Lax Performance Evaluation Standards and Guidelines
One of the easiest ways to fulfill a race-related agenda against an employee of color is to use the performance evaluation process against that person. What makes this such a good mechanism for targeting employees is that the content of evaluations, as I’ve mentioned before, is often not reviewed for accuracy by anyone outside the departmental structure.
Human Resources staff are not reading each individual review and questioning accusations or negative content. So, supervisors and managers often feel pretty confident that they can get away with formally trumping up false allegations against Black employees.
When White supervisors or managers use this tactic against Black employees, they often try to disguise the true motivation, which is race-related (e.g., to discriminate against or punish the Black employee, etc.). What they often try to do is to take racially-charged accusations and turn them into race-neutral accusations. For instance, instead of using the stereotype of saying that a Black person is angry and defensive or has a chip on his/her shoulder, etc., the White supervisor or manager will say that the Black person can’t take constructive criticism or is “unapproachable.” The reason is that these types of accusations don’t carry any racial weight with them and they sound like the types of critiques that any employee might receive.
These tactics can make it hard to prove discrimination because they don’t sound racially-loaded and could potentially be true. So, you have to reveal the motives, as I keep reminding you, behind all of the accusations being made about you.
Not only that, you should look at challenging your company’s performance evaluation process, if you believe that your employer uses lax and corruptible standards for evaluating employee performance. Here are some things to consider and argue, regarding performance evaluations at your company:
-- Does everyone get a mid-year review and/or year-end review? If every employee at your company doesn’t receive a mid-year review or a year-end review, the entire performance evaluation process is unfair and inequitable from the start. Every employee should be held to company-wide standards, as well as job specific standards. Therefore, if one employee is being held to the letter of the performance review guidelines and company-mandated standards for performance, EVERY employee must be held to those same standards or disparate treatment/discrimination is applicable. Additionally, if some staff are getting mid-year reviews, they are at an advantage because they know where they stand regarding their performance and they know what they need to improve before the end of the performance review period. EVERY employee should be treated and evaluated in the same way. Find out if some employees are getting mid-year encouragement and advice on their work performance, while others are not.
-- What standards guide the reviewers that administer performance evaluations? For instance, what training are reviewers given before they are allowed to evaluate employees? And, what reviewer errors are they warned against, if any? For instance, are they warned against recency error? Recency error means a reviewer gives a biased performance review based on something RECENT that took place, instead of based on the employee’s entire performance for the review period. This is very damaging, when the recent thing/allegation is negative.
Or, maybe there was subjective judgment error, which means that too much weight may have been placed on an incident (positive or negative). Subjective judgment error can slant a performance evaluation too far in either direction. Reviewers use subjective judgment errors intentionally, when they want to prop up their favorite staff. So, they’ll blow the most routine duties into life-saving, money-saving feats of glory in order to justify a big salary increase or promotion for one of their peons. Subjective judgment error can be used to deny a promotion or significant increase to a targeted/disliked employee. So, a reviewer may use minor incidents or fabricated incidents to ensure that a person is stifled, frustrated, punished, etc. for reasons that may not truly exist, except to serve the agenda of the reviewer.
These are just 2 types of reviewer errors that reviewers should be cautioned against prior to evaluating employees. So, find out if there were any training or reviewer cautions provided by your employer.
-- If there aren’t any official standards/criteria for conducting performance reviews and evaluating employees—there should be basic standards, even for “informal” reviews—how can performance reviews be administered in a fair and equitable manner? Every supervisor, manager, etc. must be using the same criteria for company-wide standards and job specific requirements. This is the only way to ensure equitable treatment and comparable evaluation of employees. And, this prevents some supervisors and managers from propping up desired staff based on lax standards that others don’t benefit from.
-- Can your employer produce a written copy of company-wide standards and job specific/job level/job classification expectations of performance?
-- Can your employer identify when these standards were shared with employees, so they’d know how they would be evaluated?
-- Can your employer identify when official standards were shared with reviewers?
