Fair performance evaluation?

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I work as a library circulation clerk evenings/weekends with three other clerks. My supervisor, who is the supervisor for the whole circulation department, only works on weekdays, so the evening/weekend crew is essentially unsupervised. Technically, the reference librarian on duty that evening /weekend is supposed to be in charge of the entire library (including us clerks), but the librarian is usually too busy answering phone calls, helping patrons or working on projects to observe us, besides which the reference desk is some distance from the circulation desk.

With my first annual performance coming up soon, I asked my supervisor (very nicely, of course) how she could evaluate my performance when she was unable to observe me. She said that she will handle the evaluation by the usual manner, which is to invite all the reference librarians (not fellow clerks) to comment on my performance.

This does not seem at all fair to me. One of my co-workers agreed and said that it was more like a popularity contest, i.e., your evaluation depended on how much the librarians happened to like you.

I think the only fair way to do this would be to appoint a circulation supervisor for the evening/weekends, someone who could observe our performance directly without having to rely on observations from outsiders. I have made this suggestion to management, but they seem to think that the current arrangement is just fine.

Questions:

(1) Do you agree that it is unfair?

(2) How can I get management to see the logic for an evening/weekend supervisor?

All help would be appreciated . . .

ASPIEd

Theoretically it shouldn't be unfair because the people who are asked to assess you should be objective as to how well you do your job...

However, there's no guarantee that they will be...

Did you declare your AS to your employer, because if not, I think you should definitely think about doing so...?

Aside from that, all you can do is make a list of all the things that you know you've done well and use that to prove to your manager that you actually have been doing well.

I think if you were going to get bad feedback from the other people you work with you'd be aware of it before your appraisal because normally if people want to say something to you, they don't wait...

I don't think you should worry about it too much UNLESS / UNTIL the people who are allegedly supervising you decide that you're not doing a good job... which hopefully they won't anyway...

Dunno what other people will think tho!

(1) Unfair? Quite possibly. But I do not see a better way for them to do it within their current structure. Also, these things are always unfair. It's a fact of life.

(2) You can't. It ain;t your place to do so. It would cost money. End of arguements.


Thanks to the wonders of "H.R." everyone with a job is in the same boat as you. I have been in I.T. jobs where the performance measurements were so out of tune with reality they made us laugh until we puked when they were announced. Then I did what I suppose all Aspies do (or the ones who end up in IT do anyway.

We do exactly what we do to any other logic system we encounter. We observe it, analyse it, crack it, then hack it.

We were getting monitored on a points basis for some things which really weren't anything to do with doing a good job. So you spend time making sure you score the points where you need to to be the perfect employee, then you do what you need to do to do a good job after the "game" has been played.

You can apply the same rules here if you think about it. If your scoring is coming from reference librarians then figure out what they want from you and give it to them. If you think it's going to end up a popularity competition then be nice.

Learn the system. Crack the system. And in the meantime don;t wory about it. As long as you are doing your job, don;t sweat it.

(Unless you hear the words "downsizing", "reorganisation" or "restructuring" - then it's panic time.)

Sorry about the late response -- was away for a bit.

My problem with the fairness of it all was not so much the other people's objectivity (or lack thereof), but rather that they really have no opportunity to observe us clerks as we perform our duties. If you will forgive a baseball analogy, it's like asking a home plate umpire who's watching a close play at the plate whether or not he saw a runner touch first base.



No, I haven't, primarily because I think the mere mention of the word "autism" would trigger all sorts of unwarranted red flags and alarms around here. I have tried instead to make casual statements to various people about my preferences and peculiarities, trying to make them aware of my Aspie traits without attaching a big red ASPIE sticker on them.



Normally, the list of accomplishments would be a good idea (I've used it in previous jobs), but the clerks' work is mainly customer service, which isn't necessarily conducive to such lists. About the only thing I think I could put on the list was that no patron was ever sufficiently upset with my service to throw a book at me.

As for people directly giving me feedback, I've learned that ain't the way it works around here; they much prefer to talk behind peoples' backs rather than risk a direct confrontation.



The point I'm trying to make is that my supervisor is basing her "good job"/"bad job" decision on inputs from people who really can't say one way or the other. That's what seems unfair to me.

ASPIEd

But what a tremendous waste of time it is to manufacture meaningless metrics! Seems to me that the logical approach would be to talk to your boss and show him/her how that's actually reducing productivity, and perhaps work together to develop some performance measurements that are genuinely useful. You may argue that "it ain;t your place to do so", but that sounds like you're suggesting that everyone just stay in their place and go with the flow; with that philosophy, how do things ever get better?

ASPIEd

Unfortunately it's not fair, and unfortunately it happens more frequently than you'd think in work situations.

