Manager admitted they lied on a performance review
This is a question for a friend (it really is.) This person, who is a 20 year veteran of this organization, was denied a in-range progression raise for "budgetary and performance issues., neither of which are true. This person has worked above and beyond for years and is currently at the 45% of their pay range, which is terrible in it's right.
The interesting part is when they asked their manager to put it in writing that they were being declined for budgetary and performance issues (review was all 6's out of 7 possible, not a derogatory mark on it), the manager declined. She said this is my telling you. He asked why he got 6's on his review if there performance issues he was unaware of? She admitted to him in person that she lied on his review, puffed it up but not why she did that, to then decline the raise. She also would not put that in writing.
What would possess a manager to inflate a review, decline a raise and claim performance issues that are not documented, then admit to the deceit? Could this be a fireable offense? He is represented by a union, and it in a grievable issue (anytime you are declined a raise). This manager has caused a hostile work environment for this employee and those that work with him.
I'm just curious about your thoughts on this. I'm trying to help guide them but don't want to waste their time.
Thanks!
21 Comments
21 Comments
Colleen McGrail
35
12/03/20 at 1:44AM UTC
This is intolerable. In my experience, any of these actions go against a code of ethics and it sounds like your friend took the right action by having the discussion directly with the manager. With no traction from that, my recommendation is to take the issue to HR. Without documented reason for the decline, and lack of context for the conflicting feedback, your friend is in the right. HR is not always viewed as a friendly place for these kind of situations, but if the friend goes in and says that they are now uncomfortable in their situation, the HR leader should take confidential action.
I'm sorry to hear they are going through this and hoping that they can go to HR or have another ally in the company to help them circumvent the manager.
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2 Replies
Katrina Honer
102
Career Contessa Coach
12/03/20 at 1:53AM UTC
+1 to Collen's advice! Ask your friend to reach out to HR. I don't know the correct terms but they would most likely open an investigation. This sounds like a form of retaliation. The fact he went to his manager first is good (in training, they say that's the usual chain of command) and he can inform HR what exactly happened. I wouldn't be surprised if this manager got fired for their actions, on top of making a hostile work environment.
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r francis
79
12/09/20 at 2:17PM UTC
++1 to Katrina and Colleen's advise: If they are in a Union they should file a grievance with the union ethics team as well. This is direct violation of EEOC laws as it sounds like age-discrimination and some other poor management issue.
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Anonymous
12/03/20 at 3:37AM UTC
I had a recent manager confidentially admit to me our VP instructed her to artificially deflate my performance ratings for three of the four years I worked for her, meaning she submitted her review of me and he told her to re-do it and give me a lower score. He had a couple of reasons for doing this, not that it makes it OK. 1) HR policy dictates he is only allowed to have a certain number employees in his organization achieve higher ratings each year. If too many managers rated their employees highly, some of those employees had to be down graded. 2) Our bonuses and annual salary increases are tied to our ratings and each VP has a finite pool of funds for each. Sometimes, to make the math work, employees get their ratings downgraded. While I don’t think downgrading performance reviews was an intentional part of these HR policies (at least I hope not) I do know these practices are not unknown to HR and a reality of the policies they put in place. I say this just so your friend is prepared that this might be a dysfunction of HR policy and HR may not be super helpful. My manager only admitted this policy, which is not documented anywhere and is not supposed to be discussed with direct reports because she truly felt awful my VP was downgrading me for a third year despite her thinking I was doing a great job.
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Anonymous
12/07/20 at 1:11PM UTC
Thank you for sharing this scenario. While frustrating, this is VERY typical for a department to be allotted a finite amount of money for bonuses and salary increases. And also guidelines on annual review par levels for meets and exceeds expectations.
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Anonymous
12/09/20 at 4:24PM UTC
This is exactly how my company handles ratings as well. I never understood it because wouldn’t you want as many exceptional employees as possible? I guess not when it means paying out more bonus. Really sad.
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Anonymous
12/09/20 at 7:01PM UTC
Sadly, this is common practice at larger companies. I was a people manager at a highly dysfunctional multibillion dollar global company for over a decade and had a VERY difficult time with this and related policies.. HR and senior management aggressively championed teamwork, yet I was required to either stack rank individuals on my team or rate them against "the curve". The next step was an argument with my (egomaniac of a) manager who regularly changed at least half of my ratings because 1) they had to fit within his overall "curve" and 2) because he played favorites and had major blind spots regarding their performance. I recall driving home on those days feeling like I was covered with a thin layer of slime :-(.
And then there was the reality that performance ratings were finalized months before employee self-appraisals were due. In cases where my ratings had been lowered, I had to temper my comments accordingly, communicate ratings that I didn't agree with and manage the fallout. Many of my fellow managers didn't care, but *I* did. I'm glad I don't work there anymore!
