I am a first-level supervisor at my workplace and one of the duties I am responsible for is a written annual evaluation of staff I supervise.

These evaluation assignments are handed out from a higher level centralized command chain assistant. We are a big organization and employees move around as often as every 6 months and sometimes the central command isn’t 100% up to speed on movement.

This has created situations where I have been assigned an evaluation for an employee I don’t currently supervise or didn’t supervise during the period covered by the evaluation. It has never been a problem in the past to have these assignments redone to a supervisor that actually supervised the employee, but apparently it’s now an issue.

Two months ago I was assigned an eval for an employee that I not only had never supervised, I’d actually never met him. I certainly wasn’t in a position to do a fair and honest evaluation of his work performance. I pushed back and was denied because this employee was essentially brand new and no supervisor was in a better position than me, or so I was told. I disagree with that assessment but dropped it and wrote a very vague and honest eval that was a big “meh, nobody has said he’s screwed up”.

So this week I got an assignment for an annual eval for an employee that is on my shift on paper, but in reality has been on a different shift the entire time. The whole year. This employee was supervised by 2 other supervisors who both agree that one of them should write the evaluation and either one is currently available to do it.

I requested that the assignment be transferred to one of them and was denied. I was told to “reach out to” those other two guys “for input and you’ll be ok”. I’m not worried about writing a stupid eval. It’s a 15 minute exercise that is not exactly difficult, but as I understand it the purpose of an evaluation is a fair and honest assessment of an employee’s performance. That employee has every right to be evaluated by someone that actually saw them perform.

I want to take a stand on this because right is right and somebody should stick up for our employees. I don’t think we are treating them right in this scenario.

Any advise on how to proceed?

Just for additional context: my immediate supervisor currently is writing my own annual eval, so I’d prefer not to piss him off too much. Generally we have a good relationship and don’t have any issues. Also, both the employee in question and myself are protected by an employee union, though I’m always hesitant to include them in anything because they tend to make things worse.

At this point all communication has been vis email and I’m leaning towards face to face with my boss later in the week from this point on.

Don’t know know anything about the environment you’re working in, but at first reading of your post it sounds like an assistant upstairs needs slapped around. This may be totally the wrong approach, but if I were in your shoes I’d be inclined to share the situation with your boss, explain your concerns as you did in the post and ask for his advice on how best to handle it.
ETA: I’d definitely doing the asking face to face.

Have the employee write the eval; you fact check?

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Don’t know know anything about the environment you’re working in, but at first reading of your post it sounds like an assistant upstairs needs slapped around. This may be totally the wrong approach, but if I were in your shoes I’d be inclined to share the situation with your boss, explain your concerns as you did in the post and ask for his advice on how best to handle it.
ETA: I’d definitely doing the asking face to face.

It is my boss who denied the request to have someone else do the eval. I don’t expect the upstairs assistant to be up on employee movement, she just requires my boss sign off on a request to transfer the eval.

If your boss has already denied the request i wouldn't push it. Through back channels get input from those he worked for. Do your best to be fair and provide the best feedback you can under the circumstances. With reorganizations I had to do this in the past.
ETA: Boss may have reasons unknown why he doesn't wish to force the change above. ie. Not the hill he wants to die on.

What a colossal waste of everyone's time!

I’d just get the actual supervisor to write it and stamp your name on it. Of course give credit to the actual supervisor.

Try this,

Having not actually supervised Joe, I reached out to his supervisor Jack who said he was a boy scout, or whatever.

I would cover my ass if he turns out to be a problem later on.

quote:

both agree that one of them should write the evaluation and either one is currently available to do it.

(I'm assuming from context, here you really meant 'neither'.)

If so, tell them, gently, to redefine 'currently available' and do their job. The worker was contributing to their team (or, maybe not) and it's their responsibility to provide feedback, in this case, indirectly, through you.

As a side issue, just how the heck is someone

quote:

on my shift on paper, but in reality has been on a different shift the entire time.

The 'paper' keepers need to do their job, occasionally, too.

This is a pretty common issue for me.

Two things, three really, for us.
1. Our annual evals mean absolutely nothing. You get your paystep unless HR has put you on a performance improvement plan and you’re failing.
2. Our annual evals are a massive pain in the ass. To mean nothing, they still take forever to complete and are written in the worst corporate gobblygook ive ever seen.
3. Ours have a function that allows you to send the whole thing to a different/prior supervisor for their input, no permission needed.

All that said, when it happens to me I usually just fill some bullshit and refer to entries that are in their record. Like said above, not a hill worth dying on. HR already sucks enough without picking a fight.

