risk situation whereby there are no pay consequences for you whatever folk say
inevitably people focus on the negatives that they get and spend nowhere near enough time on the positives they get. There’s learning in both, and sometimes very Much learning in the latter in terms of reinforcing what you are doing well,
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It is a firm convicted forged in one of the most oppressive appraisal systems I think is likely ever to have existed in the UK.
If someone is underperforming they need real time support and guidance. If they are not then they need to be supported to develop themselves in whatever ways they need or reasonably want and management aside from that needs to fook off and stop ruining their lives for absolutely no reason.
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As for focusing on negatives, I cannot think of a single negative thing a person can legitimately say. You are either doing the job or not. If someone is very rude or very lazy then those things can be picked up but "feedback" isn't the solution it's just clipeing.
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Ok well good luck with it
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I think you know you are part of the problem but the system has worked ok for you so you feel some psychological economics obligation to keep it moving despite the damage it causes. It's funny because I never see people like that from the human side.
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I’m sorry you think that from what I’ve posted. I haven’t had the experienced you’ve had though clearly .
I have had LOADS of bad feedback, though, believe me. Some of it ludicrous but interestingly bosses have sometimes suggested that before me saying it.
loads of good feedback too (which, for me, talking about is sometimes harder)
also some really interesting “good, but could be better” stuff. Sometimes it’s little stuff that is actionable. I fiddle with things when I’m thinking - phones, Pens, laptops. I only really do it when I’m engaged in something. One year 2 of my team told me, independently, that they saw it was a sign that I was disinterested in what they said. It was actually the opposite. It’s good to know that stuff so I can either explain my quirks or stop doing them
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That is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Feedback culture empowers the perceiver to bask in their subjective views. Workplaces encourage mindfulness ,(live in the now, don't dwell on the past you can't change) and even CBT (when someone behaves in a certain way it's almost certainly not about you) then appraisal season comes along and people come out with this SHIT.
If someone gave me feedback like that about someone in my team I would want to tell them to grow the fook up and get over themselves (and consider the possibility that the "fidgeter" has a medical condition like ADHD on their way) but probably would feel disempowered from doing so because of the idiotic stasi situation engendered by Feedback.
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And who is qualified to comment on how any given person can improve anyway? People with more experience perhaps but generally speaking those at the top would do well to consider how the environment they have created has caused people to behave, rather than criticising them for Failing.
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Tldr you aren't going to like most people or their way of doing things but unless it's particular unreasonable tough shit and harden up, felicity.
Should be everyone's EOY review.
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It wasn’t shit though. I asked them, genuinely, what I could do better to support them and they told me. It really helped.
anyway I don’t think I’m helping here so am gonna foxtrot oscar!
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Did it help or did it just give you a.smug anecdote to "inspire" a division of people who are all loathing you through gritted teeth tho.
Something to think on.
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Ugh.
night clergs
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You make the people's lives worse with your toxic competitiveness and grids and if you work for w**koBank and are handing out a million pounds to the brassest necked bastard in the room then fine but otherwise you're just mugging off some people who just want to pay their fooking mortgage in the least undignified way possible.
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I adore it when you’re in these moods tbh, reminds me why I stopped bothering with actual work in the first place.
Strongly suggest everyone works out how much they need to have in the bank/passive earnings or whatever and just stop there.
Endless accumulation of wealth for its own sake is absolutely pointless. So I suppose the question is why do you still work clergies? Given that you hate it so much and all.
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mostly a load of nonsense, does however give busy body HR staff something to do.
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The worst thing is in our bit, HR don't even fooking touch it. A total binworthy waste of time. I do feel so strongly about this (in case you couldn't tell) I am not sure what to do with the passion.
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My advice would be to divert it completely into something else and proceed blandly with an empty smile through the entire appraisal process, as both receiver and, if applicable, giver of feedback.
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Sounds like how I live my entire life tbf
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Yeah I think once you are qualified in what you do it should be based on outcomes only, save for actual problems.
Ofc this poses a problem for workplaces with no measurable outcomes.
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which you just fooking should tbh
answer - most people are in the middle of the road and why does reminding them every year of this fact improve their lives in ANY WAY BECAUSE THERE ARE NEARLY 8 BILLION OF US AND NONE OF US ARE THAT GOOD.
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Are you working yourself up into a bit of a state again my dear?
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that is the sort of feedback I can get on board with. in the moment, to your face, transparent and public.
not a shifty email to your boss about something they perceive as wrong ("he fiddles with his PENS, gvnor, it's not right!")
