My Sales Mgr for a team of 8 reps asked each of us to complete our "self-appraisals" in our corporate system, then immediately put it into a Word doc and send to her our self appraisal. All of this has been last minute upon our Fiscal Year closing. One week later, we are having formal reviews where she rates us and writes a summary of our performance and delivers to us in a 1:1, which is in a few days.

I feel uncomfortable and question the ethics of requiring each member of the Sales team to submit our personal evaluations to her ahead of a formal review and her comments. I have never experienced this before. My sense has always been that she is a disorganized manager but this is taking a step further by creating an opportunity to shape answers based on our submissions and her opinons. I fear going to HR or above, but in my heart believes this is an unethical practice and some type of breech, and at the very least, not a practice that builds trust. Any advice how to handle this? If this is a real no no, I want to be able to articulate properly and report. All advice would be appreciated.

What is unethical about asking each employee to tell their boss how well they think they are doing.

Perhaps they want to review the difference in how you think and what they think.

Why is this not ethnic in any way. And honestly what form of ethics, based on religion or society or community ethics ?

You should worry about doing yours properly and honestly and not so much about everyone else.

Do you normally try to over think everything that is happening?

In sales, normally the final review is the profit and sales quota

Thanks FR_Chuck... Maybe you have been abroad too long and are out of touch with "hands on" western business practices of transparency in the workplace. Our entire team is upset, not just me, that the manager is not preparing for a review on her own personal reflections like other managers do, but with a last minute assignment never issued before. We were asked to complete the self appraisal assignment in our company system, then cut and paste to a Word document and personally deliver to her ahead of her efforts to create employee reviews in the system. This is odd. The forced self appraisals are being delivered at the same time she needs to prepare her own comments about employee performance, not well in advance or at random to "check in" and see how tings are going for coaching, development etc... I am certain the corporate instructions for the performance system did not include the action to take data ahead of time. So we believe it is unethical... and you seem not to.. fine. Moreover, she has not offered to deliver her "self appraisal" to the team before reviews which I should have added in the post. Our team argues that her practice is biased and an unethical approach to formal reviews that impact your career. Our team does not think we overthought this. TSales is a team game at our company beyond P&L or revenue, and not an individual sport paying attention just to the self... we are a COMPANY.

That's the whole point is too get the team all riled up, and see if they can sell themselves under pressure. Play the game and sell yourself well and your team. Its called thinking on your feet, and dealing with the unknown. It's a test, to see who needs what and when, and how. It tells them how your team functions and who leads, who follows and who slacks. Who blames and who snitches.

Get use to it because its standard practice in sales and retail. HINT: Follow directions carefully. They shake teams up periodically for various reasons to make better teams.

The only ethic is making money for the company.

This is exactly what two of our American public library directors did every year for a total of fifteen years (both were big on employees functioning as a team) -- we submitted our own evaluations of how we believed we did based on the goals we had set at the previous year's evaluation, plus we had to note our strengths and weaknesses. Then each director would sit down with us one-to-one to discuss what we had written and would then give us her evaluation. The end of the session was to formulate employee goals (to benefit the whole team as well as the library) for the next year.

Like tal said, sell yourself!

This is the mark of a lazy manager, and it's been around for a very long time. While not specifically unethical, it does not build morale nor improve teamwork. She simply needs some ideas to do her appraisals. It's a nuisance but it won't hurt your career.

I must correct one thing you said, "...this...is beyond p&L and revenue..." Wrong!! Nothing is beyond P&L and Revenue. That's the reason corporations are formed.

Thanks for everyone's responses... much appreciated.

I have to add that those two directors did NOT inspire a team spirit. Just the opposite happened--and, being a small staff that got along well together, we decided to join together to close ranks, finding workarounds that would still benefit our patrons and the library. A third director before those two never asked for personal work evaluations from us, but would break down each job description, created a Likert (rating) scale based on that, rated each of us, and discussed these ratings privately with each of us once a year. Employee satisfaction and performance were high during those years.

I don't see anything unethical... or unusual in this... I've seen this being done for over 30 years at a number of different employers... and it helps get an individual to view thing in a more realistic manner... after all... there is no "I" in team. Its not do they get an easy ride... they are going to do what they see anyway... a lot of employees get overconfident and many times think they are doing things the right way when many times... they aren't. And a bit of real introspection particularly when shares with their superiors help that superior better target each individual for career development. Which has its basis in improving teamwork... not stroking any personal egos in the group.

I don't see anything unethical either. Frequently I've had managers ask for self evals to compare with what they prepared. How long have you been with that company? I think it may be you that is out of touch with common practices.

hanahina,

You are just plain wrong. Self evaluation compared with supervisor evaluation is an excellent management technique. When it was implemented in my organization it was seen as a fair way for the employee to present his/her accomplishments. Her giving you the opportunity to complete it before your evaluation meeting as opposed to putting you on the spot at the meeting was another indication of her professionalism.

For example, you judged Chuck's response as soon as he "walked in the door". If he had had an opportunity to first evaluate his credentials to answer your question, you would have taken his recommendations and comments much differently. I rest my case.

The spectrum of unfair to unethical is gradual. The private sector is often considered unfair and cutthroat, and that's just business. I'm not sure where trust comes in either.
I would welcome the opportunity to give myself a glowing review, and if my numbers are down, I would go into cahoots with the rest of the team, working on all the ways the recession has affected sales. You could even add a solid suggestion or two, to add a positive spin, and you could all make it clear that you worked on part of your evaluations together. To my mind, that shows that you are a real team.

If I asked my employees to do self appraisals and they came into the one-on-one meeting with me to discuss the rating I was in the process of doing on that one employee, with some kind of a group rating, I would not be a happy camper. Teams are important-yes, but you would be lacking in ability to follow direction for one thing and I think that could be a big gamble to take in some organizations. I think that any employee who objects to doing a self-evaluation either has some serious doubts about himself/herself (confidence problem) or isn't very proud of their work performance. Neither of those traits bodes well for employment duration, promotional opportunity, or pay advancement.

I agree with smearcase, when you get your own company you can do it your way, but for now comply with the bosses directive and hopefully keep your job.

I thought I made it clear that the team effort was only to compare any lower numbers in sales. If you are anxious over what you will say about yourself, and it turns out that everyone has lower numbers, don't you want to know first??

You may have something there joy, if the other employees are willing to cooperate. And it could be approached with the other employees- let's self-evaluate our team effort here.
Then, when the appropriate opportunity comes up during the one-on-one evaluation with the boss, mention the positive points that came out of the TEAM self evaluation, but not describe it as working on self-evaluations together, but rather as- we thought it might be beneficial to do a team self-evaluation, too.
But, hanahina is the only one who can say whether or not the supervisor would likely be receptive to her employees making these efforts on their own.
"My sense has always been that she is a disorganized manager...". hanahina wasn't very glowing in assessing the supervisor.

Wish the op would come back with updates or inputs. This debate between the old folks can go on forever.

So few do come back. The site could be so much better if we had feedback to know how some of these issues turned out. It would improve our responses to future questions too. There is especially a lot of work by members here on technical matters, researching elements of their questions, looking for products to help them. re-reading the brief questions trying to get some idea of what the H they are talking about, trying to give them condensed questions to help them get better input from the experts, and fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz- no nuthin'.
But to their immense credit, our dedicated members just keep coming back and start anew with every question they think they can help with, like nothing ever happened.