9 ways NOT to conduct a performance review
The end of the year will be here before you know it, and with it — for many — comes the annual performance review.
And while every good manager wants the review to be useful for the employee, many performance evaluations can get a little off track.
Strangest reviews
Evil HR Lady Suzanne Lucas took to LinkedIn and Facebook to ask people for their stories about performance reviews gone wrong.
Here are some of the wildest responses she received:
- One employee was criticized for causing too much drama. The drama that was being referred to? Reporting and investigating employees’ discrimination and harassment claims.
- Someone was written up for typing a period on a fax where a comma should’ve been.
- A boss felt the need to criticize a worker’s thumbtack placement. He then drew her a diagram of how to correctly place one.
- While driving into work an employee was involved in a car accident. They called from the ER to let their team know what was going on, and the next week they were written up for “allowing personal drama to interfere with responsibilities.”
- An employee was told he was “too direct” in his communications. When he asked the manager to clarify, they couldn’t.
- At her performance review, an employee was told her number of mistakes doubled in the past year. And it had … from one to two.
- One manager spent the majority of the review talking about her husband.
- An employee’s review was conducted by a manager who had only been there for four months. When the employee asked if he had consulted her previous managers, he said that after four months he knew her well enough to do the review on his own.
- A manager complained an employee wasn’t catching on to a task she was never trained for.