Anyone else have to do these things? It seems like a trap. Do you answer a 3 out of 5 because you are actually doing your work? What if everyone else is listing 5's in a display of self fellatio? It just seems like such bullshit. hell my manager is going to rate me on the same sheet as soon as I finish this, so why do it? Anyone in HR know what the hell they're looking for with this type of stuff? Any horror stories from anyone on them?

I'm the best there Jerky!
You want to see my fucking tool box Snappa?

HR requirement for most state and Federal jobs here.  May be used as a mechanism for advancement decisions.....or be a complete waste of both yours....and your supervisor's time depending on your contract.

write in 6.

Lazy management. Since you are doing the job they are supposed to do,always give yourself one number higher then you think you deserve.

Never be derogatory about yourself, they will immediately latch onto that, always highlight your best traits and practices at work.

I used to put the lowest number across the whole thing and just turn it in.

When asked why......I would simply explain that it didn't matter what I put anyway because I would still be sat down and told whatever I put down was wrong. It would drive them nuts, because i had the highest customer service scores in the entire company every year.

It all just seems so weird and inflated. 3 is meets all expectations with proficiency. I am meeting expectations and exceeding them on a few things (they nominated me for a company award for a few). So I'm inclined to want to do straight 3's with a few 4's. It feels like the old Navy evaluations I had to do where everyone marks a 5 for everything and makes taking a shit seem like you're superman.

Just x everything out and put:

My boss knows I'm a solid 3.75, with moments of 6.

So I put straight 3's, and I'm done in 2 minutes.

Those things suck ass.

lol all 5s

It's usually a way for your self-centered boss to write your eval so they know what you actually did while they took credit for it all.

My old boss actually copied and pasted mine into my annual eval.

Last boss I had put down several 5's, HR made her change them to 4's because no one should get 5's. So I started to do work at a 4 level because frankly, if you can't get a better eval then that, why bother, the money is the same and it cuts out stress in my life.

Each and every year.  3 pages long.  Always rated myself with a mixture of 4s and 5s.  The 4s were because someone can always improve somewhere (just a couple of those).  Then I would add a paragraph narrative on what I had done that year.  They want a review?  They got it, and I usually received good raises whrn others were grumbling.  Better to play their game.

I know, it just seems like such a dog and pony show. I think modesty is an important quality for people, and would rather have my management tell me I'm doing a good job instead of me telling myself I'm doing a good job.

The real kicker is in government work.


Where only average marks are accepted.  If you want to give an exceptional mark you must have written documentation during the year beforehand.

Here's the real problem-if you want to give a non-contributor/unsatisfactory mark, you must have written documentation on hand before the eval.  The kicker is grievance processes overturn most disciplinary action because of entitlement policies through hr.  So the folks who are bums are then able to have anything negative scrubbed from their annual evals too.

My boss is in full retirement mode, and doesn't give a fuck about personal advancement anymore for himself. He advised our office to just put "Meets expectations" in every box and leave the fillable boxes empty.

Sure enough, we got an email two weeks later about a bonus for all employees at "meets expectations" or above

State job btw, they have a new system almost exactly like OP described.

Pi it @ 3.14 for all questions. 

Better give yourself 5 stars +. Honesty and integrity has no place in the modern workplace. If you're not already the best at everything, HR can easily find somebody who says they are, for less money too.

give yourself a 5...

LOL- just did about 87 of those including mine last night.

Ran out of space roasting one guy. There is a character limit in "areas for development", so I wrapped up in the bottom of the "strengths" section

Felt a little bad but it's all true

No one loves you like you do.  

Our self eval is computerized and the highest score you can give yourself without having to write out a paragraph is a 4, so I get all 4s.

It doesn't matter.  Your raise or lack thereof was determined before you ever got the form.

I put 5s all the way down, with one 4.
Nobody is perfect.


Ours go to corporate, then to manager. It can only get revised down to meet merit raise targets.

I had to do one before. The scale was 1 to 5, with 5 being best. I gave myself fives in all categories. Fuck it, why am I going to sell myself short?
My supervisor looked at it and laughed. He said while I am a good worker, if I really deserved all fives I should be running the place.

It says this if you click any 5's.

"Another helpful tip to keep in mind when you are scoring your own and others’ appraisals: there should be very few “Always Exceeds Expectations”. This is an extremely difficult criteria to meet. Being discerning with outstanding scores does not mean that good results are not appreciated but over-inflation of scores only dilutes the significance of exceptional performance and lowers the “great” standard."