-- Who at the company ensures that the standards are upheld by reviewers? What are the checks and balances for the performance review process?
The reason this is a valid question, is that at my former employer, big problems developed because White managers were targeting Black staff with negative performance evaluations that contained surprise content and false allegations that only served to ensure that these Black employees would not be promoted and would not receive a significant salary increase.
After 2 external investigations were launched, suddenly this employer changed its review process because they alleged that supervisors were ACTING ON THEIR OWN in preparing malicious reviews or inaccurate performance reviews for employees. And, they stated that they suddenly realized that far too many supervisors were not the most knowledgeable about what their subordinates were actually doing. So, instead of having supervisors go to staff or other project managers to find out how their subordinates performed the new policy was that the project manager, etc. that worked with an employee most frequently would be the person identified as the employee’s primary reviewer. A secondary reviewer would also be put in place, to add another layer of REAL input.
While we worked at the company, nothing was done, we were told the process was fair, and we were both told that none of the reviewers assigned to us would be removed. The company forced us to get reviews from supervisors that were engaged in illegal misconduct and that demonstrated clear race-related issues with us.
So, again, a question you might ask is: what are the checks and balances involved in the review process?
Human Resources staff are not reading each individual review and questioning accusations or negative content. So, supervisors and managers often feel pretty confident that they can get away with formally trumping up false allegations against Black employees.
When White supervisors or managers use this tactic against Black employees, they often try to disguise the true motivation, which is race-related (e.g., to discriminate against or punish the Black employee, etc.). What they often try to do is to take racially-charged accusations and turn them into race-neutral accusations. For instance, instead of using the stereotype of saying that a Black person is angry and defensive or has a chip on his/her shoulder, etc., the White supervisor or manager will say that the Black person can’t take constructive criticism or is “unapproachable.” The reason is that these types of accusations don’t carry any racial weight with them and they sound like the types of critiques that any employee might receive.
These tactics can make it hard to prove discrimination because they don’t sound racially-loaded and could potentially be true. So, you have to reveal the motives, as I keep reminding you, behind all of the accusations being made about you.
Not only that, you should look at challenging your company’s performance evaluation process, if you believe that your employer uses lax and corruptible standards for evaluating employee performance. Here are some things to consider and argue, regarding performance evaluations at your company:
-- Does everyone get a mid-year review and/or year-end review? If every employee at your company doesn’t receive a mid-year review or a year-end review, the entire performance evaluation process is unfair and inequitable from the start. Every employee should be held to company-wide standards, as well as job specific standards. Therefore, if one employee is being held to the letter of the performance review guidelines and company-mandated standards for performance, EVERY employee must be held to those same standards or disparate treatment/discrimination is applicable. Additionally, if some staff are getting mid-year reviews, they are at an advantage because they know where they stand regarding their performance and they know what they need to improve before the end of the performance review period. EVERY employee should be treated and evaluated in the same way. Find out if some employees are getting mid-year encouragement and advice on their work performance, while others are not.
-- What standards guide the reviewers that administer performance evaluations? For instance, what training are reviewers given before they are allowed to evaluate employees? And, what reviewer errors are they warned against, if any? For instance, are they warned against recency error? Recency error means a reviewer gives a biased performance review based on something RECENT that took place, instead of based on the employee’s entire performance for the review period. This is very damaging, when the recent thing/allegation is negative.
Or, maybe there was subjective judgment error, which means that too much weight may have been placed on an incident (positive or negative). Subjective judgment error can slant a performance evaluation too far in either direction. Reviewers use subjective judgment errors intentionally, when they want to prop up their favorite staff. So, they’ll blow the most routine duties into life-saving, money-saving feats of glory in order to justify a big salary increase or promotion for one of their peons. Subjective judgment error can be used to deny a promotion or significant increase to a targeted/disliked employee. So, a reviewer may use minor incidents or fabricated incidents to ensure that a person is stifled, frustrated, punished, etc. for reasons that may not truly exist, except to serve the agenda of the reviewer.
