“Meets” expectations
You’ve given your employee a ‘meets expectations’ on their annual performance review. They are a solid performer, and you’ve told them that they are doing a great job, however; they are disappointed with their rating. Now what?
Believe it or not, this is a normal reaction. It is caused by organizations failing to normalize what good performance looks like. Employees should strive for a meets expectations, and that is where most employees should fall on the bell curve when it comes to annual reviews. Of course you will have some outliers that exceed expectations or do not meet expectations, but it should not be the norm.
Skewed expectations are formed in a few ways:
Managers who are afraid they’ll be unliked and therefore give everyone on their team an exceeds expectations rating
Annual raises based solely on individual performance - you get more money if you exceed expectations
Sub-par employees receiving meets expectation rating when they deserve, does not meet
Managers who have a need to be liked are not the friends of the performance review process. They often rate their team members higher than they should in order to remain the ‘cool’ boss. Unfortunately, when a team member transfers or is put under a new manager and receives a meets expectations, they suddenly feel that they’ve been done an injustice.
Annual raises should always be based on a few different metrics and not solely on individual performance. For example, raises could be based on total performance of the department/group/individual. By having a three-layer approach, employees have a better understanding of the working environment as a whole and how they are performing within it. This allows them to gain some distance between their individual performance an their raise.
We all like to think that employees do not share their performance ratings - that’s not reality. The most common skew builder is when a sub-par employee shares that they’ve received a meets expectations. When this happens, other employees believe that they deserve an exceeds rating because their work is better than the sub-par employee.
The best way to avoid disappointment with a rating of Meets Expectations is to educate both managers and employees on what the ratings are, what they mean, and how they should be measured. Managers should be instructed on how to properly review an employee, and counseled on the importance accurate measurement.