Regret signing of my mid year appraisal

[Tead]

For context, my manager, who does my 1 2 1 and does all of my admin, isn’t involved at all with my day to day work. There will be times where I won’t need to speak to him for days at a time. Instead his manager is more involved in my day to day work, and I work closer with her than my line manager.

I thought we, my line manager and I, had a pretty good conversation about my mid year performance. He called out the good points and small areas of development.

Friday was the last day to sign off the mid year reviews and my manager sent his feedback at 9-am in the morning. As he was leaving at 12 pm he was chasing everyone to sign off his comments before he left.

His feedback came as a shock, it was very negative with little focus on my achievements. It also didn’t reflect our mid year conversation, instead it had a bullet points marked as areas of improvement.

Despite my reservations, I signed it off because he had chased me a few times.

ive spent the weekend regretting this because I don’t this his feedback accurately reflects what I’ve been doing.

I don’t know what I should do. Part of me wants to challenge back on what he wrote but I think it won’t change anything he wrote.

He and his manager both have a reputation for putting people on ‘performance improvement plans’ and generally making this difficult for people.

Any suggestions?

I have been with my employer for 16 years and I have always received a good reviews. I am just genuinely stumped as to my next move.

I doubt you have many options - you signed it off, and you shouldn't have done if you didn't agree with it. You could ask your HR if they will allow you to reconsider, but they may not do so. At this stage a grievance isn't really going to work - you can't really complain it was wrong when you signed it off saying it was right. It just compounds the problem by making you look either like you aren't capable of correcting mistakes or you had an afterthought about agreeing to something that is correct. You may have to chalk it up to a lesson learned - your managers pressure for their leaving something to the last moment is not your problem.

Look again at the bullet points and focus on how achieving these will push your career forward and away from these people. Maybe you could move up or to another company. Basically, look for a way to put this into a positive light. You have heard negatives about yourself which stings but you can either change them or change your environment and it is your choice which you do, not theirs!

It depends what you are signing for - ours were to say we had seen the document and discussed used it with our manager - not that you agreed with it. However, we also had the option to add comments, which I usually made use of. But the appraisal form and manager comments were always available in time for the discussion about it.

I agree with the previous poster - I doubt there's much you can do at this point, as you have signed it. The time to comment would be when you received it. I would have made it clear why I wasn't signing.

How is your manager usually with deadlines? The lack of timing for you to review and comment on the doc itself looks deliberate.

I also think there is nothing you can really do about this now, not in terms of changing or “unsigning” it anyway. But I think it would be reasonable to tell your manager that you have reflected on the comments and would like to discuss them again as a way of moving forward.

@Tead you have learnt a valuable lesson. Next time when he manipulates you by giving you no time for reflection say no, I am entitled to have the weekend to consider if it is a balanced reflection of our discussions. It is unreasonable to expect me to sign it on the spot.

I agree at your next 1:2:1 state you were not happy with the pressure to sign, on reflection the write up was not a balanced reflection of our discussions. However, moving forward you said xyz are development areas please can you be specific about what you are looking for.

After the meeting email him a bullet list of points covered, e.g, achievements as well as development areas. Do this after every 1:2:1 throughout the year so when you get to next year you have evidence of where he failed to raise points and you can reject anything he hasn’t previously pointed out.

If he shirks 1:2:1s put them in his diary and keep a record of everyone he cancels.