Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

@6nso must be fresh out of college if they think HR is like a judge who will accept their evidence filings. The idea that favoritism is something that would be rooted out by HR is a joke. It's human nature and baked into most modern office politics situations.

I got 95% and the best part is there was no discussion of it. If the % is truly based on performance then wouldn't you expect to engage in a conversation regarding it? How did you quantify that my performance was 5% short of fully deserving? Don't you want all employees to be at 115% and tell them how to get there?

At the end of the day most of this and other issues are just the way it is and no sense trying to analyze or make a court case out of it. If you aren't getting promoted it's because your manager doesn't want to. Your manager likes another employee or feels they are more valuable to your managers survival. Once you can process these inputs its easier to move on.

@6b1v

Performance agreements can't be defined in the way you want them to be defined unless you're working in unskilled labor where you have exactly one task that you do all day every day. When there's creative problem solving in a job, the task of defining every possibility of as-of-yet unknown problems that could arise becomes impractical.

What exactly do you mean by "being the boss' grunt?" Is the coworker doing things for your boss outside of the bounds of work related tasks? Or is the coworker simply taking initiative to do work related things that the person who you both work for tells them to do? Screaming "not in my job description!" isn't going to help you get leading when a co-worker says "Sure, no problem."

If your boss is playing favorites, document it. Get your co-workers to document it as well. If multiple co-workers go to HR at the same time, it's hard for HR to not do something about it. If all of your co-workers (who can't all be the boss' favorite except for you) don't see the favoritism, then your perception of the situation is likely wrong.

Salaried workers consistently putting significantly more hours than the standard 40 is indeed a management problem. Either the employee can't do the job effectively and has to compensate by working more hours, or the manager fails to recognize, or worse, care that the workload as given can't be done over a standard work week. In any case, comparing notes with your peers across the country in the same job role would be helpful to build a case against your manager if he/she is expecting his/her employees to clock more hours than any other manager in the country.

The takeaway is document HR violations, get your coworkers to, and find proof that you're being expected to work more than your peers. Also don't be jealous that someone else is working harder and/or smarter than you and being rewarded for doing so.

There's no defined criteria (in our performance agreements) for going above and beyond, and yet, most people do it every day without thinking. Leading, right or wrong, is given for favoritism, being your boss's grunt or working significantly more hours than you're paid for. In other words, not for leading but for politicking. Putting in excessive unpaid overtime is a reflection of poor management and employees rolling over, which is unfair to those that stand up for themselves and often for the company, not just drinking the cool aid. Our offer letters don't say get 100% of you sti for doing a job not listed in the job description, so your defined performance agreement for leading should be limited to what's written, not subjective nonsense. I get 100% of target every year, but kiss aes shouldn't get 105% for kissing a.

The "performing" rating means to meet expectations and periodically exceed them. "Leading" means to consistently exceed them. If the expectation is to do your job, then exceeding expectations would be to do things above and beyond the basic job duties.

On the engineering side, those who help support their peers and collaborate with other peer groups and departments while meeting their basic job expectations will have a better chance of getting leading. This is simply due to how managers on a director team stack rank their employees, the basis of which determines the end of year rating. When comparing two employees who do their jobs equally well, the one who supports others will get ranked higher than the one who doesn't. You can't sit in the shadows and just do your basic job duties with minimum interaction with the rest of your team and expect to get leading. Being supportive of your team will also likely create a paper trail of things your manager can use to advocate for a leading rating, and a promotion.

The problem with the leading rating comes when trying to promote an employee. I've seen promotions happen in two different ways:

1. Manager gets a headcount and posts a job opening for the new engineering level for the promotion for a short period of time and has the target employee apply for it. A standard interview process ensures, but the short time the position stays open for usually minimizes the risk of a more qualified person applying.

2. Manager works with HR to directly promote the employee. Usually this requires a year of meeting HR deliverables. However, a leading rating can usually bypass the long and slow HR promotion process.

If there's no headcount for option 1, then option 2 must be done. Usually a manager doesn't want to wait a year and jump through HR hoops to promote an employee, especially to not lose up and coming talent, so the fastest way would be to give an employee leading and bypass the HR year long action plan.

