Oh, yes, the horror of just doing your job. I've gotten so much stinkeye from managers for meeting the requirements and not pushing to make more. IE, do more work without getting paid for it. Also known as "you're capable of so much more!"

A mandated curve makes no sense for a job environment; a good manager will make sure that all of her staff are meeting or exceeding goals (or manage them out of that job). And she's supposed to then randomly pick people to claim are not? Nonsense.

I think we've always been guaranteed COLA because we're indirectly a gov't contract. But I could be wrong, it might just be the culture . To which the subcontract is diverging more and more. I also learned that corporate policies are beginning to treat all contracts as 1-3 yr contract positions. Which we are not. Their deal with the main contract is going on 30 years at this point. People don't leave my workplace to accept other positions within my subcontractor's company. They LEAVE.

Well, Consuela, that's sense.

Which seems to be absent. Which is why this corporation is looking more and more like a moribund behemoth sustained by gov't contract inertia.

I am laughing painfully and ironically at Jilli's post.

Can you tell I harbor some issues from my last job? The fact that I didn't set anyone on fire while I was there is a miracle.

The Honorable Krystal Rivers, then? I forget what's correct.

I think so.

It's a little windy here.

Wow!

My friend Jeremy is speaking out re: marriage equality in MI. [link]

It's a little windy here.

Ah, what a glorious era we live in when hurricane season is year round!

I'd try to do a font close of some kind but the sarcasm and rage on this subject will never subside. Much like this winter, funnily enough.

My job has some outrageous performance norming too, but at least it's toward average. But when the stats came out and managers averaged like a 4/5 and staff was 3/5 the union's correct response was, how can you be such above average managers if your staff is only average? So I ask sarameg's employers, what kind of management has a D- on their staff performing up to expectations?

Good talking point!

A mandated curve makes no sense for a job environment; a good manager will make sure that all of her staff are meeting or exceeding goals (or manage them out of that job). And she's supposed to then randomly pick people to claim are not? Nonsense.

Eh. The thing is the distribution can't be measured at the local team level, because it obviously gets into that kind of stuff pretty quick. You can't take a team of 10 and plot along the curve. But you can do it at a broader level.

But we actually use a similar distribution at a department or service line level. I'm not sure where the lines are but it's something like 10-20-40-20-10, and the explicit expectation is that those in the lower two quadrants need to be managed up or out. Pay goes along with that with pretty heavy weighting - dollars available for bonuses and increases are split 0 - 0 - 30 - 30 - 40. So by far the bulk of it goes to the top performers, rather than a peanut butter distribution of COLA. [Making up those numbers again, I'm not sure exactly.]

It does require a bit of a shift in thinking. On our measures Meets Expectations is actually a ranking for a strong and steady performer, not a do-my-target-tasks-and-go-home, and it's a higher bar to get that the longer you are in your role or the higher you are in the organization. And that your evaluation is based on how well you met expectations compared to your peers. That's where the distribution on the curve really shows up.

But that sort of thing has to be absolutely, 100% clear from the get go. It needs to be part of how you understand your job. It really has to be part of your culture. Not something that gets announced at review time.