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I bet pingu is head of appraisals somewhere
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Inhouse so yes, we use feedback from our clients for appraisals. I ask the feedback from the people my team work with. Throughout the year on informal basis and at the end of the year with a somewhat formal process. INhousers generally appreciate the feedback. As manager I use it more to calibrate my own thoughts.
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I just don't believe people appreciate the feedback. What use is it? You're not stupid or just in the door, the things you do are for a reason.
Unless it's plugged into promotion so knowing that the boss hates the way you say solution could be helpful. Otherwise it's just being forced to listen to someone's opinions.
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As I intend to say to the big boss on Friday, what is in this for me or my team? There is no upside.
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Faod they are allowed to gather feedback if they want but pretty sure they think it's as mad as I do
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What ??? said.
Proper, honest feedback should be a constant process and any decent manager will make sure that everyone knows of any real issues as and when they are an issue. This is good.
Each year making people get feedback from peers and customers for a formal HR box ticking bullshit process is a wast of everyone's time and is an excuse for poor lazy mangers not to bother for the rest of the year.
That said there is a place for proper anonomous 360 annual appraisals for senior people.
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Is there tho. As if any senior person ever changed their ways in a meaningful way.
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They say you may only have appraisals once a year, but you should prepare for them every day.
I had one where after a chat around the place my boss said nobody has much negative to say about you except that you should probably buy a couple of new suits.
He gave me a good pay rise, so I did.
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I get a 360 and have changed the way I do several things as a result.
I also so staff surveys and make meaningful changes based on those.
If you don't listen to people they wont bother talking to you.
- I do not work in law these days.
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give me an example of something you have changed
re staff surveys, in my place what happens is that we all do them and then WE the middle managers have to self flagellate about the shit results
so everyone pretends to be happy to avoid the interminable meetings
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I arranged for some specific training for managers that was flagged as an area they wanted to develop. This was of more value to them than just a pay rise. This has been followed up by specific training for some to lead an inhouse support and training function.
I set up a regular meeting to discuss a specific thing that people wanted to know more about and have more feedback into.
I was given a low score in one area of personal performance so I made sure that I demonstrated that I was working on that and that I appreciated their honest feedback.
But I also would not apply this to more junior people as I am sure it woudl be used to pick holes and express petty grievances.
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that's not feedback!!!!!!!! that's them asking for something reasonable and you not being a dick about it
wait, ok, para 3 was feedback but fook people they have to make allowances for individualism (unless you were making really gross jokes or something equally obvious)
feedback culture is like dragging us all back to the playground
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as my friend described it yday
"so, what is clergs like?"
"well, she seems fine at her job"
"no but what is she LIKE?"
"what do you mean?"
"is she like... a total bitch? is she like totally a bitch?"
"er"
"oh I know she is SUCH a bitch you should hear what she said about Leanne!"
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Sigh
My point is this - if done properly it is very useful.
If done badly (like most law firms do) its really negative,
Kim Scott's model is helpful to me to see the four main ways people manage and give feedback: -
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can I ask a question tho? do you genuinely believe "perpetual improvement" is desirable? do you think a mental state of dissatisfaction with oneself is good? do you think that, maybe, most people are as good as they will ever be and you are just making them hate you with nonsense?
I am an expert and so are my staff. I work on expert advice. If something I do doesn't fit in to the system adequately (clergs omg there's a budget tomorrow and you were late and we might get fooked by the forestalling u moron) then I need to know. I do not need to know if Ricardo in the cashroom thinks I didn't use enough thank yous in my email.
Feedback on style or personal substance is not just useless, it is damaging. To relationships at work. To an individual's self-esteem. To staff turnover (it's an incentive to leave before the bullshit cycle turns over once again).
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moreover, most workplaces do not really encourage internal advancement. you tend to have to leave (unless you are on one of those Superleaders Of Tomorrow programmes in which case you made your bed from the prickles of feedback and can lie in it until you get septicaemia). so why the pressure on IMPROVEMENT all the time.
My honest belief is that I won't improve any from where I am now (and I think that is fine). I can learn new things and apply new techniques. But technical stuff is generally excluded from EYR. So WHAT'S THE fookING POINT.
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this is the disconnect
some people care and want to improve or not look bad
some people just want everyone to fook off so they can do their job and go home
appraisals assume the former
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well indeed
also, appraisals assume that there is always meaningful improvement to be had
how does a 54 year old lawyer who has been in practice for 30 years, keeps up with CPD, does all his/her work on time and with appropriate admin and is generally good craic in he office improve?
