Staff Evaluates Manager

njjel

Have any of you ever done this type of evaluation? If so were the end results positive or negative?

Crout

I've never seen this used, and quite honestly would shudder at the repercussions. I wonder if the Management folks who thought this up would stand for the same practice. I'm curious: what are you trying to measure?

njjel

I had no input into this process! Frankly I was floored when I saw the email. So I thought, well maybe this is something others do now that I am not aware of - thus my question here. I am interested in other's comments on this too.

Gillian3

I participated once, as an employee and thought that it was wonderful. I don't think management was quite as impressed. This idea is a valid one, but requires an organization that is open to employee input and will do something about it when they get it - one where if the employees say that a manager or supervisor is a crappy one, that the reaction is to help the manager improve, not ignore it or automatically assume that the employees are out to "get someone". If the organization is a typical top down organization where management says "jump" and the employees say "how high", it would be a waste of time.

njjel

Gillian - Were the evaluations done anonymously? Or did the manager know who made what comments and how did it turn out in the end?

Gillian3

The process was conducted by a consulting firm. All responses were anonymous and reported to the consulting company. My view of the whole thing was that it was a waste of time because nothing was done afterwards. Information got out which indicated that some managers were rated very poorly which made employees even more cynical about the process and top management in general.

Crout

Well, that's a horse of a different color. Yes, I participated in something quite similar. The company I was with at the time was in financial straits, and the bank forced them to bring in consultants who conducted a series of interviews where we were asked to assess our top management team. The universal opinion was that our company was being run by a bunch of idiots...some more well-meaning than others, but idiots nevertheless. The consultants turned in their report, picked up their check and nothing more was said or done.

Geno

It's called "360-degree feedback" and when applied properly, it is typically only one element of the manager's evaluation process. In other words, while subordinates get to, from their perspective, weigh-in on their supervisor's performance, their opinion is only one component of the entire evaluation tool being used.

You are right though, I wonder if the person(s) who dreamt it up ever exposed themselves to it.


Geno

njjel

I can't see it doing good in our case, but then I don't get a vote! I see it turning out not to the betterment for our managers. In addition the evaluations are not being done by an outside firm and are being send not to HR but to an administrative assistant in Administration so a 3rd party has been added to what should be extremely confidential. The ee's are being asked to email them to her so obviously she will know who said what about which manager. Good Grief!!!!!!!

Gillian3

You may get zero response. That will validate your concerns about the Admin. Assistant which I now remember from an earlier thread.

njjel

Apparently some of the ee's are NOT turning in the evaluations. I know that if it were me I would not turn one in either.

Caroliso

You'd think if consultants designed this they would have thought through all the pieces.
We've done something like this at my company for 12 years. It's called Feedback to Supervisor, and everyone who wants to can provide it.
When we first unveiled it we had a series of trainings for all staff about how to provide constructive feedback as opposed to dumping, complaining, etc. The trainings were informative, and good, but implementing this sort of thing is very tricky.
We've observed a couple of things, although improving the process to fix the problems is hard.
1. Getting feedback that is really useful is difficult. Some staff don't feel comfortable critiquing the boss, even if the boss welcomes it. Feedback that is all glowing is useless, the best feedback has a little of both.
2. As someone above said, this process works best when there is a mechanism to do something about what isn't working. Our feedback goes to the person's supervisor, whose job it is to figure out what to do with it. Of course they need to weigh it against other issues, so it may get dealt with in any one of a number of fashions.
3. We found that staff who put in the time wanted to know what had been done about it, which puts the supervisor's supervisor in the position of having to explain things they should be able to keep between themselves and the employee being reviewed. Not hearing back wht specifically had been said left the supervisees feeling unsatisfied if they didn't see immediate changes.
4. Our supervisors weren't wild about anonymous feedback. We allow both types, anonymous and not-anonymous, but the anonymous option has dwindled away to nothing. Either the manager actively discourages ("I welcome face-to-face feedback") or departments are so small it's obvious who submitted it (the feedback is narrative rather than numerical responses to questions.)
5. We give staff the option of delivering the feedback in person, and as a group to the supervisor rather than one-on-one. In the first few years some supervisors insisted upon this, with the obvious result that they requested some of the feedback be re-worded before being submitted.
6. Some of the more contentious situations wound up in my office, and this took time to sort out and was demoralizing for the team.
7. Like with reviews, some folks who'd had the same supervisor for a few years find it difficult to keep coming up with new things to say.

I could go on, but it sounds like you're already in the middle of the process so maybe this isn't so useful to you now. Let me know if you want to know more.
C

System

As an employee of a large, very top-down company, I was asked to rate managers on an anonymous form-type questionnaire. I filled it out but was, shall we say, cautious in my responses. From what I could gather Nothing changed with respect to the managers' performance. The company also invited us to respond to other questionnaires, and nothing ever changed to my knowledge as a result of anyone's participation. So I'm not very optimistic about any such evaluations making any meaningful difference to employees, managers, or the company. The only circumstance in which it could would be if it were given out in a company that's very open and honest with employees to begin with. Those companies probably don't need to take such measures.

Kathy Carlson