It's the same crap here, except we don't actually assign scores, we just make goals at the beginning of the year, add midyear comments, make adjustments to goals as necessary, and then project your final results a couple months before the year ends.  Then the boss scores you 1-5.  But the boss can't score you honestly, because you can have a whole team kick ass and he can't give you all 4s.  I know in the past if you gave someone a 4, there had to be a 2 somewhere else.  Then the 2s don't last very long after that.  I don't know if it's still like that or not, but it's pretty hard to take it seriously when you see stuff like that.  And don't even think about a 5, LOL, you have to walk on water for that.  Also, you can be told you're exceeding expectations throughout the year and then get a 3 (meets expectations) because your boss expects you to exceed expectations.  Makes sense, right?

Oh, it is a show for sure.  But, my firm really gets off on those evaluations.  It is not an employee-friendly place anymore, and many people have been cut, so I have to help myself.  As well, my supervisors complete similar forms with same number selections, and their reviews align with mine.  One year, one boss entered all 5s, and told personnel these evaluations were stupid.  Not pomping myself there, but will let them know I work hard and am a team player.  The way they are cutting people, it's necessary.

My past three employers all had the 'no one gets 5s' philosophy. I answer pretty accurately (mostly 4s and a few 3s) but j will always have one 5 to see if they try and make me.change it.

12"

All 4s and a 5 or two.  They're BS anyway.

I'm fuckin' amazing.

They'll never raise your ranking, only lower it, so I may as well start high.

Here's the deal, at least in my environment -

My boss doesn't have a clue what I do or how I do it. All he knows is the end result. To that end, all he really has to go on is my self-eval at the end of the year. It's better to go all 4s and maybe a 3 or two and maybe have another one or two of the 4s knocked back to 3s by management, than to just start from all 3s and hope they don't decide to adjust it further down for you. It took me a long while to catch on to this...

Edit - I only ever put 5s for the things I know I aced (like "did not stab coworker in the neck, not even once").

One year I put in my self-eval "knows just enough to be dangerous". I didn't get very much that year

Yes, do one for myself every year. Boss just signs it because he has the motivational, mentoring and leadership abilities of a toilet plunger.

I always give myself 3s and 4s with a couple 5s.

Our raises are decided ahead of time irrespective of our actual performance. It's another rock-solid motivational technique by boss decided was awesome.

We've been infested with corporate bullshit, good idea faeries, managers and people who have no earthly clue how to perform their assigned roles suddenly telling everybody else how to do their jobs. Nobody can figure out why sales are tanking and the outside salesforce has adopted a complete fuck-it all attitude.

It's just to make sure you and your manager are on the same sheet of music...

I'm not perfect, but I'm one of the better employees.. I always give myself a 90% grade overall.

The more money they make, the lazier they get.  Doing their job cuts into meeting time.

In my experience they have already made up their minds and won't pay much attention to what you say/write anyway.

Where I used to work they'd ask us to write a review of the people who reported to you.  So I would do that (after all not only was it my job, but I also had the absolute best information on how well these people got their jobs done).

I'd write their review and send it to my manager.  My manager would then send it back to me and tell me to make changes because the management group didn't see it the same way I did.  Of course I raised questions about who was involved in rating people that worked for me - no answers.  I asked questions about where these unnamed people got their information - no answers.  I asked questions - and was told to stop asking questions and just revise the review.  I did and got it returned to me again for a second rewrite.  Then I rewrote it again and was told that the verbiage did not match where the managers group had rated my employees and I needed to make the verbiage match their ratings.  When I asked where my people had been rated my boss wouldn't/couldn't tell me as it wasn't set in stone yet, there was still "negotiations going on."

It's a fucked up system.  Over two or three years, with conversations between me and other managers and supervisors we eventually found out that they were using something called "forced ranking".  If you have 5 people working for you then one (only one) can be excellent.  One has to be in the poor performance ranking and the other three are somewhere between excellent and poor performance.  Even if you have the top performing team in the business and everyone knows it one of them is going to get screwed badly and some others won't get the pay/recognition they deserve.

Prior to the performance reviews ever being done the managers would get together and decide where everyone below them got ranked for performance and pay raises/bonuses.  Managers who might not ever have been in production or even know what an employee looked like would have input on pay/bonus/promotion opportunities for the employees in other departments/areas.

