Words to make HR take notice

[JapaneseTea]

Investment banking.

Just had my yearly objectives and for the first tine in 10 years had one ‘below par’ rating.

Coincides with new boss being so deeply sexist, probably he doesn’t even realise he is.

It gives me the chance to go to HR. I feel I am paid less, respected less, do all the ‘wife work’ of The team with no reward. Plus never suggested to go for promotion.

When I go to HR, what are the buzzwords that they are worried about? It’s nothing concrete obviously, it’s just the drip drip drip of doing the shit stuff with no recognition or credit.

Thanks !

Unequal pay, discrimination, grievance for a few.

You don't need buzz words, you need specific examples, including dates and witnesses, and specific comparisons where a man was treated differently to you in the same/ similar situation. Or at least have those details available to share. It doesn't matter if each example is small, when you give a number of small examples, the power comes from the quantity and frequency of events, rather than the scale of each event. Be unemotive in describing them (except when talking about the impact its had on you).

HR can't do anything about complaints without specifics, buzzwords or not.

Good luck.

Thank you, so it is a log of incidents. Right. Dammit, I was keeping one, then let my guard down as boss seemed ok.

He has had to change the rating as I still had the form with me, and so he couldn’t sign it off. Fuckwit, he’s not even clever about being a total tosser. He is pretending the change if due to my reasons it was unfair but that’s bollocks. He would have submitted it if he could.

Have a meeting with HR so will raise concerns as otherwise he’ll just do it to me next year instead.

How do I find out who really has oversight of my pay / compensation ? Need to know if he has input to that.

I don't think they'd be too open about how reward decisions are made (given you don't know after all this time).

I suggest you raise this as a specific concern and ask HR how they can assure you that there is no discrimination (or unconscious bias) in reward decisions made in your bosses team. By raising it as a clear concern now, your HR team should be motivated to pat attention to it going forward so he doesn't discriminate and create a problem for them.

I have a meeting with them next week.

So I will raise :
A) should a bad rating be sprung out the blue?
B) his behaviour shows unconscious bias, ie I do all the wife work for the team with no recognition. Will this affect compensation?
C) generally can hr benchmark my salary against others at same level, time in service, job group?
D) example I have of being discriminated against.

He should have given examples of where you are below par. You need to provide examples that negate his examples. I dont think the unconscious bias reference will stand. Again you need very specific examples as evidence. HR will only act on evidence. Give examples of the work you have produced and any project works you may have been involved in , or contributed to

Don't use the term wife work.

Give examples of where with similar qualifications and experience, you are given lower graded work than your make colleagues, administration tasks that should be shared across the team and not given work that you are qualified for.

Just had my yearly objectives and for the first tine in 10 years had one ‘below par’ rating

Firstly, what percentage of the year under review was covered by the new boss?

Secondly, ask HR to clarify how your annual review is quantified, and to what extend did your former manager input to the rating.

How shocked are you at this result? Is it a bolt out of the blue, or did you get negative feedback during the year and how late on was it, did it negatively skew the strong results of earlier in the year? If so, object to it strongly and say it isn't a fair assessment of your total 2017 contribution. Did you get testimonials from colleagues ie 360 feedback, to back your argument?

Please please don't come out with buzz words like wife-work (which I've only encountered on MN not in RL) because it will devalue your argument and you will lose credibility.

Keep it factual and remain open in communication style, so you don't give them the reason they're looking for to downgrade you (especially if you didn't deserve the low rating!)

Presumably you have measurable objectives and can show how you have met, failed to meet or exceeded these objectives.

I'm a union rep. As was said above you need actual examples with dates and times rather than any particular words.
With your rating, can you demonstrate that you met your objectives?

Thanks all, this is extremely useful to take the emotion out of the situation and focus on what I want out of it.

So to clarify, I wasn’t going to use the term wife Work. I was just using mn short hand. I meant administration tasks, running and organising team meetings, global calls, information sharing and ensuring the correct work is done. If I don’t do it, it won’t get done which is a shame for our team and company, as all of those things mean we can offer a better service to clients.

In terms of the objectives, I had five, in our team I trusted my boss that he knew the work I was going and that in the last six months it has been so busy to supercede most of the objectives. He hasn’t arranged a catch up in the last three months, and an NO TIME said I was under par. I had one objective that I did not do, with his verbal permission. This was the reason to give me the lower rating. So on the form he is justified as I ‘didn’t’ do it, but in real life another project completely superseded it. All face to face interactions he wanted me to complete the new project t (which was not in my objectives).

I trusted him not to penilise me for this, but this was Misplaced trust !

So now. I will put together a list of actual discrimination and comments of his for hr. he does not like the fact I mainly work from him, but that was decided before he was boss and is written in my contract. So I will be looking to protect that.

His boss is in the US, and I have requested a meeting with them both to talk about the bad rating as obviously there was a ‘communication breakdown’ rather than my boss is a fucking lowlife arsehole.

I’d also like hr to benchmark my pay against similar job role people. Is that possible ? Obviously they won’t want to!

How shocked are you at this result? Is it a bolt out of the blue, or did you get negative feedback during the year and how late on was it, did it negatively skew the strong results of earlier in the year?

