Combating Poor Performace Reviews
The best way to combat an unfair performance review is to give your employer the facts. The review should have comments that have happened over the review period. If this happens to be a year, look to see if all comments have been written over the last couple of months. Comments should be written over the entire review period. Go back over the review period and see if you can remember any awards that were given you, or even letters of thanks for a job well done. Look at positive comments vs. negative comments, if there are more negative comments than positive either you should be fired or the performance review is skewed improperly. The key is to present the facts to your reviewer. If your boss is not willing to revisit the review you will have to take your argument up the chain of command.
Even if you are correct that your review was unfair, keep in mind that going over your bosses head will bring an awkwardness to your relationship. Only take it to the next step if your review is harmful to your career. Many employees who have just a few areas of improvement get upset and think they have had a bad review. The purpose of the review is to show the employee growth areas as well as areas where they have excelled.
If your employer has not included your awards during the year, you are entitled to have them included. Most companies are willing to look at the review and amend as needed. This may not get you the raise you wanted, but it does lead to a written record of your accomplishments during the review period. If you do happen do get let go later, your reviews will be important to have in case the company is protesting your unemployment. It is very hard for a company to fire someone for poor performance when you have a legacy of awards and written documentation that you have been doing your job.
Do a self assessment of how you really are performing. Does you employer have any valid points? I have had a poor performance review from my employer of ten years. At first I was very mad, after all I have been doing an excellent job for the prior 9 years. Unfortunately, the job was changing and after reflection I found that I was not. I had to make the choice to either change my behavior or change jobs were my prior behavior is acceptable. Most of the time it is worth your effort to change, especially when you look at your accrued benefits.
Finally, now is a good time to start keeping track of your specific job performance. You may need to ask for feedback from your direct supervisor about how your performance is going. If he returns with negative comments, you and your Supervisor can make an action plan to better your performance. Make sure that the action plan has a date certain for follow up. Once you have corrected any performance issue, you now have it in writing that you are doing your job or at least better. If done correctly, you will be doing a better job and your company will find it exceedingly difficult to give a poor performance review to an employee that is trying to do a better job.