You have no idea how glad I am I was able to retire early.  I might not have been able to retire at all.

Have you ever heard this old saying?

The definition of stress - that reaction that occurs when the mind has to override the body's urge to choke the living shit out of some asshole that desperately deserves it.

I feel for anyone stuck in the lower levels of modern corporate politics and bullshit.

"Use action words like the following: Reconsider, Experiment, Sharpen, Learn, Specialize, Deepen, Observe, Challenge, Strengthen, Expand, Revive, etc)"

The best is goals: show up, on time, do my job. Management doesn't dig my goals.

Mine used to be 14 pages and be based on 20+ different metrics and 10 competencies. It would take me 3-4 hours to complete.

Company recently ditched that and it is now 2 pages and takes about 20 min to complete.


They are complete bullshit either way.

I've got to do that bullshit soon too. I believe whole heartedly that it's for lazy managers who are garbage at their jobs already. I know this because I have 2 horrible managers at work who are more concerned about giggling like school girls and talking in silly voices than doing their jobs and I get to listen to it every fucking day as my office is right next to 1 of the managers and when they close the door grab ass happens. For instance Q3 ends, on the first day of Q4 the entire department is writing and pulling the reports that go to the VPs desk On the following Tuesday, while the 2 are in the Managers office next to me all day laughing and having a gay old time.

They don't inspire confidence, they don't train worth a shit, they are clique-ish, I'm pretty sure 1 of them cannot actually do the job of his department and the other has the personality of a fucking rock. It's a complete shit show.

Mark all 5's.



If asked tell them that the work here is not challenging at all and you like working here because it's like a paid vacation.



When you desire to be challenged at work on a daily basis you will need a promotion and a position of more responsibility because you have your current position mastered.



For now all is fine but you must keep your future in mind.



Besides, I know that in these times of trying to run a company as lean and efficient as possible at all times, you as my manager would have brought it to my attention already if I were producing anything but superior work in all areas so I could correct the situation for the good of the company and to maintain the quality of our products.  Since you have not, I must assume my work is Superior in all areas with no room for improvement.



-------

Tell them something like that.



 

Realistically, it is sold to them by consultants or SAP who owns Sucess Factors as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even though SAP recently discontinued them in their own company.

 

We have done the reverse.

A 20 minute 3 page review has been replaced by a complicated spreadsheet guaranteed to take several hours to complete.

And since raises are predetermined for me, HQ has increased my workload for no benefit to get the same shitty raise.

Stellar work.

Be honest. I rate a little lower and then bury them with all the strategic and execution results. Basically show SLT I'm doing more and driving results better than most, then rate myself  'successful'.  Always come out with strong or outstanding

This was kind of my strategy. They keep telling me that they're impressed with my work. So if I make it seem like i can do even better then it could reflect well for me.

So F'n stupid. We do it a few times a year.

At our little village: No HR doesn't give a shit unless you file a grievance they won't read anything but the final rating, and if you file a grievance you better have some supporting documentation or your super have none.

As the guy that does the part that matters I really don't either. At best I get reminded of something that they did/do well. At worst I ignore it.

If you put nothing and just check the boxes I figure you don't give a shit so why should I?

The operating theory in some depts. is that if you rank your self the bestest SOB that ever walked your supervisor has to prove you aren't, this is not true. We're not under any obligation to acknowledge anything our employees write. If I were as big an ass as I play, I'd burn the ones that do to the ground, if you observe someone daily it's generally pretty easy to come up with 5+ things for each block they suck at regularly that make them not just a bad employee but standing alone appear completely unfit for the job, worded right, it can pass the reviewer's smell test. Conversely if your super is worth a shit they can come up with 5+ positives about you too.

This is how it usually works.

Hell the last couple years my boss gave the yearly eval. like he always does, but it was clear that his boss was the one who wrote the dam thing.  lol.  

We do and I always give myself top scores 5 of 5.

Truth.

When I was a younger man and had a REALLY good rapport with my boss (taught him to shoot, and he became a serious gun enthusiast) I included the following nugget in the self-evaluation.

"Areas for improvement:    I need to be better about separating work and personal.  Sexual affairs with the bosses secretary should be limited to off premises encounters."


He almost didn't catch it.   He shows up at my office "You motherfucker, I almost passed that along to the partners..."

Toot your own horn, why not.