When it comes time for awards and recognition it’s a different story. But annual reviews are the single biggest waste of our time at my agency.

This is not a new issue at your place of work.

I am sure many before you have complained as well.

There are battles worth fighting, this does not seem like one.

You work for your boss, you make him happy, he keeps you happy.

No benefit in being a martyr. Let it go, do the appraisal.

Just my humble advice after too many times fighting a cause that didn't ever make a hill of beans difference.

Your supervisor told you to ask their supervisor, so do it.
Have their supervisor write it if possible, or you write it with their input and you turn it in.
Keep all emails and documentation, including your supervisor telling you to do this.
Later, if there is a good opportunity to pass this along to higher-ups, do so. Use extreme caution.

This appears to be a systemic problem from your telling, so calling out your boss to his boss may be a big mistake. That person could be the culprit.
Just document to CYA.

Gather the information you need to write a fair and honest evaluation and do exactly that. Think of it as a test to see if you can get the job done in spite of the issues you've raised rather that a flawed process that could be more efficient - it's clearly both but I suspect people above you have made you a supervisor because you get things done. So get it done, and if you have suggestions for improving the process bring those to the right person's attention after you get it done.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
This is a pretty common issue for me.

Two things, three really, for us.
1. Our annual evals mean absolutely nothing. You get your paystep unless HR has put you on a performance improvement plan and you’re failing.
2. Our annual evals are a massive pain in the ass. To mean nothing, they still take forever to complete and are written in the worst corporate gobblygook ive ever seen.
3. Ours have a function that allows you to send the whole thing to a different/prior supervisor for their input, no permission needed.

All that said, when it happens to me I usually just fill some bullshit and refer to entries that are in their record. Like said above, not a hill worth dying on. HR already sucks enough without picking a fight.

When it comes time for awards and recognition it’s a different story. But annual reviews are the single biggest waste of our time at my agency.

Yes, it seems our organizations are similar in tis way. The evals truly seem like a waste of time.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

quote:

both agree that one of them should write the evaluation and either one is currently available to do it.

(I'm assuming from context, here you really meant 'neither'.)

If so, tell them, gently, to redefine 'currently available' and do their job. The worker was contributing to their team (or, maybe not) and it's their responsibility to provide feedback, in this case, indirectly, through you.

As a side issue, just how the heck is someone

quote:

on my shift on paper, but in reality has been on a different shift the entire time.

No, they are available indeed. I already talked to the other supervisors and they agree they should write it.

Parts of my facility are current shut down for some retrofits meaning I don’t need my full staff. So a couple of my positions are temporarily moved to another facility.



I’ll sit down with my boss on Thursday and simply point out that this employee would have a valid reason to get the union involved if we proceed as I’ve been instructed and if that doesn’t change anything, I’ll ask the other supervisor to write the eval and send it to me, where I will add, to the very top, that “this following portion of this evaluation was written by supervisor X who actually supervised this employee during the evaluation period”.

make sure you create a subfolder in your corporate email inbox labelled 'EVALs' or similar

drag any correspondence regarding this into that folder for posterity

that way -- in the future -- if any issues arise you have the email trail of your responses / notifications that the eval requirements were wrongly assigned and you brought it to their attention

it's just one of those inefficiencies of working for a large Org. people change jobs / roles, turnover etc... everyone just has to communicate and get it done without too much drama

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Do what you are asked. Do it to the best of your ability and move on.
It is about all you can do.

When you work for "the man". You have to do the man's work.

That is how it works. Sorry.

I imagine this is an HR process. Not on any specific case, can you just talk to an HR manager that is over the eval process about the general issue - evals not being assigned to the most appropriate supervisor? I'm sure inside of HR there's an up-to-date database of who reports to whom.

As you say, it's a disservice to the employee. What I am used to is whoever supervisor has the employee for the evaluation process (not the evaluation period) gets to do the evaluation. They'll talk with the previous supervisor for input and write the evaluation proportionate to the time spent with the other supervisor versus under him.

quote:

Also, both the employee in question and myself are protected by an employee union,

Report it to your union representative, with multiple examples of that division sending you evals for people you don't supervise, which I presume are Union members, who are not getting a proper eval because management isn't sending them to the proper evaluator.

That should stir up the process...

Write the employee a glowing email to include, "in a earlier time of history, would likely be seen walking on water."

When asked, have YOUR emails and other documented communications ready.

If they don't take the evaluation process seriously, I wouldn't either.

I've had something similar several times over the years.

I was told to "give him a shampoo eval"


"He performs head and shoulders about everyone else".