State of the country

[ChrisB]

I work in local government and in the last 10 years I've had 4 assistant directors, 5 senior managers and 4 team leaders.The team I work in went from 10 to 3 and is technically now back at 10 again and I've gone through 5 restructures. No doubt there will be a few more yet but its water of a ducks back now, most of us don't even flinch when the 'consultation' comes around. Its just a big merry go round every few years.

The way I look at it is, for each year i'm there, they are paying me, I'm clocking up redundancy and what they call a pension and if I can weather the storms for a few more years all the better.

Just got the new appraisal process to look forward to now. Some private sector types were employed to do a study and came up with a fancy system.

Public sector inefficiencies, the stories I could tell!!

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Posted by ChrisB on 22/10/2016 22:48:26:

Just got the new appraisal process to look forward to now. Some private sector types were employed to do a study and came up with a fancy system.

Thank you - I'd managed to put the abuses of the appraisal system out of my mind!

I don't know how widespread abuse of such systems as "performance management" are, but in my company, a system based on forced "bell curve distribution" meant that managers had to identify "under performers" regardless of the capabilities and performance of their staff - the "Performance Improvement Programmes" were shared around almost by rota and people put through the performance management process, resulting from the most ridiculous of justifications.

Quarterly reviews made the gathering of competency "evidences" an ever-present chore along with the pressure of wondering who would be the next target.

Edited By Martin Harris on 22/10/2016 23:39:59

[ChrisB]

Sounds familiar. We are in for monthly performance reviews interspersed with fortnightly update meetings and we work in a non critical non front line local authority department....madness...or maybe clever thinking on the part of the bean counters?

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

I feel for you...

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Alan Hilton]

I managed to escape from the water industry after 26 Years in 2001 when just turned 50 when the Industry started to get impossible .I retrained as a teacher (science degree) . Having a pension from the water years I have been a freelance supply teacher since qualifying . Teaching full time is horrendous, any long service teacher who is on a high pay scale is under constant threat easpecially in an academy system and work life balance is much in favour of the school. Holidays are for planning and making sense of the constant reforms imposed by the DOE . I don't envy the current generation at all

Alan

[Frank Skilbeck]

Posted by ChrisB on 22/10/2016 23:21:28:

Sounds familiar. We are in for monthly performance reviews interspersed with fortnightly update meetings and we work in a non critical non front line local authority department....madness...or maybe clever thinking on the part of the bean counters?

A few years back I set up a small engineering office for an overseas company, we "employed" all contract people, so if they didn't fit the bill then their contract wouldn't be renewed (never had to do that though), we had a good group. The parent company then got taken over and somebody from HR came to see us, asked if we did performance reviews and got a blank look. She then asked one of he engineers if he got any feedback on his performance, his answer was that they keep asking me back..................

[ken anderson.]

the lad's who are still working, think of yourselves as ........................ cog's in a well oiled machine, surrounded by nut's ......

ken Anderson...ne...1...... worker's dept.

[Peter Christy]

Re: Appraisals: Nearly all my working life, I've been in broadcast TV, as an engineer / video editor. The last four years before I retired, I found myself back with my original employer, who I had left in the mid 70's! In the intervening years, many things had changed - very few for the better - but annual appraisals were still the order of the day. My supervisor, bless her, was always deeply embarrassed at having to appraise me, since I'd been doing the job since before she was born, but she was always very honest and straight-forward about it.

However, she was deeply shocked when I told her not to take the appraisals so seriously, since no-one ever read them! She was under the illusion that someone from HR (or "personnel" to my generation) would read everything she wrote. I therefore suggested a little wager. In my appraisal we included a line of complete management gobbledegook which we generated from this very useful site: **LINK**

After several weeks with no response from "upstairs", she graciously conceded the wager! After that, every year, we included more and more "Birtspeak" (named in honour of John Birt, the master of meaningless management speak!) in my appraisal. My final one was comprised almost entirely of complete rubbish from the above website!

Response came there none!

I'm sure there's a moral here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is........

--

Pete

[Glyn44]

I still do appraisals, but only of other people's new models! Looks nice, flys well, do I want one, can I afford it this month etc.

[Bob Cotsford]

Peter, I know where you are coming from on the appraisals, they are aimed at younger employees with a career progression to consider. For me, at the end of my career it became a game to see just how outrageous I could get before my team lead refused to process the appraisal. Seeing as he has a sense of humour and a similar view on the appraisals, the bar was set pretty high (or should it be low?). I never had one returned, reinforcing the view that no-one ever read them.