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Tiasha Stevenson
88
12/09/20 at 8:13PM UTC
I know you wrote this to be helpful to the original writer, but you need to get out of your company, ASAP. THREE YEARS of them downgrading your contributions? That’s 3 years of lost wages & morale. You deserve better. I know job searching is a PITA, especially in a recession, but your bank account called & told me she wants better for you!
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Anonymous
12/09/20 at 8:49PM UTC
I work for a HUGE multi-billion dollar, household name, and I run into a similar problem every year. My managers have always admitted to downgrading my review, because "HR likes to see room for improvement, so I can't give you a perfect score. I'm just going to make up some stuff that you can improve on, but you don't actually have to." 3 years of this.
On the bright side, it doesn't affect my raises, though. As Directors have told me, "Don't think of raises as raises. Think of them as pay bumps, and just because you're great at your job doesn't mean that you're entitled to one."
No, I'm not kidding.
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Anonymous
12/03/20 at 4:58AM UTC
Wow that is so third world and frankly fucked up! How dare someone do that to another person and think it's justifyable? I'm sure that VP got his/her nice bonus and pay increase plus many other perks, I'm sure. It's a sad, sad, backstabbing, dog eat dog world we live in any more. There is no honor, no empathy or brotherhood of mankind when it comes to making a living. It's a crying shame that an individual has to feel demoralized by their superiors because of a budget. Do you ever just have one of those days where incident after incident happens and you find yourself mumbling aloud "I hate people?" Well, that's why. And if you've never felt that way, you will. I love people, I cannot stand superiority and I despise hypocrisy. Hopefully the day will come to all those corporate execs that try to play God all find themselves taunted by their manipulations and lies and jolt awake every night in a cold sweat seeing the faces of all those they wronged.
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Anonymous
12/03/20 at 10:07AM UTC
You definitely were mistreated. However, I learned the hard way that going to HR without solid proof can backfire. If you are complaining against Senior Management you may get an investigation in name only. I know it’s easier said than done but it’s time to update your resume and start hunting. You sound like a person who would make a valuable employee and who deserves a better boss.
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Deborah Frincke
132
12/07/20 at 10:29AM UTC
One thing that comes to mind is that it is very difficult for Your Friend to "grieve" a process that gave them a higher score than their supervisor thinks they should have. There are processes for the opposite, but not what you describe.
A second thing that comes to mind is how these scores are used to affect wages. The part that Your Friend can address is that - that the performance review as written supported a raise, and a raise was denied.
The consideration for Your Friend is that it may be, possibly, that the Supervisor might then lower the written evaluation next time to support not giving a Raise, if the Supervisor doesn't feel it's warranted.
The realistic choices for Your Friend seem to be, ask to have the raise revisited (and potentially have the supervisor's concern about performance brought up). or let it go. A private conversation is hard to document, it would be very easy for the supervisor to say "I was just warning about drop in performance that wasn't significant enough to reduce the rating", and in any case, there's no advantage in having both no raise and a written poorer performance evaluation.
I also recommend that Your Friend seriously consider whether this is a warning that will result in a lower evaluation next year. It's typical to have a signaling conversation ("your performance is slipping") and then follow that with a score change ("last year I told you your performance was slipping, and you haven't changed, so this year I'm reducing your evaluation"). If I had to guess, this rather weird sounding conversation with the Supervisor might have been intended to convey what I just wrote.
User edited comment on 12/07/20 at 10:35AM UTC
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1 Reply
Lori Ann DeLappe-Grondin
49
Training & Learning Development
12/08/20 at 2:45AM UTC
You bring up some very interesting points, ones I hadn't thought about. I will pass this along! Thank you.
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Roberta
303
12/09/20 at 1:27PM UTC
With all due respect, you don't (and never will) have the whole story. You just don't, no matter how much you trust your friend. The best advice you can give him is to grieve it with his union and let them handle it.
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Julia Howe
57
12/09/20 at 2:12PM UTC
yikes. i had a manager who kept delaying my review for over 3 months while aggressively reminding me (almost every week) that he’d be writing my performance review. the workplace got so toxic while he was going through a divorce (he would yell at his ex on the phone during work hours and be generally disrespectful to women at work after these calls) i finally turned in my laptop and gave 2 weeks notice. in those 2 weeks, he would heap on a rediculous amount of tasks with zero budget for execution, knowingly setting up failures. he would almost daily threaten to fire me too. so the moral of the story is, theres no cure for a bad boss. some of them will explode with vindictiveness when you put in a resignation to save their own hides, make sure to document everything and get out with your pride and dignity.
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Anonymous
12/09/20 at 2:36PM UTC
If they are Union then they need to reach out to their rep and let them handle it from there.
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Emily Frank
26
12/09/20 at 3:27PM UTC
Since he's in a union, he should take it to HR and the union. Sounds like a toxic manager, and the beauty of unions is that they can actually sometimes get rid of these poisoners.