These are just 2 types of reviewer errors that reviewers should be cautioned against prior to evaluating employees. So, find out if there were any training or reviewer cautions provided by your employer.
-- If there aren’t any official standards/criteria for conducting performance reviews and evaluating employees—there should be basic standards, even for “informal” reviews—how can performance reviews be administered in a fair and equitable manner? Every supervisor, manager, etc. must be using the same criteria for company-wide standards and job specific requirements. This is the only way to ensure equitable treatment and comparable evaluation of employees. And, this prevents some supervisors and managers from propping up desired staff based on lax standards that others don’t benefit from.
-- Can your employer produce a written copy of company-wide standards and job specific/job level/job classification expectations of performance?
-- Can your employer identify when these standards were shared with employees, so they’d know how they would be evaluated?
-- Can your employer identify when official standards were shared with reviewers?
-- Who at the company ensures that the standards are upheld by reviewers? What are the checks and balances for the performance review process?
The reason this is a valid question, is that at my former employer, big problems developed because White managers were targeting Black staff with negative performance evaluations that contained surprise content and false allegations that only served to ensure that these Black employees would not be promoted and would not receive a significant salary increase.
After 2 external investigations were launched, suddenly this employer changed its review process because they alleged that supervisors were ACTING ON THEIR OWN in preparing malicious reviews or inaccurate performance reviews for employees. And, they stated that they suddenly realized that far too many supervisors were not the most knowledgeable about what their subordinates were actually doing. So, instead of having supervisors go to staff or other project managers to find out how their subordinates performed the new policy was that the project manager, etc. that worked with an employee most frequently would be the person identified as the employee’s primary reviewer. A secondary reviewer would also be put in place, to add another layer of REAL input.
While we worked at the company, nothing was done, we were told the process was fair, and we were both told that none of the reviewers assigned to us would be removed. The company forced us to get reviews from supervisors that were engaged in illegal misconduct and that demonstrated clear race-related issues with us.
So, again, a question you might ask is: what are the checks and balances involved in the review process?
Labels: agenda, criteria, personnel manual, reviews performance evaluation, standards
posted by S. Mary Wills at 11:00 AM
2 Comments:
The mistake I made. I am a 20+ year African-American male management professional, who got feed up with our poor transfer/promotion policy that allowed senior leaders to promote and hire the least qualified if they towed the line. The least qualified happened to be white. After complaining to our HR leaders in an email, I got a reply from the director for whom I complained. "I cannot ever work with you, I fill uncomfortable, I have felt this way for a long while." Those magic words have ruined my 10-years with the company. I filed a discrimination complaint with our state agency, because I was passed over for six (6) promotions: Employer's response: the complainant is intimidating to his direct supervisors, there is no synergy between them. ONE PROBLEM THOUGH:
My performance reviews were exceptional, including the same supervisors recommending me for promotion. Go figure? Their response: Although it is true his performance appraisal are recorded in the positive, the complainant intimidating his supervisors caused this, we have corrected the manner in which the reviewers should evaluate his performance. The discrimination agency believed them, I am out of $4000 in legal cost, my lawyer says to sue, but he needs another $5000 to file. It turns out the investigator on my case thought at the preliminary stages: “this is a case of sour grapes; they have a right to hire who they want.” Every evaluation since then, downhill. Every email I write is critiqued. “You provide too many details.” “You’re not very articulate.”
And then the HAMMER comedown. My first evaluation meeting after filing with the state, resulted in my being accused of being argumentative and out of control. They wrote: “He was terse and angry, while wagging his finger in his supervisor’s face.” SURPRISE: It never happened! And no one believes me. I got a warning and it is in my file indefinably.
Moral of the story: I wish I had not complained.
I understand anonymous. I made complaints in my past jobs but I made sure I had found another job first. I complained then I moved to the next job. I knew my work life would be made unbearable for me to stay once I complained.
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