Background: In anticipation of your meeting you have reviewed Terry’s file for t
ID: 359690 • Letter: B
Question
Background: In anticipation of your meeting you have reviewed Terry’s file for the last year and notice:
Quality ratings place Terry solidly in the top 40% of the department – acceptable if not good, but definitely not one of your best either.
Overall attendance is not a problem (employees are allotted 8 sick days per year) since you see that Terry has only used 4. However you do notice that all four coincidently occurred on Fridays.
There have been no work rule infractions that Terry has been written up for since the last appraisal (e.g., tardiness).
From periodic safety reviews you’ve documented that Terry ‘adheres to and follows all safety protocols’.
Further from your own observations you find that Terry has been a solid worker who shows up and does the work – an affable worker – just not the fastest nor the best (in terms of quality or quantity). While Terry is pleasant to work with, one issue you have is that Terry neither speaks up during any of the departmental meetings or training sessions; plus is either too timid or worse does not care enough to share information outside Terry’s direct responsibility (i.e., don’t ask, don’t tell mentality). One example is when Terry knew that a key component part was running out (it feeds in to Terry’s area). While Terry was not explicitly responsible for reordering the stock; common sense should have prevailed and Terry should have alerted someone. As a result, the department had a costly shutdown for half a day (side note: the person who was responsible was reprimanded for their oversight). Other times you’ve observed Terry’s knack for problem solving; however Terry does not share how it was accomplished with colleagues or you unless pressed for details. Definitively not behavior you would expect from one of the more senior veterans in your department. Again, solid worker – just no self-initiative. Once you thought it might be due to burn-out (Terry has been in the same position for over eight years); but a previous off-the-cuff discussion regarding advancement in the department or getting extra training related to Terry’s job didn’t go very far. As a result you’ve had minimal interactions with Terry since being neither one of your star go-to employees, nor one of you problem employees needing constant supervision. In fact, Terry is kind of like the photocopier – you can count on it when needed to do its job, but mostly is overlooked or invisible. The review with Terry will probably be like the last one where you got the sense that Terry believes performance appraisals are usually a waste of time. Just one piece of gossip going around that that you should be aware of is that bonuses in the near future might be tied to performance appraisal ratings.
Meeting: Assume that you have concluded your meeting with Terry. Following is a transcript of their key talking points:
While Terry acknowledges the “yearly performance-appraisal dance” has to happen with your co-workers, personally Terry doesn’t believe in the value of it since having been working here for the past eight years and has had several supervisors. In the beginning Terry used to care, however what has come to realize is that nothing ever changes. In fact sees there are only three types of employees: ones who are ‘drinking the company water’ trying to get in good with the bosses; the other group are the ones constantly getting in trouble shooting their mouths off causing problems to only to get fired or laid-off; and the third group are like Terry that if you keep your head down and do not cause problems, need minimal supervision, and generally know what to do (or are pretty good at figuring things out). Terry put it very succulently that they “don’t buy into the whole team-hurrah, just the job as trading time for a paycheck, and that doing any extra work only really seems to get you is more work”.
Explanation / Answer
I will start and prepare my appraisal and meeting with the following structure:
Hi Terry – Thanks for all your work throughout the year and I am glad to have you on my team.
As we discussed earlier, the expectations from your role are as following:
The measure criteria are as following for your role:
On all these criteria, based on your performance, your evaluation score is as follows:
Terry, your overall performance this year was good and I am happy that you are doing well on the job. There are certain areas identified where you can improve business user services and less time for managing breakdowns.
Employee is given a rating: Good
Overall satisfied with the performance.
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