In my current job and my previous one, I was given unfair evaluations by people who had not observed me first-hand, and who had their information fed to them by someone inherently prejudiced against me.

In my first job I was a university instructor who reported directly to the department head. I had rave reviews from the students and was friendly towards everyone in the department (or so I thought). I dropped in and chatted with people, showed interest in what they did, the whole NT thing. At the end of the year my contract was not renewed. When I brought this up with the department head, she said that one of my colleagues said that I was teaching students things they shouldn't know, and that she's communicated repeatedly about this, and I was not cooperative. I was shocked. I had no idea what that was about, or why the department head didn't come to observe my teaching directly if she was so concerned.

Right now I'm working in a very different environment. My boss isn't directly involved in what I do either nor does she have the time to really observe my work. My immediate supervisor was prejudiced against me from the very beginning (as my mom was in a twisted way a family friend of my boss) and has yet to initiate a formal or informal meeting with me in the 1.5 years I worked there. She has her own clique and never shares information with the rest of us. My boss relies on her for feedback on the rest of my department. She's accused me of all sorts of random crap. On top of this, my boss imposes her analysis of my personality on me every time we talk, which irritates the hell out of me--she deduced a few of my aspie traits, but she makes it sound like I'm a total misfit who doesn't know how to do my work (which is not true, from the feedback I get from my other colleagues and the clients I work with).

But here's what I gathered from my experience:

- Ask for informal feedback from colleagues and supervisors often. If what they say deviates wildly from the truth (or what you perceive to be the truth), have a calm discussion about how they think you can improve. Even if you disagree with what they say, people like to talk and to be listened, so the fact that you've listened to their opinion makes them more favourable towards you in the future (whether or not you've actually done what they said). Try to sneak in a line or two to remind them of your recent achievements without sounding braggy. Sometimes people honestly don't know what you've done and you need to remind them. Also, that's a chance for them to let you know if your achievements are really valued by the organization, or if you're just wasting your time.

- People talk behind other people's backs all the time. If they don't want to tell it to your face, it doesn't mean you can't get the information. Bribe a spy or two in the established networks (I'm serious---best if you can get a people person on your side).

- Pay attention to the positive things they say about your colleagues. Those are the things they want from you too.

- Be friendly towards all your colleagues, especially those who might be in a position to evaluate you. Even if you think they're complete d**kheads.

- A lot of performance evaluation is a popularity contest. It's just a matter of whether you're judged by your peers or directly by your supervisor. We're on the wrong planet. Live with it.

- Even if you get an evaluation that you think is completely unfair and not entirely true, try to stay calm and give yourself some time to cope with it before giving a reply. People of different neurology have different ways of obtaining information, and they may sense your feelings and attitude before you realize the same. They may see your relationship with others in a different way than what you perceive. NTs sometimes judge someone by how he or she relates to others ("she's popular, therefore she's doing a good job"--it's downright weird to us, but it's not right or wrong necessarily). Don't write them off just because they perceive things differently. Try to tease out all the strands that could be true and just discard the others. There is no completely fair and true evaluation.

- Remember: NTs go through this crap too. They also get pissed off when they get an unfair evaluation. However, they may be more likely to be able to come to terms with the popularity contest part of it, or they may be more able to communicate and cope with their anger and move on. They are less likely to internalize it and take it as a personal attack.

- I wouldn't advise disclosing your aspieness unless you know your organization is aspie-friendly.

PS: Also, even if they tell you you're doing a bad job, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're fire you. Here's a partial list of why people give bad evaluations:

- You're really doing a crappy job and you need to know that.

- Regardless of how you're performing, they don't want you anymore, and they're just nudging you out the door. You don't want to work for this kind of place anyway, so if they end up firing you, no big loss. You don't want to outstay your welcome.

- They really want to keep you and see potential in you. However, you have room for improvement and they want to let you know where you can improve.

- They need to feel that they're in control, and make sure that you know your place. They really don't care if you stay or go, but the whole thing is just a social ritual for them to assert their control.

- They need to appease other members of the organization (as unfair as that sounds). For example, while my boss may know that it's not my fault for not knowing certain information (which my supervisor withheld from me), she had to make it sound like my fault and not my supervisor's, due to the delicate relationship between those two.

In fact, to certain employers, the fairness of an evaluation isn't even that important. What's more important to them is how to use the evaluation to shape the relationship between them and you. It's a tool for them to retain you, dismiss you, shape the politics and dynamics of the workplace, etc. So it's really up to them how they want to conduct the evaluation.

It's a really hard concept to stomach but I think that's the only way to think about it if you want to stay sane in an NT-dominated workplace...