Total bolt out the blue. No mention all year for being below par at all. This is what I want to clarify with hr, can he do that? And how do I stop it happening again. Can he get him to have more training? He is terrible people manager. I thought I managing upwards well, but obviously not.

In above post - I meant to say I am mainly working from home. It is a cushy role that I have and I have put up with a lot to keep it.

Why are you taking on admin roles and other people are not? Do your job. The one that’s in your job description. If the jd is wrong, be very careful about doing lower graded work or they will downgrade the job. You need to be doing your job, as your contract states, and not other duties you have decided to do.

When discussing performance, always have evidence that shows you have completed the task well. Or whatever you need to show for that objective. It’s plainly obvious if one task has taken precedent over another so demonstrate this. The work pattern of the team will show this as will your boss’s work. He prioritised one project over another and a verbal agreement is good enough on this. It is still an agreement.

Write everything down and keep records. Reflect decisions back to him in an email. Stop being the run around and do your job. Be positive with HR and say you wish to do the job that is in your jd as it forms part of your contract. I don’t quite understand why you wish to continue working for this boss though. Working for a “fuckwit” would not be my idea of a great job and when I was in your position I moved on - very quickly!

You describe your job as a cushy role!!! Good heavens! Really! Perhaps it’s about to get less cushy?

All managers should speak to staff when they are under performing and have regular meetings to discuss targets and performance. So he should have spoken to you much earlier and given you a chance to improve. It is not acceptable for this to happen at the end of a year. He does need more training on performance management.

playing mum to everyone and organising their meetings and admin may help your team but not your career, can you not see how spending valuable time doing menial tasks when you should be focussing on your own project work will be a detriment to career, progress and reviews?

If you prefer to spend time as the office mum you should expect to be paid less than your team mates that deliver results.

The admin jobs used be shared by me and another team leader, working together. She left so I carried on as can see the value to the team.

The job is cushy as I do what I want, Work 40 hours, three days from home with a decent salary. The job doesn’t cut into family time or usually impinge too much on my life.

The strange thing is that manager has been really good this year, lots of catch ups and planning long term changes. We have worked together well on the emergency project and in the narrative on my objective he referenced how much I had contributed on that project.

So he is a bit all over the place. I can’t see what the bad rating gave him, it’s only pissed me off and shown me not to trust him.

Anyway when I talk to hr I will be asking for

A) Clarity on the lack of info for bad rating
B) The examples of discrimination and negative comments of my working from home.

C) How to stop a bad rating happening next year.
D) request to benchmark salary

Re the comment, I can remember them, but not when they were said. Does that mean they are worth mentioning or not.

I don’t mind if I get made redundant at this point as want a more local job anyway. But the redundancy payment after 10 years is too much to walk away from (if offered).

Japanese you may need to face the fact that the problem is the new boss - is is very common for a new manager to want their own crew and oust the previous incumbent.

I meant to say I am mainly working from home. It is a cushy role that I have and I have put up with a lot to keep it

Lack of f2f contact time can seriously impact a work relationship. It's far easier to be duplicitous and stick the knife in when that person can't see the whites of your eyes.

HR may well support the manager and turn a blind eye to all the good you've done if it means doing the bidding of the new manager. He is the the one in authority and who they may perceive is adding the value to the business.

None of this is fair, but it happens an awful lot nowadays under the guise of Performance Management.

Just be on your guard, forewarned is forearmed

If they can turn this into a performance issue, the likelihood is they won't be offering redundancy.

Not sure HR is who you need here. Modern HR is about supporting managers. So it should be them making the approach to HR about your complaint, not you.

If you don't get anywhere with HR I would submit a grievance, it's the only way they will take this matter seriously.

I wouldn't mention any thoughts about redundancy, that would play into their hands.

Interesting. I think I have been very naive and luckily got away with it this time. Ie the boss had to change the rating to be OK across the board as he had not realised that I had not yet signed off the form when he gave the rating.

So after reading all the comments I need to

Realise that new boss probably wants me out and is supported in that by US boss.
Be clever with regards to this year’s objectives!
Raise to hr about the process of the no notice bad rating but accept they can’t / won’t do anything.
If I want to keep my job I ditch all the admin stuff and just do what’s on the objectives and keep them bang up to date.

It makes no difference to me, I like doing project stuff. The team info and culture will disappear which is a shame as it took five years to build. But that is not my responsibility.

Instead of ‘value add’ I will be thinking of ‘holding on’.

But asking HR to benchmark my salary might still be worth a punt, bearing in mind gender pay gap figures have to be published in April

Is there an opportunity to defend the rating as part of the review process? ie state that having achieved all but one objective that was replaced by new business requirements that you believe the rating should be higher and welcome frequent reviews next year to ensure that you return to your previous levels of exceeding expectations...

And yes... no harm in asking your pay to be benchmarked..

Sounds like you've got a good way forward there.

If you can at least get them to agree your rating is "met expectation" rather than under par, for this year, think about it in terms of damage limitation. I'd be inclined to get your CV up to date and put the feelers out - get out before next year, you may find this isn't the end.

It is not nice (I've been there!) but it honestly isn't you. Stay strong and ensure that you are given the rating you deserve.