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The idea that you must advance or leave, which exists in may places is really damaging. Some of the very best employees have found their place and are really happy there and do a great job. Those people are gold and should be really valued. They do a good job, are reliable and don't need much management time.
That said everyone can be better at how they do stuff. No is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
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I once had as feedback (from my secretary)
"she didn't come to the Christmas lunch and I think she thinks she is better than us"
I mean I do think I was better than her because I am not a judgemental cow
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wibble - no there fooking isn't room for improvement!
also, most people who think there is have no idea of the subjectivity of what they are saying
for example, I have had three bosses this year. If one didn't want to be bogged down with everything I am working on but another wanted to know everything (why am I keeping her in the dark!) and the third didn't really know, WHAT FEEDBACK SHOULD I USE/
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isn't ALWAYS room for improvement
most people are fine
just fine
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heh.
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why heh? what DO you do with three people with conflicting expectations of what "good" looks like?
and why dream up minutiae for people to apply to their work? if all of their goals are met, what's your fooking problem tbh?
as I will be writing in my totally worth the effort EYR form
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Fine is fine.
That is a valid thing to be happy with and to say to your employer. I am happy with things exactly as they are and I don't think I can improve at all. You are wrong, no one is perfect, but its a valid position to hold.
For example - you seem very stressed and unhappy with many aspects of your working life. There are things that you could do that might help with that.
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heh was for the " judgemental cow"
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I think while in theory yes there's always "room for improvement", in reality, in some circumstances (not all), the person is never going to change because it is just part of his or her MO/personality and it is part of the package that we have to take or leave as a whole. I have a junior with whom I have worked for almost 10 years and I kept asking her to gauge the context of a piece of email correspondence and try to keep it "punchier" if warranted, as opposed to every email starting off with a two-paragraph summary of the background with defined terms. But maybe because of some ingrained self-preservation/CYA mentality, she is just not going to change and I have come to accept that.
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What do you MEAN no one is perfect? there is no such thing as perfect because PERFECT IS A COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE CONCEPT. For example, I think everyone who believes in feedback culture should be sacked from management positions and investigated for harassment. Not everyone agrees. Lucky for you.
Your second paragraph is precisely precisely the font of the problem. If I am unhappy with my work, I could do something about it. What about the employer and management structure who create the environment? They could all sit around and wonder why everyone wants to leave and they have had to block four lateral transfers this year. But they won't. What could WE do to become better.
There is nothing I could do better. That is not the same as saying I couldn't BE better. But I cannot change because I am me. Just as you cannot become a Hollywood film star. I don't want the agonies of the mediocre yet ambitious thrust upon me, thanks.
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Another split is that there are people (sounds like Tricky is like this from her post above) who are very comfortable with needing a performing team and if someone isn't performing or doesn't fit they are shown the door and others who are squeamish about this and want everyone to be ok even if the team suffers as a whole.
i'd say it stems from whether you enjoyed competitive sports as a child or something
i always found the concept of 'competition' ludicrous so I suffer from that. Luckily I'm very avaricious which compensates somewhat.
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Oh yes if there was a cash incentive I would understand it to be the phoney process that the employer needs to go through to pretend that it has Identified Excellence.
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Ironically clergs for someone who suggested it was a waste of time you have posted nearly 50 times on the subject in the last 18 hours.
So basically you could have just got it done in the time you have spent whining about it.
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Strutter
You are a moron
That cannot be improved, I don't expect
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Well I’m clearly not, but thank you for showing you have no meaningful comeback by trying to insult your way out.
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Obvs if someone isn't performing that is a problem. I don't base my opinion on someone's performance solely on client or other feedback tho.
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My appraisals fook me off no end. I get nothing but outrageously good feedback that even I couldn't make up if i tried and yet it makes no difference to anything.
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well see this is the thing
I know I sound like someone sitting on twenty "she just rofs and tells us to fook off if we get too close to try to ask her to do something" emails but honestly I am not
I am fine in that nobody's perfect but perfect would be wasted here way - got some nice feedback from a few folk. But what good will it do?fook. All.
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maybe I should just try to be as insane as possible in 2020/21 and see what happens
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heh!!!
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heh..
Ps I have a Clerg type person that I manage. We agreed not to bother with annual appraisals for them as it wasn't a good use of anyone's time. They do their job well and so I leave them alone.
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I am hoping to reach a similar arrangement.
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I refuse to accept that I am in any way unusual, though, because the process is without rational merit.
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