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KLeon
27
12/09/20 at 6:12PM UTC
I suggest that your friend to make typed notes with dates of all conversations and everything that was said. Add notes as further conversations happen. Maybe write a memo or e-mail addressing each item they were scored on, provide solid examples of work they did that met the criteria of those items ending with questions on specific things they could to to improve their scores. Add any notes of that conversation, even if the boss doesn’t put it in writing. I understand companies having limited funds to pass around, but the fact that your friend knows they are at 45 percent of the pay grade means that if he/ she left, another candidate could ask for more money up front And possibly get it. When we are “negotiating” (ha) getting hired seems to be our best opportunity to get paid more, the company can start someone at 25 perfect of that pay grade, or for whatever reason start a new hire at 60 percent of the pay grade. File a grevience with the union including the notes even though the manager didn’t put it writing. Make note of that within his/her document. Do this in a calm, professional manner and don’t be argumentative. Update their resume and look for a job for higher pay. Don’t share all of that with a hiring company, or talk badly about your current employer. If nothing else, this will be an empowering exercise and experience. Iv’e never belonged to a union but I suspect they might be a better ally than HR. ALSO, during this process reread the employee manual to gather any useful information. I’m not an expert but this is based on situations I have observed throughout my career and how they played out.
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Anonymous
12/09/20 at 7:34PM UTC
I recommend thinking long and hard before going to HR with a major issue or complaint. Their job is to protect the company, not the company's employees. If you do, and the issue has legal implications, I HIGHLY recommend speaking to a lawyer before approaching HR. (Advice based on firsthand experience!)
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Tiasha Stevenson
88
12/09/20 at 8:17PM UTC
HR’s allegiance is to the company. Even if they seem helpful, they are always seeking the greater good vs. your personal best. File a grievance with the union, that’s your best bet. And if you have evidence that it’s due to discrimination, file an EEOC case.
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Anonymous
12/11/20 at 5:47PM UTC
Unfortunately, I am (and I note others are) posting anonymously. And, we all know why: The retaliation and retribution that is real; has done real damage to bright, talented, capable women (and others); and has real long-term detrimental effects on one's finances, retirement, benefits, ability to obtain other work, let alone one's psyche.
And, this type of unprofessional, non-leadership, abusive, hostile, degrading, demeaning, bullying stuff is disproportionately done to women and other vulnerable groups. And, it is unacceptable. There are laws against each of us doing this kind of stuff to each other in public, why aren't there laws that hold these people's feet to the accountability fires??? This is not leadership. It is destructive to an organization's bottomline and to our economy as a whole.
It is past time that there be a STRONG movement that calls this stuff out and firmly and definitively deals with it--and not just in the executive suites as the people who many of us knew were "essential" (yet, are jacked around with part-time hours necessitating working multiple part-time jobs, no benefits, no health insurance, no bonus or recognition for a job well-done, etc.), experience this type of damaging treatment on a daily basis.
Equally unfortunate is the fact that many hiring practices still employ the use of checking with prior bosses or supervisors. When my staff wanted to do this, I said "absolutely not!" as I bore witness to a boss sitting there telling someone who was checking a reference that the employee was "lackadaisical" which was a bold-faced lie. The employee was stellar and the boss did not want to lose her. Because of that boss' lie, the employee did not get a better job with better pay and better benefits. I am totally against US citizen's giving up their rights to legal redress because hiring systems demand that potential employees give up the right to hold someone accountable for falsehoods when references are checked.
I feel for this person as I have witnessed, stood up for, and helped people in these types of positions. It is devastating to have something like this happen then to try to put on a brave face, hide how you are feeling (angry, sad humiliated, etc.) during interviews, especially when HR is astute at picking up on demeanor, attitude, feelings, etc.
And, it is also tragic that some in HR now protect rogues like this--that is until a tell-all book that names names is published or a post on social media gets the higher ups to finally do something. So, I am concerned that if this person goes to HR or someone higher up, if this type of behavior has not been reined in, perhaps it is part of the destructive culture. Also, in some companies, if they find out you are looking for another job, they fire you which is ridiculous!!!!
Another troubling strategy some rogue bosses, departments, and organizations use is to give someone so much work that they cannot possibly get it done. Then, they write the person up and begin a campaign of hostility (also known as "constructive discharge).
I hope the union holds this boss and the organization to the values and ethics I bet they espouse in their vision, mission, and handbook.
This type of stuff will remain rampant in the workplace as long as we have people who make the laws (people in government) who do not make laws consistent with our values. And, how is this or the other troubling posts I've read about toxic, abusive, etc., bosses and employers consistent with "family values", "strong economy" and more? These values are destructive to both and so much more and there is voluminous data to prove the cost of brain drains, reputation damage when this type of stuff gets out--and it does, decreased wages because people leave jobs or are paid less or are not as productive which results in less money/taxes in our economy. It's a mess and we know what can fix it.
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