To hire a new employee, Wells requires consensus among 3 interviewing managers to give every candidate a fair shake and eliminate any potential biases.
And yet, when it comes to a process as important as reviewing your work performance for the year, you only get one person’s subjective opinion. With all the complexities of your job, it all gets boiled down to an overly- simplistic rating of 1 through 5. It depends on the reviewing manager’s mood that day, if your manager is a fair- minded individual, whether your manager takes the time to do it properly and takes reviews seriously, and the process is subject to a manager’s multiple subconscious biases.
Managers are human and intuitively :1 Prefer people who have qualities similar to themselves. 2 Focus on your most recent good or bad performance vs the entire review period. 3 Tend to rate employees based on their historical performance level.
My point? This is the year to start taking the details of your performance, your performance review, and the resulting numerical rating seriously. At least in our area, they were not previously taken all that seriously. You know, if Wells capped raises at 2% -for the most part that is what you were going to get. But this year, they are putting a lot of emphasis on mid-year reviews and that is not random. I absolutely think your rating will be taken in to consideration for all upcoming decisions: primarily layoffs, but also raises and bonuses. It is the dawn of a new era.
If you think you have may been rated unfairly, I personally wouldn’t just let that stand. I would respond respectfully and stay open- minded for ways to improve. But I would also stand up for myself in writing if necessary and ask that it be included in your file. Research how to do this successfully. You certainly don’t want to antagonize your boss, but don’t let them give you a 2 or 3 rating if you can strategically make a fair case for a higher rating.
And I would start preparing now for your next review. Someone once told me to maintain a detailed log of your accomplishments, contributions, successes, compliments, progress on goals, ideas that saved the firm money or solved a problem, risks saved. And pull it out come review time. Some of us were raised to “not brag on ourselves” but now would be the time to do it. The guys upstairs have no problem praising themselves, believe me. I know this is difficult given the current uninspiring environment, but if you won’t stand up for yourself - who will? It may or may not matter in the end, but don’t make it so easy for them to eliminate your position if you need the job.