Now it looks like I'll be seeing my last years out on the sick I can relax for the first time in years. If the sun shines I go flying, if it doesn't - well there'll be other days.

[ChrisB]

I'm told that some years ago a chap at my place worked on his own after all his team colleagues left, including his manager.

Twenty years went by with him working in the basement, signing his own leave sheets and logging his own sick days etc. When he came to retire he contacted the HR rep (now known as business continuity and performance partners) and they were surprised he was still there and thought he'd gone years before. He retired with his pension and was a happy chap.

Couldn't make it up

[Chuck Plains]

Posted by Donald Fry on 22/10/2016 17:05:09:

Posted by Chuck Plains on 22/10/2016 16:48:58:

I'm not so worried at the moment. I'm 63 and can't see me being able to afford to retire for another decade. But my favourite time to fly is in the evening anyway. I can fly my glider and watch the sunset at the same time.

Mourning for you mate. I am so dreadfully sorry.

No no, It's evening, not mourning.

[Shaunie]

I was once criticised on an appraisal "you don't suffer fools gladly", my reply that "I would rather not suffer fools at all" backed up by " there should be no fools in the department, if they are a fool we should not employ them" went down like lead balloon.

Shaunie.

[jrman]

Shaunie, That was similar to my response of " why do you expect me to work with fools"? They never did have a suitable answer!

[Cuban8]

Between leaving school at 16 in 1973 and up to 1986, I worked for a large British owned manufacturing company. Nothing spectacular, but I worked my way up from workshop junior (in the R&D labs) to senior tech, responsible for wiring standards and design ,production test, field mods, trouble shooting etc. A wonderful job that I was good at and was interesting, reasonably well paid and gave me the opportunity for further education at the company's expense.

Appraisals were unheard of back then, maybe an informal chat with your boss from time to time - and of course his office door was always open if you needed to sort something out, either with the job or a personal matter. I'm not saying that everything was a cake-walk; problems occurred and midnight oil was often burned to remedy faults that always crop-up from time to time.

Other firms that I subsequently when on to work for (foreign owned) seemed to revel in tieing themselves up in knots with all manner of schemes that were supposed to improve the lot of employees and their efficiency, but achieved the exact reverse. The appraisals were heavily loaded against anyone who 'went the extra mile' (yuk) so not unnaturally, many would just do what was required and no more.

I recall a madcap plan to award 'engineer of the month' to a suitable worthy who would get the title after being recommended by a customer for 'outstanding service'. Guess what? ............the same few people would win, month after month, because of various examples of chicanery involving (what we knew) was a fiddle - and I'll go no further than that! The scheme was eventually and very quietly, dropped.

I worked for a large German engineering outfit for a few years and let me assure you that the Germans are also perfectly able to produce rubbish products that are badly designed, poorly documented, and not fit for purpose (as well as badly managing staff) just as anyone else. Even after many years of leaving that well known firm, all the hype over '100% quality Teutonic engineering' still puts my teeth on edge, as I've seen things from the inside.

I've been retired for five years now (packed it in at 55), but I still hear the same old tales from friends still in work, so nothing's been learned - and I'm glad to be well out of it.

[ken anderson.]

canny flow chart...kinda sum's it up.....I hear you say...from top to bottom lad's.

ken Anderson...ne...1 flow chart dept

[Keith Evans 3]

Appraisals ,performance reviews ,development plans ,etc. are sledge hammers to crack nuts.

Good managers and leaders do these naturally i.e talk to their staff regularly about what is important to them and the organisation .

The systems are usually introduced into organisations to " force " those individuals who keep their staff in the dark

and also to ensure that they comply with global recognised initiatives such as I.I.P. which look good when advertising the organisation on a wider front .

Far better to identify those 5% who practise " mushroom " management deal with them and not torture the others .

[Martin Whybrow]

The appraisal scheme can be abused as well. About 5 years ago, I joined the R&D department of a very well known international company; after I'd been there just under a year, they company decided to sell off their R&D to a very large company from South Asia; when it came to the 1st appraisal, my line manager was very happy and gave me an 'exceeds expectations' grading; when my pay award letter arrived, my grading was 'needs improvement', when I went to HR to complain, they told me they applied a levelling algorithm which meant that I'd been moved down by 2 steps in the assessment grade and didn't even receive an annual pay increment, effectively resulting in a pay cut. Given that only a few % get given the highest grade, I couldn't see how they could move people down by 2 grades; I asked HR to see the algorithm they'd used and the distribution of grades across the workforce, but they refused stating it was confidential (this is now legally required to be given to any employee who wants to see it I believe). I handed my notice in a couple of days after that!