Appraisal moderation

[cheerup]

I work in the public sector and we have historically had annual performance and development reviews. They recently introduced scoring in addition which in my view makes it more of an appraisal but that's (largely) by the by. I was aware of the scoring but was not aware that the scores would be moderated by a group of managers including some not in what I would see as 'my' hierarchy although they sit in the same service. I don't have a problem with the moderation process per se but do feel that we should have been told that our supposedly 'personal' development reviews were going to be read by such a wide audience. Am I being unreasonable? (but too scared to post there!)

We had this - started a few years ago actually- union made a fuss and some amendments have been made Not being told is another issue. Unclear what you mean- are you saying you were not told properly beforehand? What about the Union? Ours came down on Management like a ton of bricks straightaway when it was introduced

No, we weren't told beforehand that the senior management team for the whole service (not just my section) would be able to read all of our PDR documents and would meet to discuss them although there was probably some vague reference to the scores being moderated.

I doubt anybody other than your manager is reading the whole thing - time pressures alone mean that's impractical. Any scrutiny is usually given to top and bottom performers to check they have been fairly evaluated. Ime it consists of managers justifying their scores verbally. It may be that HR or a performance coach reviews the documentation but again there's usually loads so it doesn't get a thorough read.

I have sat in some pretty dire performance ranking meetings where I've seen people being asked to vote if they agree with the manager's rating when they have neither met not observed the individual or their work. Or where ratings could not be evidenced by documentation or where individuals had been given poor ratings with no evidence of management nevermind coaching and development or even outlining expectations at the beginning of the period. My favourite was the twerp man who demanded we sack the bottom 15% regardless of actual performance because he'd read about someone else who did that in the states Shame they were a top performing team with all 4 under performers (about 3%) either on suspension, capability processes or garden leave.

So really, they won't care a jot what's in your paperwork. They are far too busy fighting amongst themselves usually to look that closely.

What KM says. Good moderations have the 'real' mgr giving a very brief (1 min/2min) summary of how you performed, whether you exceeded expectations, should be promoted, given payrise or whatever. No-one other than your mgr goes through the actual documentation (unless there is a big humdinger of a row)

Once the summary is read out, interested parties (ie other mgrs that know you, and care) will sometimes probe a bit deeper (as in "Actually I think they did a fab job for me on X and I think they should move up a scale" or "No, they're crap. This happened once...").

You will sometimes get big rows when either two people fundamentally disagree, or when a manager rates all of his own people at one or other end of the scale, or when you get a good HR person in the room who calls out everyone's biases. The ones I've seen generally have the people who don't know you sitting out and enjoying the bunfight, and the people who do know you getting all animated.

For the managers themselves it is a truly horrendous process, but IMHO it is much much fairer than just having one person decide your fate. The very fact that they are having to justify their positions stops managers from just holding back the people they don't personally like and promoting their 'favourite' (although usually there is a lot of political argy bargy going on that can muddy this sometimes).

Anyway, Moderations are a v good thing in theory, don't always work as intended in practice but are certainly better than alternatives.

OK. I've calmed down now. I think my main bugbear is the pointlessness of it rather than the process. There is no such thing as 'promotion' or being 'put up a scale' since we're on nationally negotiated payscales with service related increments and no PRP element. I therefore didn't put much effort into doing mine although realistically even if I had known about the moderation process I'm not sure I would have found the will to do much more.