Hi, ASPIEd and all.
This is something I've seen a lot of, too. I've just recently gotten to a place where I can summarize it a bit better...'outsourcing' has become a dominant trend in our work-society's mentality and, somewhere along the line, it became not only acceptable but considered good business practice to delegate 'tasks' -even as personal (in a professional way, if that makes sense) a 'task' as evaluating a fellow human's 'performance'. If a supervisor's 'too busy', it's become justified to not give 'personal' attention to a process that has great impact on that employee's future. It becomes outsourced to others who, though possibly not as 'busy', are also more impersonal - not necessarily in 'nature' but in terms of work-related motivators. These 'givers-of-second-hand-information' are not going to be compelled by as many business-related concerns as an 'overall' supervisor would be during the evaluatory process, which creates more opportunities for the process to then become more dependent on sociability-related factors. Factors that maybe have less to do with a work-related process than previously realized by all involved.

YaYa

Thanks all -- you have much wisdom, which I shall now go off and ponder.

Seems like the world would be a much better place if we didn't have to plow through all the garbage at work -- early retirement, even at a poverty level, is looking more attractive all the time . . .

ASPIEd

Best wishes for your evaluation!

PS: Early retirement doesn't necessarily equal being poor. Once you've accumulated a good set of skills and life experiences, you can either start your own business, where you are your own boss, or do contract/project work, where you only have to focus on getting a project done rather than negotiating long-term work relationships.

Um.... Don;t do this. You say "what your doing is reducing productivity". What he hears is "You are a bad manager".

Unless your job is to increase productivity in a department then you keep you mouth closed. Make yourself personally productive, but leave others to themselves.

I say this for several reasons. Firstly, due to the "you are a crap manager" thing above, and secondly, if efficiency increases publicly then what happens? The work is done by less people. And if the work is done by less people then a) someone ends up with no job, and b) you manager gets a smaller budget (which is how manager types really measure their personal success).

So leave whatever the status quo is alone and concentrate on doing what your job is.

A poor manager/supervisor makes the results of the annual review a surprise. A good manager/supervisor keeps the employee informed and up to date with regards to how they're working. This is done in one-on-one's (nothing too formal, just a cup of coffee is good enough).

The problem is too many crappy bosses are afraid of giving constructive feedback because they're unsure how it may be taken. Your job as an employee is not to let that happen. Bring up (at least monthly) the topic of "how am I doing?" and "how can I improve?". By forcing the question you force the boss to acknowledge your plusses (or minuses). If you are lacking and/or having problems, you address it early and often ("hey, last time we talked about XXX, and I did YYY, what did you think of it?").

An annual review should hold NO surprises.

Same here, at 47 years old.
My former company outsourced HR entirely. So why did the CEO feel the need to micro-manage everything, including the hiring and in my case firing?

My job, was flying solo on the road all day. I was fired, for not fitting into the mold of robot. When I typically worked through lunch, on a daily basis, I was confronted about appearing to not be working in our warehouse each morning. Those doing the talking (obvious only in hindsight) were taking every cigarette and potty break they could, but I wasn't allowed a moment to collect my thoughts or organize my day before driving a 7 hour 350 mile Road Rally!

It's all about perception. It also sucks that I lost a decent gig and the safety net that came in the form of a paycheck. It hurts that my co-workers could be such ignoranus' even though I was there longer than most of them. And the audacity of management to make accusations without evidence or attempt to back-up what they say. ...

I say "turn the page, ... get over it."
But it still hurts.

You probably have no reason to worry unless you get an unfavorable review.

However....

YES, it is unfair to base an evaluation on the opinion of people who neither directly supervise nor directly work with you. So, if you get a negative evaluation, you have grounds to challenge how the negative marks are validated (e.g., what specific incidents can they say justify the low marks).

As far as getting higher ups to recognize the need for weekend supervision, you can propose it, and they can either accept or reject it. Certainly, if they don't want to schedule a supervisor to work the weekend, they should appoint one of the lower people a supervisor for just those days who would have an additional duty of being in charge when none of the other supervisors are working that day but himself would not be a supervisor.

Don't think about the result you might get. The best things you can do are to start/keep/continue to network with your colleagues or others that you may work with, especially people that relate to a job that you are or will be doing. You can always set up your own notes of why you should stay if you feel that's necessary. That way you have something to defend yourself if necessary and it won't necessarily be just your word against theirs.

If you're in a salary paying job, you may want to consider being a part of a union. They can help with issues like these. Of course, you need to appease the union members too, but generally they are on your side even though they can have their own agendas too.

I am in a situation like this right now. Dealing with all the emotional aspects is frustrating and relatively humiliating.