The problem is it that HR only allows 1-2 leading ratings per director team, which can be 70+ employees, so using a leading rating for a promotion likely means it has to be taken from someone who deserves it.

I've seen some terrible managers, so I'm sure that they're the cause of many missed promotions and year end ratings that are not given to who truly deserve it, but getting promoted and a leading rating requires going well above and beyond the basic job duties and active communication with your manager so they know what you're doing. Document the things you believe you're doing that would make you deserve a leading rating or a promotion. Compare your notes with your manager at the mid year review and before the year end (stack ranking is usually set before the year's end). Your manager can't tell you exactly where you are on the stack ranking, but they can give you a general idea if you're towards the top or not. Often times theres more deserving candidates for leading and promotions than a director can give out in a year, so the manager team has to fight amongst themselves for which will get the top ratings and promotions. The manager who is armed with the most data on their employees achievements will usually win out.

If you were passed up for a promotion/leading, make sure you understand why and work on the things your manager tells you to work on to better position yourself for next year. If theres no progress in a couple years despite you doing what you were supposed to work on (and actually improving), then you need to find a different team because your manager is the obstacle.

ESP unclicked folks got better bouns.

I know most of my team of 15 never got an exceeding. That tells me the same a-- kissers get it every year or my region just doesn't give them out....quick with a developing threat though.....

145%, had leading. thanks for the extra

If you are ever getting less than 100%, you are basically on the lower half of the list of your team to get riffed. Should be a sign.

Performance ratings are popularity contests. I don't go out of my way to converse with my manager unless absolutely necessary and as a result he does the same. That being said, I'm a solid performer and sometimes even out performing others on my team. In 21 years, I got one exceeding rating and that was because they doubled my work load overnight without a raise (another position than now).

You really do have to play the game to get those high ratings and to me not worth it. It's just human nature.

For STI awards, size does matter, team size that is because the tool forces the manager to live within the budget of the managers team. That can be overridden, but it's every manager for themselves unless the VP org does the right thing and manages it across the VP org or Director level. HR reviews the results for fairness, but they just look at the outliers.

The Leading/Performing rating and it being tied to pay rewards is demoralizing. I got leading for 7 years in a row, because I always give everything I got to excel at my job. Then I got a performing and was told by my manager (no bs) that I deserved it, but he had to give it to someone else since I had gotten it so many times and he had to be fair. That was the last time I cared about VZ. Any other reason, I might have bought it, but not the PC “I have to be fair to others”.

If that wanted leading, they should have done better more than I did. I place the bar very high.

@yzh ......vs I could just do a little bit more than fail and get 95% of target.

A little bit more than fail is going to get you a developing rating, not performing.

The range for that is ZERO to 75.

Personally I gave my "Leading" team members 150% of target.... The rest of the team got 75% - 105%. Then you get the 115% company modifier to bosst everyone's bonus.

I want them to see that they get rewarded for their efforts, not a 10% difference between barely meeting the requirement and being a superstar.

These ranges eventually made me not care about STI at all. It seems demoralizing to me that you could kill your self working or get on the right project etc and get 105% of target as a reward vs I could just do a little bit more than fail and get 95% of target.

Actually historically when I get leading the company does bad if I get performing the company does great so I’m only looking out for Verizon which in turn also gets me a higher STI.

@yui

What's the max for leading? 105% to 115%? 125%?

The award range for performing is 75-105 of target and anything in that range is valid.

And what the managers stated is true. If there are Leading employees in the

same pool, their minimum is 105%, so the money has to come from elsewhere

to pay that.

OP here - @shc I thought Merit was ok - 4.25%. I was surprised.

They're banking in you being grateful because merits (or lack thereof) are going to be a slap in the face.

Exactly what the first responder said. If I get 100 bucks to use for STI awards. In order to give a 'Leading' employee 105 bucks as a reward for that rating, my 'Performing' employees have to give up 5 bucks to balance it out.

As managers, we have to work within our STI money pool. We base it on ratings. For example I had two 'Leading' ratings on my team. They got more than 100% of target as reward for their stellar performance. Both got around 105%. This extra money had to come from the pool so my "Performing" team members got something less than 100% of target to make up the difference putting some of them in the mid to upper 90s.