Performance "calibration" at work. Try not to be hurt - just move on. This has been going on for 3 years and gets more aggressive each year. Your manager probably held out for as long as possible or is "rotating" the good ratings to spread the pain.
We're being told to have 60% Meets, 0-30% Exceeds (with a lot of extra work to justify, preference is %0 exceeds), and this year they added 30% need to be inconsistently meets. Every year they tighten the numbers of good reviews we are allowed to have.
There are slides from 2019's "calibration" talks circulating for managers that show a "calibrated" team's performance - a perfect bell curve and the words "We are not grading on a curve". Not sure how that's possible since I was told, "Drop one exceeds to meets, drop one meets to inconsistently meets - don't care who, don't care why, update your verbiage to match by COB when they run the report again".
In years passed I "donated" my higher rating to one of my deserving staff. This year no luck. Attrition is the mission.
I'd call the Ethics Line, but that will get me nowhere - this rotten practice started at the top. Just leave this dead shark. Fake accounts, fake regulatory progress, fake interviews, fake move to the cloud, fake reviews...see a pattern?
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not my post, i took this from a separate thread and copy/paste here - i just want to make sure other folks are seeing it, here is the stamp on that post that i copied:
Post ID: @jls+1hIvMSfF