By Cory Wright
This is a follow up to a previous blog on the benefits of conducting responsible employee evaluations. Unfortunately, there are organizations that do not have the best interest of employees at the forefront even though they embarked on the commitment to hire them. On a regular basis employees are culturally conditioned to fear or not subscribe to the performance evaluation process as it frequently has negative connotations. Most people want to go to work and do a good job and as a result be compensated for their efforts at the agreed upon salary. Simple. Injecting the other factors into this simple equation confuses the situation and far too often the employee evaluation process becomes a weapon. The department that is supposed to standardize this process is Human Resources as they are supposed to protect the human resource which is the most valuable part of any organization. Let’s look at what happens when that department is not in unison with their own mission statement.
The office of Human Resources should review the structure and process of evaluations annually to make sure the organization is consistent throughout all departments. If this takes place as designed supervisors and managers will have the same interests in moving the organization forward as the leaders in Human Resources. The interests or lack thereof in this organization building and employee building process starts from the top. The positive or negative response all starts from the top. And if the top is infected that sentiment will filter throughout. All efficiently run organizations observe a top-down management construct.
It’s common for managers to randomly show interest in evaluations when an employee is not meeting expectations. Conversely, the same managers do not show equal interest when employees are meeting or exceeding expectations. This invokes an energy of hostility as employee evaluations quickly become categorized as negative. By definition, when you produce a hostile work environment through any means you are creating workplace violence. I know this is a tough pill to swallow for managers that are terrified of accountability. When an organization or supervisor wants to terminate an employee the supervisor is told to create a “paper trail”. This is also known as documenting. The stand-alone term “documenting” has a negatively weighted bearing to it. In all my experience I have never heard of positively documenting an employee for the purpose of employee advancement, salary increase or promotion. Documenting almost always impacts an employee negatively. An evenhanded manager dedicates the same time towards the positive documentation of employees. Once again, if the process of evenhandedness was encouraged from the top by prioritizing this vital team building construct, employee evaluations would not bring a sour mood over the managers that do them or the employees that receive them.
Some organizations actually bully supervisors into doing unwarranted negative evaluations. Yes this does sound ridiculous but we cannot underestimate the extent that corruption will go to maintain the status quo. We have to become comfortable with understanding exactly who benefits from corruption, before we write off the idea that corruption is a waste of time. It may be a waste if you are not benefiting but to a benefactor it is well worth their time to operate in an organization filled with chaos. When people are systematically divided and fighting for resources and/or survival, they are distracted at what the true cultivators of corruption are doing. Most organizations have lengthy bi-laws that outline a process of identifying an employee’s flaws, charging the manager/supervisor with designing a program that elevates the deficient skill set over a period of time until the employee is operating at an acceptable level, re-evaluating the employee to measure their no skill level in a collusive effort to show that they exhausted every possible measure at supporting an employee before deciding to ultimately terminate them for poor performance. Even after this is determined they even have a system where an employee can be reclassified or moved to another part of the organization where their skillsets may be more useful. Well that level of tolerance is reserved for a select few privileged employees, don’t get your hopes up. I’m sure you can quickly identify people that failed miserably in a particular area that were conveniently moved/transferred/reassigned to another area after showing below standard performance for what they were initially hired to do. Some even have systems and committees in place for the sole purpose and crossing “T’s” and dotting “I’s” to make absolutely certain that termination was the last possible resort imaginable. Then you have the “because we can culture” of management. Buried within the same bi-laws that express an extreme commitment to total employee health growth and prosperity are exit clauses that indicate they don’t even need an extreme circumstance to come to the decision of employee separation, they will do it just because they can. Contradictory? Depends on which side of privilege you are on.
As a seasoned manager there will be times when you have to make tough decisions. You should also be able to stand up and take account for the decision(s) you made without running and hiding. You should be able to look people in the eye whether that decision was good or bad, and have learning takeaways that will evolve into improvements moving forward. I feel the same way about people that behave corrupt. They should be willing and able to admit to their wrongdoings or evil while looking anyone in the eye at any time without any shame. With that, I present a real life experience that can easily be found with a FOIL request to the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, Docket No. PES 16-013, page 15 paragraph 2. This was written by the board that reviewed all the evidence and ultimately ruled in favor of the petitioner. “At the time Wright was fired, his AVP XXX was working on Wright’s evaluation. She was receiving pressure from HR Director XXX to give Wright a negative evaluation. AVP XXX did not agree. AVP XXX was also told that President XXX wanted to read her evaluation of Wright. She expressed her concern to Sr. VP XXX that she was pressured to do a negative evaluation. Sr. VP XXX told her to be honest in her evaluation of Wright.” It’s safe to say that based solely on a corrupt administration “Wright” did not receive an evaluation at all, as the bullying and intimidation presented to the AVP resulted in administrative fear that prohibited that AVP from completing their job duties. This is normalcy in corrupt organizations.
The superior or supremacist ideology that supports this corruption can only manage an organization based on the concept of fear. Since they are administratively bankrupt, they cannot effectively manage an organization based on fairness and transparency because they struggle with the rules and regulations associated with proper governance. They frequently illegally terminate employees and boldly tell all within earshot, “Let them fight for their jobs on the outside!” It’s a sad day when your Human Resources Director freestyles each issue when they cannot get a timely response from their parallel colleague the Wizard of Oz. Shout out to Oswald, pun intended. Careers are lives, and the killing of careers creates bodies. How many bodies will amass before you are haunted by your devious deeds? It’s prophesied that Karma sometimes skips over the wrongdoer and applies deeds in full to the children of the wrongdoer. Shame.
The weaponizing of evaluations by Human Resources is shameful act. The organizational impact can be measured in many ways that translate into a negative impact on the deliverable product. Organizational moral will decrease. Production will decrease. Output will decrease. Work quantity will decrease. Work quality will decrease. The retention of qualified staff will decrease. Employee attendance will decrease. Commitment to work diligence will decrease. Workplace involvement and community will decrease. Some things will increase. Law suits against the organization will increase. Worker’s compensation claims will increase. Employees calling out sick will increase. Employee disgruntlement will increase. Individual employee workloads will increase creating a backlog of late or unfinished assignments. Acts of workplace violence will increase. So if the both the decreases and increases both add up to a loss in operating funds and/or an exposure of the misappropriated funds, we can conclude the cost of dishonesty and corruption to be catastrophic. Know your rights and hold people accountable. For more content visit us regularly at g04.900.myftpupload.com and enter your email below to stay updated on posts, courses, and things we have in store coming soon. For any future blog ideas or OSHA, public health, and/or facility management questions email us at [email protected].
