Two issues have come out of my appraisal this afternoon. I’m currently very upset and feeling very let down. In fact I’m not even sure that either of these is an issue that should be discussed in an appraisal in the first place!
With no warning at all, my manager produced a new version of my job description. A task that is no longer relevant has been removed, which is fine, but in its place, there is a large piece of work that someone else is currently doing. When I looked at the footer on this document, I could see it had been around since June – that’s three months. I was gobsmacked and then very upset. I said that I could not understand why, in all that time, no-one had mentioned to me that this was happening. I have left it that I am not sure that I want to take this work on – I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to be honest – but that I feel as if I have been ambushed. She says they have followed procedure. Stalemate.
Secondly, our clerk has a dotted line in to me, but actually reports to my manager. There has always been a capability issue, which has been addressed in the past by performance measures, which leads to an improvement, then it all drops off again. Two years ago she was diagnosed with a long term health condition and performance has dropped further. She has refused a referral to Occy Health saying that she is ‘not that ill’.
I have recently refused to manage her day to day because she just ignores anything I ask her to do. My manager and I had a conversation about this and it was agreed that my manager would talk to her again and ask her to go to Occy Health for an assessment and, if she refused again, tell her it was that or capability procedure. She was to present Occy Health in a positive light and be encouraging.
Instead, my manager has gone to her, in her appraisal, and said Rockin has got a problem with you! This explains why said employee is not currently speaking to me. I feel very let down by this. It is not what I expected and it is doing nothing to resolve the issues we, as a team, have with this employee.
I really don’t know where to go from here. I feel as though 4 years of good, open relationships in the workplace have been destroyed in an afternoon. Very, very upset and let down.